What I'm doing now

A break

I quit my job in November 2023. This is the first time I quit a job since I started working, in February 2010. The reasons aren't interesting so I won't expand on it.

Around that time I was working hard on contextualize.ai around my 9-5 hours, trying to make it into a small business. I ended up burning out.

Burnout

Software engineers burning out is

I'm thankful that I've worked as a software engineer for 15 years and was able to save some money, which can support me and my family.

Two things kept me relatively sane in these months: vigorous physical activity, and friends.

[about obsessions coming and going. graph showing them]

Sports

Guitar

Music

Focus

I stopped listening to so many podcasts, watching so many YouTube videos. Well, maybe not stopped, but greatly reduced.

Wax Wings

Friends

If you are reading this, you know who you are.

Since the last month or so I've been living the life I've always wanted to live. I do one intense physical activity every day of the week. I joined a weightlifting club and I'm preparing to compete. I started doing Crossfit. I started learning Muay Thai. I go snowboarding on the weekends. I do sauna after sports multiple times a week, and I ice bath for 12 minutes every Sunday. I cook my own food every day. I wrote many poems.

The things that give me the most joy today are things that I had never done until very recently.

I'm listening to ERRA a lot. They released a new song two weeks ago that has been pretty much on repeat ever since: Blue Reverie. It gives me such a feeling of calm happiness and confident, contained strength.

With regards to the previous "now" update from January 2021:

• I didn't cycle inside as frequently this winter, mostly because I'm giving precedence to other sports, and doing stuff outside.
• I'm still excited about Rust, but I'm not using it for any projects right now.
• I read Antifragile, and it changed my perspective on many things in life. I ended up reading all of Nassim Taleb's books.
  • The addition of antifragility to the right of the fragile-robust continuum is immediately practical: many things not only resist stress and volatility—they grow stronger. I've applied this to my health and investments, also having in mind the barbell strategy.
  • The concept of skin in the game is also ever present: not suffering consequences from mistakes makes things fragile and unjust. How wold investment bankers and politicians act if they were proportionally held accountable for damages they caused?
  • Putting yourself on the line, being vulnerable and real, taking risks, pouring your soul into your work and art, is how I want to live.
• I didn't write more essays since then, but I have ideas in mind.
• I launched contextualize.ai and made my first money on the internet.
• I barely improved my German. This year, for the first time, I'm forcing myself to not fall back to English in some social contexts.
• I'm still listening to a lot of Tim Hecker, Spiritbox, and Tigran Hamasyan.
  • Monotony from Tim Hecker's latest "No Highs" is... breathtaking. It gives me the sensation of slowly accelerating upwards towards the sky, in reverse, stopping mid air, and then slowly accelerating back to earth. The heavy synths hit and it's suddenly so emotionally overwhelming.
  • Spiritbox also released an EP last year. Cellar Door is soul-crushingly heavy and I had it on repeat for at least two weeks when it came out. The keyboard synths in the transition from Cellar Door to Jaded are incredible. They give me this feel that something big is about to happen, and have this "Daft Punk Tron soundtrack" vibe.

January 2021

• Cycling 100km every week, lifting weights 3x a week and eating well to stay healthy
• Building software with Rust at work and on personal projects
• Reading Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
• Writing essays like the ones you see above
• Building out an idea for a sustainable business
• Improving my German
• Listening to a lot of Tim Hecker, Spiritbox, and Tigran Hamasyan