words as photographs

I Disseste que falaste sobre mim a alguém que te fez perceber o quanto me deves. E eu poderia ter dito que lamentava o facto de ter sido necessária a ajuda do público. O meu repúdio foi tão completo. Esperavas que perguntasse mais. Que quisesse saber. Que me interessasse. Que prestasse atenção. Não viste mais que uma porta fechada. II   Apareceste sem convite e sem razão aparente. Suspeito que tenha sido uma tentativa de reclamar atenção, aliviar a consciência ou revisitar um passado há muito distante. Suspeito, porque sou culpado de ter feito o mesmo. De o ter feito contigo, e de o ter feito com a Q. Fiz sofrer muito a Q com a minha atitude, e espero, tenho confiança, que o que tive com ela tenha valido a pena a dor que lhe causei. Mas não me vejo a repetir tal façanha, nem vou permitir que mo façam a mim. Deixemos os mortos em paz. III Começam a faltar palavras. Ainda me surges, ainda me irritas. Um passado que não quero ver tocado, uma dor que não quero ver ...

I worked out yesterday. And what difference it has made in my mood. I feel like I put in work to benefit me alone. It has a nice feeling of selfishness to it, in the sense that I prioritised myself for something that is healthy and beneficial. Today I feel better equipped for bracing the day. I should have started the work day sooner, however I opted to look into articles about maintaining good posture and what kinds of work outs I can do indoors. Yes, I am distracting myself, but urging me towards a direction of health and happiness, instead of isolation and imagination through video games. Now that I'm feeling more rested, the plan is to build on that and improve my physical condition quite a bit so that I can recover quicker from the very demanding times ahead. It would also be nice to build up to a point I'd be able to do handstand push ups. To work.

What the hell, my mind keeps slipping away to fantasy games and character builds. I'm so tired of it, because it naturally goes there, but I don't have the time nor the inclination to pursue it outside of work. What's the point then? I'm just escaping this crap. It merely occurs while I'm working, as a kind of "try to get away" feeling. A constant lure, because I don't want to face work itself. But that is odd, because there's a part of me that appreciates the work when I am engaged with it. It seems that by working, I feel insecure because I start becoming all too aware of how distant I am, and how late and how ineffective. I might not be running away from boredom, but from fear. Yet, by giving in to that fear, I only make it more powerful. I must persevere through the discomfort.

The problem is that you are alone. That's all there is, and there's so much navel gazing you can do, until it becomes redundant. There's a job you have to do. A very good job. You hate the job. Fine. That isn't atypical, most of humanity is stuck at doing something they don't really care for. It's called doing what is necessary to survive. Maybe your job isn't necessary to survive per se. But it is necessary to enable all the rest of your life. You have already defined what is going to happen once the circumstances finally change. Now it's only a matter of patience, persistence and discipline. Head down. Keep quiet. Do your job. Push through. Take care of yourself. Sleep well. Eat well. Stay strong. Stay healthy. Keep ploughing through. Use whatever healthy tricks you deem necessary. Conserve your energy. You can do this. I can do this. You can do this. I can do this. You can do this. I can do this. Say this as many times you nee...

11:49 I want to get distracted because I'm chewing through my stack of emails and when I look at those that remind me I have shit to do, I get a bad feeling of anxiety. I want to do anything other than work. Maybe check up on Social Media. This is a bad idea because I'm exchanging true anxiety for delayed anxiety. I.e., checking social media won't make me feel anxious, but arriving at the end of the day will make me feel terrible. 11:57 I want to get distracted because my work management software is fucking slow. I want to immediately go online and get distracted, since I have no patience. This is a bad idea because the application will open in the background while I get distracted for much longer than necessary. 12:03 I just finished my first task, catching up on my emails. I noticed I have work the customer is chasing on (bad). I also have training this afternoon, which will take away from the time necessary to follow up on my work. I'm going to sta...

Will it be today? Will it be today that I finally get to be more productive? What's my current status? I'm very despondent and actively ignoring my duties. Why? I don't feel I have enough capacity to tackle them. Why is the capacity lacking? Because I have been very tired and sick. And because I don't find anything about my work motivating. Meaning that whatever I do only makes me feel drained, instead of reinvigorated. Building momentum doesn't happen naturally. What's wrong with momentum? Why doesn't it happen naturally? Like I said, whatever I do only makes me feel drained, instead of reinvigorated. And why do I think that is? Because whatever I finish, I never get to have a human reaction for it. It feels underappreciated. And I don't appreciate it myself enough. Why don't I appreciate it? I have no emotional stake in the game. I feel that I can let it linger as long as I want, and I don't face any external consequences. But...

Not in a good place. I partied too hard in Saturday. Unknowingly, sort of. I was drinking at roughly the same pace as before and during the cruise. And this time it hit me particularly hard. I think it was because of being vulnerable, of still being in recovery from the cruise. My body is still particularly weak, the exhaustion putting my natural defences at very low levels. So the night was a complete bender, filled with huge black outs and less than stellar, wobbly walking around. The hangover was tremendous and disabled me completely. It activated the worst outbreak of herpes I've ever had. My face feels like an open, bleeding wound. I feel disgusting. When it comes to coming back to work, fuck. Zero energy, no motivation whatsoever to do anything more than behaving like a vegetable. In the roadmap there are a few parties ahead. Next week on Thursday I have the Department's night out. The following Saturday I have the Sabaton concert. I'll spend the week wi...

