We made it.
It’s probably the same feeling every year, but it certainly feels like this one has been a tough slog. From work (what the hell??) to learning how to help Jules with dyslexia, there’s been a steep learning curve for all of us this year. Not to mention all the craziness happening in the world around us: Trump, Brexit, HK, bushfires at home and “forever wars” abroad.
Of all the applicable clichés my favourite has to be “…once more ‘round the sun.” A seemingly unremarkable star, I might add, but for the fact that its third satellite hosts us; we’re nothing more than the smartest hominids on the only chunk of rock that can provide life-support for our fragile bodies and interconnected ecosystem. From micro- to macro, this planet represents the only biome we know, in all its variety and variegation.
(It’s a shame that so much of Australia, at least, is burning.)
So what did I get up to in 2019? I worked for awhile at a company that seems hell-bent on wasting their potential, succeeding in spite of themselves, and it made me hungry for more: if these guys can’t run a technology department, well, maybe I could? I came back to my consultancy and have consistently been a bad manager, concentrating on the clients rather than our staff, to the point of personal embarrassment. (I want to be more supportive for my team, and I’ll certainly endeavour to do so in the new year, but I find it difficult on a few different levels. Perhaps if I had more time to dedicate to it? Rather than the typical “you have 20% time for team building … but we expect the project to get delivered too. And we’ve underestimated, so work weekends if you can!”)
Yeah, I need a break. A couple of weeks with no school, no work and nothing to do but paint wargaming minatures with Jules, mess about with Arduino, sleep, go running, write, read.
We bought an apartment! A beautiful, quirky three-bedroom apartment on the ground-floor of The Malthouse, nestled snugly in the much-coveted locale of Summer Hill, a medium density community that is close to school, transport, markets, parks, and cycleways.
In the blink of an eye, another weekend has come and gone. It’s a familiar feeling that many of us experience - the sensation that time is flying by, leaving us wondering where the hours and days have vanished to.
After too many years, I’m finally building myself a NAS: network-attached storage, a device for backing up files, photos, and all the data that is otherwise in the cloud. Say goodbye, FANGs, I’m going self-hosted.