Three bad days

 Been sick (extreme fatigue) for three days now. No real trigger or cause. Worried about that. Going to bed early tonight. Maybe that will help.

Horrors and Validation

 ICE killed a human in Minneapolis today. Shot her in the face a few times through a car window. Heavy shit. Certainly far outside my sphere of influence, but saddening and troubling. My goal for tomorrow is to call each of my elected federal representatives and ask them to make this *gestures around* stop. That's something I can do. Likely not impactful. But certainly more impactful than sitting here and doing nothing. I will look up those numbers right now. 

John Carter, (202) 225-3864

John Cornyn, here's a link to fill out a form. https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/share-opinion/. I can also call a state office and talk there. Here is Austin: 512-469-6034

Ted Cruz. https://www.cruz.senate.gov/contact/write-ted/form. Also call Austin office at 512-916-5834.

~~~~~

My partner asked me to validate her feelings tonight. Or, rather, she pointed out that I had *not* validated her feelings. This brought up a (not helpful at the moment...) question of "Wait a minute, why is it important to validate someone's feelings?" I mean, after all, she had the feelings. She knows they're real. She knows that the value and important of her feelings has absolutely nothing to do with me. Heaven knows she doesn't need a man to make her feelings important. I'm not trying to be an idiot here or anything. Like I know it's important. I know it feels good when someone else validates my feelings. Doesn't it? I honestly don't remember? I like when people listen to me. I like when people understand where I'm coming from. I like when they can acknowledge the way that I feel. It feels good to be noticed and seen. I don't know what the hell validation means in this context though. Do you need a double check? Do you need someone to tell you that your feelings at that moment made sense? "I can see how a person with your specific history and trauma would feel that way, if they believed that the way I acted was motivated by malice, sure." Like I want to be a good partner. Genuinely. I'd like to understand this. But I guess I just don't know what the actual hell the phrase "validate my feelings" means. I could read something, I guess? I searched online, but all I got was slop. Maybe I can dig a bit deeper. 

This problem is exacerbated by my lack of energy. I like to (do I really like it?) say that my mitochondria are being jerks right now. I overdid it today. I mowed some of the lawn yesterday. Then today I had to walk to the park twice. Far too much for this body. I'm not as good of a partner or dad when I'm completely out of energy. 

I'm going to try to get some sleep. I say "try" like it's not a freakin' guarantee. I take 1mg of melatonin (children's chewable, delicious) and I'm out pretty quickly. Hopefully I can get a full day of work in tomorrow. I'm still a bit behind schedule. 

Interesting Animals

 My kid is creating a list of interesting animals that he wants to learn about. What are some of your favorite interesting animals?

I think that bats are interesting. My favorite Wikipedia article is about [Bat Bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb). Definitely worth a read. And yes, I did write that in Markdown notation, and I do hope that it remains formatted that way. 

I'm writing this year because it is a thing that I can control. There are many things I dislike that are outside of my control. I feel powerless in regard to politics. I spend a lot of time and energy reading and worrying about politics. I have opinions. But largely I'm unable to affect that at all. I'm having a hard time doing anything about public health or anthropogenic climate change. So writing is my way of focusing myself on things that I can control. 

Two thoughts kicking around today. The first is that community is wildly important, and I have done very little over the last few years to cultivate community. I don't want my kids to grow up without seeing me try to build and generate community. I grew up in a great community. That community was built on rails-- as long as you went to school and went to church you really got it for free. My parents did do some cool stuff to build theirs though. They hosted some parties and visited with friends. It was something. Because I've been so sick, and because the consequences of me getting sick again are so severe, I've heavily isolated myself and my family. Leaving the church definitely cut off my primary mechanism for community gathering. So maybe 2026 will see some small efforts to build a community again. It's important. It would dramatically improve the quality of my life. How do I build community when I am immunocompromised and have incredibly low energy production inside my body? Fantastic question. We'll try some things. We'll see.

