I've written a converter to translate a selected number of my posts from the now-defunct blogging platform and social media website https://cohost.org. They're poorly converted to markdown and I don't plan on doing much with them except host them for personal posterity. A few will appear in my main feed, most will not. They can be viewed here.

I recently came across a blogpost about rewriting an "elegant" function in Clojure into an optimized function in Common Lisp.

In it, John Jacobsen discusses how they went from this Clojure code:

(defn smt-8 [times]
  (->> times
       (partition 8 1)
       (map (juxt identity
                  (comp (partial apply -)
                        (juxt last first))))
       (filter (comp (partial > 1000) second))))

I started writing a little blog in the summer of 2017, when I had really hit a local maxima happiness. A year into my software career, feeling medium good about Avuity, feeling very good about May, it seemed right to talk about it, even privately. I'm very glad I wrote all those things down. It makes me quite happy to read Marriage and see the seeds of good decisions, even if the execution took a lot of work.

Why start blogging again now? Because in between writing code every day, I feel like I have thoughts and reactions to things I read and try. I read all of Test-Driven Development in a single day, and like 99 Bottles of OOP before it, I walked away with my brain on fire. I've begun reading Domain-Driven Design, and I can feel it poking at my brain in the same way. I don't want to lose this feeling, nor do I want to lose the insights these books are providing.

It's very easy to grind through a tough problem (personally or professionally) and then move onto the next problem without 1) reviewing what I (we, in the context of teams) learned or what challenged me, or 2) putting any effort into practicing or preparing for the future. Mindfulness when learning and practicing goes a long way towards cementing valuable lessons, much in the same way adding and reviewing flash cards might. (I've had my time with Anki, I don't think I need to do that right now.)

This past week, I had the opportunity to contribute to an existing custom report built for a client. It loaded incredibly slowly, so in between working on the contribution I had been tasked with, I also took it upon myself to speed it up. I think it's time to share what I've learned.

I'm siting here at 1215 after another long day, and I've been thinking to myself, what am I doing? I don't need to spend the money, I don't need to drink wine, I don't need any of this. On the other hand, the wine tastes amazing, the music in my headphones and the music played by the two jazz dudes in the corner are both bangin, I'm written some really good facebook posts today. I don't regret my decisions.

I had dinner with dad, and he whipped out some classic Jon Bogart-isms. Stuff like, if I actually wanted to do certain things I'd just change the rest of my life to make them happen (wrt travel vs eating out all the time). What's great is, I can let that shit fall away from me easily nowadays. I hear it, I recognize the kind of effect it's had on me at various points in my life, and I let it fall to the wayside. Jonny Dee is a smart man, he's encountered a lot over his life, and I value his wit and wisdom, but like so many pseudo-negative aspects of my life, I have to be willing to say, “No, I don't need to accept this as my current truth” the way I did in high school or college or after college.

I've been feeling really good recently about my place in the world, my goals and my efforts, and the work I've put into my various relationships. I don't know exactly where I'm headed, but like I said a couple posts ago, I'm at a crossroads and I'm trying so hard to navigate this one correctly.

I don't know what I'm here to write, I just know that I have this feeling like I should keep it up. So here I am, writing more.

What's the point of writing for one's self? Reflection? I don't get my actual feelings out if I'm not conversing with someone. Julie talks about reading her journals from when she went to therapy early in her relationship with Jon and how much clarity she finds in it, how nice it is to see the clear lines of work and effort and thought that went into various decisions in her life. I don't do that. Maybe I should? I honestly don't find it compelling to write for myself. The kinds of thoughts that I write don't accurately represent me internally in a given moment. Maybe like a sign post signifying the general area it might be helpful to write the various interpretations I've created from parts of my life, and then look back on them later, saying, "Ah from this vantage point, I can see the shape of the land, the whole from all of the pieces I could barely consider when in the tasks and minutia."

Compare this to when I was in high school and early college, writing on Livejournal. I experienced so many strong emotions I had trouble processing, and writing for that kind of audience helped a bit. So many of those old posts feel like I couldn't handle the changes in my life, external and internal. Not so much like that anymore.

I'm at this weird crossroads in my life right now, where I can push hard to get married and settle down, and I could also dive back into the "dating" life I led in the winter/spring months. After lots of hemming and hawing, I had some excellent conversations with Ally on Friday night and Saturday morning, which has led me to the conclusion that I should get married. I should ask May, in fact, to marry me.

I "preposed" to May on Saturday night, after we smanged. Almost said it during, but I had the good sense to wait until we were cuddling afterwards. Honestly, I'm a fool with timing. Thankfully, The Kindest Human, May, responded very positively and generously, considering that I had informally asked her to consider marrying me. We're having a conversation tomorrow evening (2017-07-31T20:30 ish). I hope it goes well, and based on the comments we've made to each other, I suspect the smanging will eclipse the marriage talk, lol.

Starting any project is difficult, and I suspect regular blogging is not an activity I'll have much luck with, seeing as I've classically hated all forms of writing. However, along with the work in self-care and Success Oriented Mindset I've implemented over the last year, I think it's time to attempt to conquer this issue as well.

Also, at this point, all I have to do is twist something into a vaguely "programmery" design, and I fall head-over-heals into it, desperate for any reason to apply my skills at programming, even when I have no idea what I'm doing.

No one will read this, and I sure as fuck hope not. That's okay. We'll see how I feel about it in a week.