Open Source
I had my first contributions to open source merged in late 2024, and so far, I've contributed to rpgp, The Railway CLI and Mastra. I plan to continue contributing to rpgp, and I'm looking forwards to contributing to the next open source project I find problems with.
I'm actually thinking about making a blog post about my experiences with open source, but to be honest, my biggest piece of advice would be to use open source software until you start having problems with it. Then, fix those problems. If it really boils down to just this, I don't think it's worth bothering with a blog post.
Outside of other people's open source projects, I also often write my own tools, scripts and other small projects, "abusing" my abilities as a developer to make my life easier. You can find some of these examples on my projects page, or my Github page.