I have since forgotten the second thought that was kicking around. We got some family news today. A relative is sick. Kind of an unknown severity of sick. I am worried. It is a cause for reflection. Life is precious and short. Mine feels sorta long and more disappointing than precious, but here we are. There really are some beautiful parts of my life though. My kid showing curiosity and making a list of animals he wants to learn more about is definitely one of those. 

It is Sunday night. Work tomorrow. I'm excited. I've officially missed a deadline. I probably have one week of wiggle room on it. I'll have to hustle. I'm really enjoying it though. I do so much love writing code and fixing things. I'm nervous because I hate disappointing folks. But it should be alright. Fresh start here we go. 

Hypocrisy by Chris

 I got to do one of my favorite things at work yesterday. The first thing you have to understand is that I'm a gigantic hypocrite. I absolutely hate having my code reviewed. Conversely, I really love looking at someone else's code and offering some ideas or suggestions that they might not have considered before. Yes, I know, I'm a monster who thinks they are smarter than everyone else. I'm working on that. I don't actually think I'm smarter than the people I'm reviewing. (I always think I'm smarter than the people reviewing me. I know that I'm not. Stupid self always gets defensive. I'm working on it!)

Anyways I did two big reviews and came up with some simple and straightforward ideas to make the code more maintainable and clear. That's kinda my jam. I assume that one of the reviews was written in a roughshod manner in order to "get it out quickly" and "iterate" and "learn". I'm not sure about that approach. I mean, love the idea of getting things out and learning. But I don't really love the idea of not refactoring while you go. You can't go fast, and you can't learn, if your code is in a garbage state. Just fix it! It's fun to do! 

The trick to the second review was that "This is how we've always done this" is usually the correct answer, unless you can find a safe and clear way to maintain the current pattern and improve clarity. Specifically, "these public methods must live in this particular 3000 line file" was true, but "therefore all the behavior behind those public methods must also live in that file" was false. Add another class! Call that class from the 3000 line monster. Fewer conceptual collisions! 

I think I did a good job. There's a nagging (like a 2/10 nag here. Nothing serious) concern that all my suggestions are ultimately founded on "vibes" and don't actually contribute to the success of the project. Maybe what I believe to be "good practice" is really just some other human-dude's opinion that I internalized. Was I indoctrinated? What evidence do I have that my ideas actually contribute to project success? Like it feels good when the code is more clear. It makes sense that code that doesn't suck is easier to maintain and build on top of. But really, how much greater is our chance of project success with great code vs poor code? Like 10%? I don't know. The success of the project feels like such a nebulous thing. What are all the factors that influence it? We can't even quantify all of them. We feel like good code matters so we do our best. 

The underlying uncertainty here feels a little deeper. What leads to a happy life? What actions should I take as a parent to help my kids' future? What are the things that matter? 

Well that's enough for today. Might be back later. 

My previous post has five views as of right now. That's about 36 hours. I expect that represents zero humans. This is okay. I will continue to write. For me. 

Crowded Gym

Today is the first of 2026. Twenty-Five (definitely not sure about that hyphenation or capitalization) was certainly the hardest of my life. Well, maybe 24 and 25 together take that award. I got really sick. A very mild Covid infection led to a few months of POTS symptoms. I felt fine, but I'd get super lightheaded if I bent over to pick something up. Standing up for long periods of time started to make me sweat. The dizziness eventually went away, but standing up got harder and harder. That transformed into pretty atrocious fatigue. If my body used to be a minivan that got 20 miles to the gallon, all the sudden I was a wheelbarrow that was getting three to the gallon. And the rate at which my tank filled back up was incredibly slow. Things that used to be trivial were suddenly far beyond the realm of possibility. 

