[pytest-dev] returning from my break and choosing my role

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

Hi everyone,

in the last few weeks i have ramped up my involvement with pytest after 
taking a longer break.

In my time of reflection i came to a few conclusions i want to share.

The need for my break after all in part originated from caring too much 
about things that don't actually matter to me as a person.
Its not sensible for me to stay on top of all the things and it destroys 
the time frames i actually have for contributing the things that i want 
to bring in.

Back around 2005 when i i started with pytest, it was very simple and i 
could actually easily fix issues with pytest in a testsuite
for that little while it took Holger to actually pick it up and fix it 
better in pytest itself.

Over the following years, as my involvement with pytest grew and 
expanded, the feature-set pf pytest,
as well as our technical debt from trying hard not to break things for 
users grew.

Between 2016 i had taken it very hardly on myself that we cannot nicely 
iterate on this technical debt which turned pytest from something
where i can easily fix a bug that affects my testsuite from my testsuite 
into something where that is not the case anymore.

I had also taken it in on myself that some issues (like marker transfer 
between sibling classes) would affect some users gravely.
And a fix was incredible hard to come by back then.

My self-introspection while taking the pause has lead me to a few 
questions and my personal answers.

What do i want to be responsible for ?
What do i want to feel responsible for ?
What do i want out of my Involvement ?

Its important to answer those with a good base-level of the "good 
selfishness" which is there to preserve our own selves in the world and 
to assert our own position.

In future i will no longer be on top of all the issues in some sense (in 
fact, ignoring issues that don't spark my interest has left me with time 
to do more about things that i care about, both pytest and other things).
In future i will work on guiding and developing pytest into a direction 
where users will actually be able to fix bugs that affect them in a own 
testsuite until we fix it right.
In future i will work on community building - i want the community of 
pytest to grow, i want the number of pytest core developers to grow and 
i want the number of active umbrella plugins to grow.
For that a vibrant, including and encouraging community setup is needed 
(plus community builder is a great self development goal, i have so many 
rough edges at community communication that i want to smooth/reshape).

And while aiming for that a primary goal of mine will be joy
* joy of developing and bringing things forward
* joy of interacting and helping people/myself to grow
* joy of being in control of what i do for who and when i do it.

I'm choosing a future that i will enjoy and and i invite everyone to 
join me in the journey of choosing a personal future abundant with the 
positive.

Whats coming next is that i'm going to keep slowly organizing myself 
around the changes i want to bring forward and slowly bringing them into 
reality in small sustainable steps.

Part of that already manifests in my proposals/changes to the 
development processes and the Node Structures.

The rest will reveal itself as i refine my own processes and start to 
communicate better/more structured.

Regards, Ronny