h1 Rust 2021
- 2020-09-24

I am tired. Today was rough. This year has been rough. Everyone around me is tired too. 2020 has been a hot mess, coming right after a not so hot 2019, and a messy 2018. It’s not just you. It’s everything. It’s okay.

My wish for Rust 2021 is for you to go easy on yourself. No really. You. If you’ve done any work on Rust at all, that means you doubly so. Yes really.

The core team has tasked themselves with starting a foundation. Laudible, but can we take a sec to realize we’re still mid-pandemic. Not that long ago our biggest sponsor cut back drastically. People lost their jobs. Co-workers. Friends. People we love and cherish. Things are tough. And there’s still much, much, much more. And right while all this is happening we’re creating this foundation. Ooph.

That’s why I want the core team to take a break. Go on a vacation. Close the office for a while. I don’t know when. Maybe do one in the winter. Maybe one in summer, after we have a foundation. Big ol’ summer vacation. Too hot to think anyway.

Actually not just the core team: I want everyone to take a vacation. The whole Rust project. Hit the brakes, take it easy. Archive rust-lang/rust for a week. Can’t come to work if the office is locked. Take a breath. Take a bath.

“Rust” is the outcome of the processes we apply. It’s through dialog, labor, and mutual respect that we get any of this done. And we can’t do these things if we can’t talk about how we feel. And uhh, reading the room here, but people don’t seem to be doing well. How can we feel safe in dialog if we don’t even feel physically safe. We really gotta take care of ourselves first before we take care of RFC2000.

Of course we also should find ways to get paid. Of course stdsimd is cool, and error handling is cool, and async is cool, and…

Yea.

The backlog of things to work on is infinite. The people that work on them aren’t. The cool problems to work on will be here when we come back. I just hope you’ll still be here with me ♥