Week ending 5/29/2022

:sweat_smile: My involvement with the open source dating app project continues. This is something I’ve thought about for so long, and the initial excitement of finding other people equally as enthusiastic about it and who could actually, maybe do something about it was pretty distracting for a while. I kind of threw myself into it, thinking, discussing, and writing about it on most days. I’m still spending a fair bit of time on it, but it’s settling down, and I’ve started to setup some tools (like Fibery) to help me manage the flow of information, planning, etc. and hopefully reduce the need for immediacy that distracts me from other equally important things.

Whenever some exciting, new project like this comes along, there’s always a challenge: my life is pretty full as it is (in fact I’d like it to be a bit less so!), but I also really want to work on it, so I have to make time in my life somehow. Often I realize it’s easier to sacrifice certain other things than I expected, but that’s not always for the best either, especially long-term. So here’s hoping I find a good balance, remaining involved to a good degree, but in a sustainable way that makes time for many other things. :slight_smile:

:man_technologist: I finally finished most of the onboarding for a new consulting job, which turned out to be a lot more in-depth than I expected. Multiple legal contract reviews and even a background check. I haven’t worked from the outside with a company that took security this seriously, so it’s been an interesting experience. I’m really looking forward to actually getting started on the work itself this coming week, because onboarding and setup aren’t my favorite parts of the job. :yum:

:clinking_glasses: During the height of COVID times, I had Zoom hangouts with a group of fellow cocktail enthusiasts. It really was a big help in those darker days, but even now I miss it. We’re still doing somewhat quarterly/seasonal events, and we had a late Spring get-together this past week. It was nice to see some familiar faces, not all of whom I’ve even met in person yet! And to be able to geek out on cocktails together, which is something most of my friends aren’t that into (certainly not to the degree that I am). This is a group of people where, if you mention any given random bottle of spirits, it’s likely at least one of the people on the call will step off-camera for a minute and return with that exact bottle. I love it. :grin: It’s probably impossible to recapture all the magic of these get-togethers at their peak, but they’re still a really good time and I’m glad they keep on keeping on.

:rose: Speaking of dating, I had someone really interesting match with me this past week. But I do this thing, paradoxically because she looked like such a good match, I wanted to send a good first message. So I waited several days to match with her. When I finally did, well… crickets. Is it because my message just wasn’t that good? Possibly. But it might also just be that by the time I did match+message, she was already in conversation with several other people she’d matched with in the meantime. I know it’s probably counterproductive to try to craft a great message if it means I have to wait to match, but I keep doing it… I suppose I should probably just experiment with simpler opening messages! After all OKCupid has data on this, and apparently “How’s it going?” is remarkably effective. :laughing: I can try a little harder than that, but not more than 50-90 characters worth, apprarently.

:relieved: I pride myself on being a good friend and being there for people when they need support, help, advice, etc. I don’t think this is unusual, but I also happen to not be great at seeking out help and advice when I need it, at least when it’s a challenging but not acutely painful situation. I was feeling rather stuck this past week, somewhat ashamed because to have let things come to this point, overwhelmed with several things I had to do and stuck on one in particular. I was genuinely unsure what to do next and I worried the decision paralysis would last through the remainder of the week and into the weekend. But my neighbor, bless him, happened to ask how I was, and when I answered honestly, he was interested enough in what was going on to hear a semi-extensive backstory before I got to the meat of it. In the process I realized several important things that in a very real sense took a lot of the weight and urgency off of what I thought was a real blocker. I left that conversation feeling remarkably better! And it’s an important reminder to me (and maybe you too?) that just talking through something with a friend can be super helpful. They don’t even have to know anything about your problem to help!

:phone: I am intentionally using the old-school phone here because it’s closest to what I remember from my childhood (we had rotary back in the day!). A couple months ago I reached out to my step-mother, a person who I have a somewhat strained and uncomfortable but hopeful relationship with. We co-own the land I grew up on together, but my involvement in the past 20 years or so is largely confined to paying my share of bills. I don’t really contribute to any of the significant maintenance that goes on up there. Setting aside whether I should be obligated to do so, what I’ve come to feel more recently is that it would be in the best interest of my relationship with my step-mom if I helped a bit more. So I’m making effort to do that.

I got in touch with her previously just to offer to do more, but we didn’t make a specific plan at that point. A fair bit of time went by, and I knew all the while that I needed to reach out again and make good on my expressed intention. Finally this week I did, and have plans to go up in a couple of weeks. Sometimes relationships in our lives stay uncomfortable because the very discomfort itself discourages investment and time spent together. It’s a bit of a paradox and often requires at least one person to just lean-in a bit. So that’s what I’m working on, and I hope it will start to shift things for the better.

:tumbler_glass::chart_with_downwards_trend: I keep track of all my alcohol intake to a reasonable degree and try to analyze how much I’m drinking on average, over time. I track it in estimated “drinks” per day/week/etc., not every drink is the same but I’ve hopefully developed at reasonable ability to estimate equivalence. Anyway, I updated my analysis again for the past week, month, and year, and I’m happy to see I’m trending down pretty consistently. There are multiple reasons for this, including a recent interest in non-alcoholic drinks taking the place of some cocktails, as well as an uptick in my fasting the last month or so as I attempt to reach a “target weight”. Overall I am a consistent drinker, but not an excessive one by any conventional measure, as far as I can see. And I am to keep it that way.

:tv: It’s been a while since I started a new TV show. The various Star Wars shows have been a bit hit and miss for me, but I did really enjoy The Mandalorian. And although I hated the prequels and didn’t necessarily feel like Ewan McGregor was that amazing as Obi-wan Kenobi, I have to say pretty much everyone was awful in them, and so it’s probably not the fault of the actors (more likely writing and directing…). Thus I went in to the first couple episodes of the Obi-wan Kenobi series cautiously optimistic. And I have to say so far I’m reasonably pleased. There have been some annoyingly campy moments, and things that just don’t make sense (yet?). But (spoiler alert!) the girl they got to play young Leia is really fun, and in my opinion a great choice for a young Carrie Fisher. And, despite the same old Tatooine primary setting, there are some intriguingly new elements (Inquisitors being a major one). So I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes…