Work
I spent three days in a mad rush building a featureful prototype for a potential client. A mentor who has since become an incredibly close friend coached me through it, and
- I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun building something
- I can’t remember the last time I worked this hard
- I learnt so much about the meta, the process of building, and myself.
I have absolute confirmation that the work environment I thrive in is one that is empathetic and collaborative. It is hard to find that (even more so as a contractor?) and I hope I can build small community around myself to fill that need. Talks at RC coworking are really helping with that.
When flutter came out and there was an uproar about how it would get rid of the DOM and new programmers would find it very hard, Google tried to patch it and create some strange canvas-to-DOM thing, right? Did that happen or did I hallucinate it? Anyway, I dislike how strange flutter feels to me as a javascript developer. If you are going to gate the features [hot reload] in even your minor versions [dev tooling] that strongly, then you should have the option to filter your docs by version number, a la python. I feel like the people who are really god at it are lifetime flutter devs? On the one hand I want to get into it, but on the other hand I think maybe that’s me being too general.
Even if it’s a well documented system, even if it’s familiar to you, if you are setting up a codebase from scratch you need at least 4 hours of synchronous time with a teammate to really get started. I have known this, but I will push back on it so much harder now that I know it.
Anyway, I jumped into a stack I have never worked with before for exactly one day on Thursday and I’m surprised at how much I could wrap my head around.
Life
I spent a few days in Bombay this week. I stayed with extended family - my sister in law’s sister in law - but they were so generous and welcoming.
Staying with them was such a departure from family dynamics I am familiar with. They are an incredibly social couple. They run several cricket clubs in their area, are part of parent groups in their child’s school, are active in the redevelopment efforts of their society... and one of them really enjoys alcohol. In the extended family I grew up in, this fact would overshadow every other aspect of the person’s life and character. Growing up, parties weren’t encouraged because they might lead to alcohol, and playing cards were thrown in the fire (even Uno!). The way my extended family deals with alcohol is a good proxy for how they handle other “undesirable” things (homosexuality, agnosticism, even independent thought). So obviously, I learnt to hide even hints of these kinds of things appearing in me. I don’t think I was very successful, but I carried the anxiety of not offending into every interaction with anyone in family, even my parents. With this couple, I know that our value systems, especially our politics, are quite far from each other. But I don’t feel off about coming out (of any kind) to them - I know that they have some baseline to empathise from.
My big project from ages 16 to 21 was the effort to unlearn the prejudices of my family. I think it surprised me how much fear I was still carrying inside me, and how much I typically hold back from family, especially my parents. I feel like I do have examples of my parents having empathy. Two values I hold very strong - feminism, and patriotism - is rooted in what my mother talked about when I was 5. But as I grew older those examples got fewer? I wish I could feel safe and cared for with other parts of my family.
Did Berty’s every flavour extravaganza this week! Was hilarious, but I wish it had more physical comedy. I’ll add improv to the list of hobbies I want to do when I get around to it eventually.
We also did Piece Off this month, and my team of 4 bagged first place for a 1000 piecer. We did the gorgeous Scrumptious in 56 minutes! Though we followed up pretty poorly with an 8th place in pairs (Girl in Kimono).
Health
My big life update is that I am off of gluten and dairy for the next two months. I hope it will help reduce inflammation, but somehow I’m not very hopeful.
Flares have been consistent and crappy. Have not been exercising at all, I’ve been lucky to get in one stretch a week.
Media Diet
Listening
I’ve been obsessed with the new Lorde album, Virgin. I’ve played it top to bottom, no skips at least 20 times in the last week. It’s quite a short album at 35 minutes, and very beautiful emotions. My first impression is that it was very Taylor Swifty? But more electropop. Turns out Jack Antonoff had nothing to do with this track, Lorde produced most of this herself. On the first few listens I really enjoyed just the tunes, beats, melodies, drops; but I sat down with the lyrics a few days ago and now I feel... honoured. Like she’s shared a part of her journal with me. The last time I enjoyed an album this much was RAYE’s My 21st Century Blues (2023), and before that was Charli’s how i’m feeling now (2021).