About

From Goalkeeper to Sysadmin 🥅→💻

I’m Jonathan Lupica, and I took the scenic route into tech.

I spent 17 years as a semi-professional handball goalkeeper — Belgian first league, national team selections, 36 European cup games, and a league title to boot. When I hung up the gloves, I became a coach, because sharing knowledge and helping people grow is just as rewarding as being on the field.

Those years taught me something invaluable: how to stay calm under pressure, trust your team, and never fear what’s coming at you.

The Plot Twist

Before all this, I trained as an accountant — and actually worked as one for 10 years. Yes, a full decade of spreadsheets and balance sheets. But here’s the thing: the most exciting part of my job was always troubleshooting the office network, setting up new systems, and being the unofficial IT guy.

So I made the leap. I’m largely self-taught — countless nights and weekends spent learning, deploying, breaking things, and figuring out how to fix them. It took real dedication to change careers, but that’s exactly what drove me: the passion to do what I love, no matter how much effort it took.

What Drives Me

I’m addicted to learning.

I can’t help it. Every new technology, every problem I haven’t seen before — it’s a challenge I can’t resist. My homelab is my playground: I break things, fix them, break them again, and eventually write about it here.

What I love most about this field is that it never stops evolving. There’s always something new to explore, and I’m always first in line to try it.

And Linux? I just love it. The philosophy, the control, the endless customization — it’s the foundation of everything I build.

What I Do Today

By day, I’m a Team Coordinator & System Administrator in Belgium, managing networks, virtualization, and everything in between. By night (and weekends), I’m tinkering with:

• Kubernetes — because why run one container when you can orchestrate thousands?
• Proxmox & Homelab — self-hosting everything I can get my hands on
• Home Assistant — automating my house one Zigbee device at a time
• GitOps with Flux — infrastructure as code, the way it should be

The Tech Stack

Here’s what I work with regularly:

Why This Blog?

This blog exists for two reasons:

1. For me — I believe you truly understand something only when you can explain it to others. Writing forces me to structure my thoughts, dig deeper, and really master what I’m learning. It’s the same reason I became a coach: teaching makes you better.

2. For you — If I struggled with something, chances are you might too. Hopefully these posts save you some time (and frustration).

Fun Facts

• 🥅 Played 36 European cup games as a goalkeeper
• 🏆 Belgian first league champion
• 🇧🇪 Belgian national team selection
• 🎯 Became a handball coach — because teaching is in my DNA
• 📊 Spent 10 years as an accountant (I can still reconcile your books if needed)
• 🏠 Running more containers at home than most small companies

Let’s Connect

I’m always happy to chat about Kubernetes, homelabs, or Linux.

• LinkedIn: Jonathan Lupica
• GitHub: cvx10