Last Week's Latest
This was my first week back to work after a 5 week break in the Philippines. What is life? It was nice to get back to work - I did work from home, however, as I had a few appointments. But I also did miss the sheer freedom of not worrying about code not working or data not moving or people having issues with other work related things. I missed the abandon of waking up late, eating whenever, doing very little, and not feeling back about not accomplishing much. It's nice to have such an extreme downtime. But back to reality I have come. A reality that saw 6000 emails being read (deleted), trying to remember my password (this took about an hour last Sunday evening) and coming back to some very important mandatory training on the importance of not laundering money no matter how much fun it looks on Breaking Bad.
It wasn't all bad. After 6 hours of my code not working, I discovered why and after all this pain I learned how to handle the error in future and prevent this from happening again. It comes back to the whole 'learn from your mistakes' mantra. If this was a few months those 6 hours of failure would have really pissed me off. Now, that was probably the best 6 hours of my work-week as I suffered, I learned, and now I have a lovely solution in place.
Maybe this is growth.
Maybe I'm maturing.
I doubt it, but maybe.
What have I been up to this week?
📚 Reading - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka. This is not a book I would ever have chosen to read. It was voted on by my bookclub for the month and so, I am reading it. It's kinda weird. The main character is, but just kinda floating in existence. The book has seven chapters (maybe 8), each being a moon (hence the title). I'm not sure if I like it or not. There is a lot of Sri Lanka history references, so I'm lost. All I know about Sri Lanka is the Tamil Tigers. And that's only the name, not what they actually did. I will finish it. But it's definitely a book I'm reading because I'm in a bookclub and not one I would have continued with after 100 pages if I was reading it off my own initiative.
🎵 Listening - if we're being honest by lovetheband. Apple Music recommended this new album of theirs as I listened to one of their songs ages ago. And it's quite a nice album. A lot of songs resonate with me. It's a bit mopey and I'm a bit mopey too sometimes. Worth a listen for sure. i can't love is my favourite track for sure.
🎙️Listening - The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. As a massive Harry Potter, the discourse surrounding J.K. Rowling and the transgender community has interested (and confused) me for quite a long time. This podcast sees Megan Phelps-Roper (of former Westboro Baptist fame) interview J.K. Rowling and others involved in the transgender discourse. It's a fascinating podcast. I wouldn't say it answered many questions, but it definitely provokes a lot of questions about society, the internet and where the world is headed in general, and not just about transgenderism.
📱App - Buffer. I started using Buffer to schedule social media posts for these articles and newsletters I post. It's super handy. I can schedule posts to Twitter and Mastodon which is super handy as I can write once and post many. You can schedule posts on up to three channels for free, including Tiktok and Instagram.
📺Watching - Why I want to leave onlyfans by Miguel. This guy on Youtube only has two videos, but this one about why he wants to leave onlyfans provided such a unique insight into what being an onlyfans boy is really like. And it's not so glamorous. His assessment of it was very thoughtful and I'm hoping he makes more videos on Youtube. He is writing a book; I have no idea what it is about but I wish him every success.
Thanks for reading friends!
Hope you're having a good weekend and excited for the week ahead. I'm excited to go back to my apartment in Belfast and get back to my working routine.
All the best,
Aaron