Dealing with unexpected disability was not something I was prepared to do. I'd seen my wife get sick and gradually stop being able to contribute to the household a few years earlier. That was difficult, but it felt very natural for me to pick up the slack, make adjustments, and lower my expectations. When I got sick everything I'd always been able to depend on went away. Suddenly I couldn't push through difficult things anymore. There were a lot of nights where I completely ran out of steam. I'd start to walk very slowly and jankily. If anyone talked to me my brain would take a long time to parse what they said. I was desperately broken during those times. I'd try to hide from the wife and kids-- somewhere dark where I could lie down and cry by myself. I'd cry because I knew I couldn't take care of these people. I knew my kids would come in and need me to get them a cup of milk, and I knew that I couldn't possibly get off that bed. Those were dark times. In those hours when my body was more exhausted and broken than I had ever experienced, I wanted to die. It made me so very sad to consider my kids growing up with a dead dad. I wept and wept considering that. It didn't make me want to die any less, but it did make me very sad. 

My body would, after a few hours of quietly doing absolutely nothing in a dark room, eventually feel good enough to drag myself to my computer and play a game of Dota. I could log on and play a mentally demanding game that didn't require any body movement except mouse and keyboard. It takes no time at all for my brain to get completely focused on the game. During the 40 minutes or so a match takes, the very sad chemicals inside my body would eventually fade and be replaced by something else. There's something to be said about escaping your problems temporarily until the desire to off yourself fades. 

I lost my job halfway through 2024. Technically I quit. Ha. I was just so sick. I couldn't possibly work the hours I needed to. Heck, I stopped being able to tolerate code reviews because I was just so dang depleted. Mustering the emotional fortitude to tell some Gen Z recent grad why I was correct about the thing I was obviously correct about became too much. I thought that after a few months of rest that I'd be able to jump right back into a job. Maybe I was burnt out? Maybe I hated my job? Maybe I just needed more sleep. 

Nah, it was Long Covid, obviously. I can't confirm that I didn't hate my job ;) And I almost certainly was burnt out. Neither of those things could explain the depth of my fatigue. Apparently I won the genetic / environmental / unlucky lottery that left my body fucking screwed up for no discernible reason. It felt unfair for a long time. Still does, tbh. I'm so much better at managing my body now. I've improved somewhat. Like, maybe substantially. But probably more than that I've learned to give shit up that I can't afford to do anymore. I have an energy budget that I'm pretty familiar with finally. I know when to bail out and take a nap during the day. My kids and wife are getting better at getting their needs met while I have energy. We eat a lot of McDonalds-- standing up to cook isn't usually something I can afford to do. 

I spent 16 months unemployed. I spent the first six months resting. The market took a crap and there weren't a lot of jobs once I finally started looking. I ended up landing a lot of good interviews, and got really close with a few fintech companies here in Austin. One of them (Wise) almost definitely passed on hiring me because they found out I was sick. Hahaha, those fetchers. I sent an embarrassing email telling them I'd work for free for a few weeks to show them they were making a mistake. I was desperate. They said no, of course. 

Apparently I used to have a lot of money? I didn't really know that at the time. I received a good amount of stock when I worked at Google, and I had been holding on to most of it from the last two years I was there. That sustained us for a long time. Then we received some early inheritance from my very good father in law. And then we lived on credit cards, because that was the money I had available to me. 

Being poor is weird. Do I have enough credit left to fill up the car with gas? Which bills can I ignore for a little longer? I hadn't experienced that as an adult before. I wouldn't recommend it. Waking up with uncertainty of how you were going to keep this boat afloat isn't super fun. 

I landed a job! A really good one. Honestly, over the previous twelve months I had experienced enough interviews to finally be good at it. System Design interviews had kicked my butt enough times that I finally figured them out. That's really all it was. Failing enough times, diving in and figuring out how to answer the question that they had asked me, and then prepping for the next interview. I was finally good at it, and I landed a job because of it. I started in November. I've had it for two months now. I like having a job. I really like this job. It's pretty perfect for me. Two thumbs way up.

Knowing how much money I'm going to make, and on what day it will land in the bank account, is a cold glass of water after a terribly hot day. We're still like, maxed, on those credit cards. It will take us a long time to dig out. But we'll be able to! Easy peasy tbh. We'll make it. Assuming I keep this job (which I will), assuming I can maintain this level of health (which I'm working really hard to do). 

On that note, I need to go to bed. I'm freakin' wide awake. But I have work tomorrow. So now it's off to melatonin land so I can wake up and head to the code mines. gl hf, thanks for reading noobs.