It’s super hard to get involved as a UI person. If you’re a developer, you can just rock up to a project and fix bugs, and if you follow the coding style they’ll probably get accepted.
If you want to successfully contribute as a UI person you have to convince a bunch of developers that you know what they should be doing better than they do. It basically never happens.
Work socks as well.
They’re socks that go with construction boots. Basically the same as hiking socks but cheaper.