Why does everything that is mandatory eventually ends up being boring and naturally avoided by me? What kind of rebel spirit is this, that decides to rise against everything, in a very indiscriminate way? It's as if I'm built with an anti-habit instinct. This mechanism doesn't make intellectual sense. I'm talking about habits and rules set upon myself, by myself, so as to live a more fast moving and fulfilling life, without wasting time or energy in less than ideal pursuits. But the mind doesn't want to work. It rejects the focus. It moves towards preserving energy and navigating low effort content. Music. Articles. Wikipedia. Videos. No actual work. Actual work is quite difficult to sustain without a clear vision. But visualising the objective isn't enough. It's more about having the belief, the faith that fulfilling the objective will lead to a more desired state. I've cleared my work stack before. And I haven't enjoyed the outcome. So ...

Oh great. Spent the whole morning distracted. Started by coming in late. Then spending more than 5 minutes on Social Media, replying to funny jokes. Then reading up too much about Cabin In The Woods. Then building a playlist to prepare for the State of Unrest show in London. Then way too much time working the thumbnail for it. I like to get lost doing these little, cool things. And it all started because as soon as I started my session, I immediately got contacted by work colleagues with work queries. And instead of going in with the flow, and immediately transitioning to other work I needed to do, I instead started derailing. So I'm back to the start. Yesterday and today I ended up failing my new objective of not hitting Social Media before 5 p.m. Yesterday was better, but this morning I couldn't start without checking it. This might prove a lot harder to put in than expected. I want to check up on my friends and what they are up to. Keep them alive in my mind. ...

Oh boy. I'm sick. And it's no fun. The run I went for on Monday has brought some unnecessary consequences. Running in negative temperatures has damaged my lungs and given me a cold. I'm now being very well taken care of ("very caring, a little annoying") by my Lioness. It did bring about a revelation that has been in the making for the last 18 months. When I'm struggling physically because I'm tired or sick, or when I'm struggling emotionally because I'm anxious or worried, I self medicate with my computer and the Internet. I will find something to distract me and actively sabotage what I have to do for work. I have been putting in place counter-measures to help me keep on track. I know if I give in completely to my urges to be distracted, I engage with a self defeating spiral that damages my capacity to be disciplined further and further. It's hard enough as it is to stay focused, with boring systems hanging up, people slow to reply. I...

Having a lot of trouble starting today. Yesterday I went for a run. Unfortunately I hadn't decided to do it the night prior, so I didn't prepare things accordingly. Ended up taking too long to get ready and get out and ran 3 Km instead of the usual 5. Not necessarily a bad thing. The weather has been very cold, in the high negatives, and when I came back I certainly felt cold damage to my lungs and throat. Nothing major, and I seem to be recovering. I returned to work last week tired, but invigorated and motivated. The lack of meaningful interactions have started taking its toll. As I recovered physically I have become drained emotionally. I'm back to feeling despondent and easily distracted. Losing a lot of time on platforms like Spotify and YouTube, concerning myself with researching bands instead of tackling the open work I have within hands. Being very irresponsible, but again, it is very difficult to do progress without meaningful interactions. I become much ...

Here we go again. The weekend was great to recover much needed energy. It's really hard to live with a constant sleep deficit. I can get used to it, but colours will be muted, reactions will be slow, the mind will be blunt. Better to be awake for less time, but be so much more aware. Anna and I defined our strategy in the upcoming months. The focus is still Portugal. She is to continue applying and we'll look into temporary housing alternatives in Germany. Something we can drop at short notice. This way, after the current house contract terminates, we can still linger in Germany for a little longer while we continue to find something in Portugal. If by May the situation is still the same, then we reconsider our options. So far, so very good. I'm very excited and curious about this next step. So many possibilities! On my personal end, I'm going to focus on losing some weight (the holidays were terrible), getting my work stack in order and slowly define what I...

No thinking, just doing. I'm still dizzy from the boat. The work review hasn't happened yet, postponed for today. Yesterday was a bit chaotic. I was split between catching up on my own work, of which there's quite a bit left, and helping Anna out with another job application. She has applied three times, got rejected on two due to lack of experience and the other one seemed like a bust. The job offer was put up from the start with someone specific already lined up for it. She's now applying for a Project Management position. Although the chances are slim, we're convinced that applying yields a better result than not, regardless of success. It's practice, it's iterating her CV, it's motivational in the sense we feel there's still a horse in the race. However we have around two months to line-up our next step. An idea that struck my mind is to commit to a six month period in a different household. We move in together around Ulm or Munich, for...

Today I'm to be reviewed for work. There's a new initiative in place with the aim of putting in place career development plans. I'm to come up with an objective to help me further my career. Since I don't really want to continue at K3, this is something that is hard to do. But let's entertain this thought. What are my possible career paths. All of them will certainly fall inside the realm of the technical. It is the only thing that lends itself well to working remotely. ( ed: it's incredible how detached I am from K3. while typing this post I went to distract myself with the blog layout. something that hasn't happened yet with less work related subjects. ) Server and Service Administration is being taken care of by James and Matt. I guess the best would be to train up on current programming techniques and service configurations for NAV. It actually makes sense if I want to move out of this role and step into a more consultancy driven/freelance t...

My mind is cotton soaked in alcohol, my body bloated with excess, my soul is restless. What a party. It has finally ended. Five years. Of savings. Of sacrifices. Of hard work. Of hard partying. Of great new friendships. Of love. So much love. So much more love than I have ever felt before. And now it feels like the cruising has ended. As if each iteration was the process of planting seeds. The soil now feels flush with them, and sprouts come all about. There would always be more to do, but we'd be doing more of the same. And I don't really want to do more of the same. I believe that has been the theme of my life. To constantly be treading new ground, even if at the expense of becoming an expert in any single field. To constantly be pushing myself towards new discoveries. There's no other high. It took five years for the cruise to feel like "done" to me. New festivals sit in the horizon. Opportunities that are closer by, within easier reach. Less effo...