Preparing, Revisiting, and Slowing Down

Dasith Rathnasinghe — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:28:44 +0000

Tomorrow, I have an interview.

The role focuses on areas I’ve worked with before, so today was mostly about revisiting and refreshing concepts rather than trying to learn anything completely new. I went through common questions, reviewed familiar topics, and reminded myself of things I already know but don’t always keep at the top of my mind.

Outside of interview prep, I spent time revisiting fundamentals, the kind of topics that often fade into the background once you’re busy with day-to-day work. I reviewed computer architecture basics like execution cycles and pipelining, along with operating system fundamentals such as bootstrapping, interrupts, processes, threads, scheduling, and synchronization.

I also revisited core networking concepts, including how data moves across systems and how common protocols work, as well as security fundamentals and common vulnerabilities. On the database side, I focused on transactions and concurrency control, reminding myself why these concepts matter in real systems.

Later in the day, I met an old friend who happened to be in town. We talked, caught up, and spent some time together. It felt good, a reminder that life doesn’t stop just because you’re preparing for the next step.

Tomorrow, I want to go deeper into database internals, especially topics like indexing, hashing, deadlocks, starvation, and query optimization. I don’t want to rush, just understand things a little better than I did yesterday.

I also realized I’ve skipped my evening walks for almost a week now. I plan to get back to that today. Staying healthy matters more than any interview.

I don’t know how tomorrow’s interview will go. I’m not aiming for perfection, just to show up, think clearly, and learn from the experience.

Let’s see.

Starting Over

Dasith Rathnasinghe — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:30:32 +0000

Today feels like a reset.

I was laid off four months after starting my career as a software engineer. The explanation was organizational restructuring and changes in direction. It wasn’t about performance. My role simply wasn’t needed anymore.

Right now, I don’t feel much. No strong emotions, no panic. Just a calm acceptance that things didn’t go the way I expected.

Before joining the company, I was doing well academically and felt confident in my software development skills. I joined with hopes of steady growth, learning, and building a stable career. I also had expectations around progress and financial improvement. When everything ended suddenly, all of that disappeared at once.

Instead of dwelling on what could have been different, I decided to focus on what comes next.

I’m starting this blog mainly for myself. Revisiting concepts and building new things genuinely excites me, and writing helps me slow down and think clearly. This won’t be a place for polished success stories or motivation. It’s simply a space to document learning, small progress, confusion, and whatever the day brings.

I plan to write short daily updates. Some days I’ll write, some days I probably won’t. That’s usually how it goes. Still, I want to try not to prove anything, but to stay connected to the process.

This is not a grand restart.
Just a quiet beginning.

Thanks for reading.

DEV Community: Dasith Rathnasinghe

Preparing, Revisiting, and Slowing Down

Starting Over