Now

Social Media

My host, Micro.blog, supports ActivityPub, so my posts are federated to Mastodon, and I can follow folks whose accounts are similarly federated. I believe in supporting work like this, so I am using a paid account.

I’m hopeful that with open protocols, blockchains, federation and syndication, we can make something that works even better than the collection of for-profit islands we’re all on.

Home

Camping out in another house for a few months while our home is remodeled. We only had to move everything out of two floors of our small home, but we vastly underestimated the time and effort this would take. We made it out on time and we are eagerly awaiting the moment we can return. So excited for all of the details to be complete.

Questions remain:

Do all of the items we packed deserve a place in our home once the remodel is complete?

The move has really held up a mirror to my attitudes about what I have believed I needed to keep versus what is giving me joy. I am resolved now to be intentional.

Family

Working on being a better father. Unlearning and retraining myself is hard.

At the same time I am very grateful we found a school that fits my daughter better than the previous two, and we are learning how to better advocate for her.

Career

I’m at a very good place, in the sense that I’m confident in my abilities and I really enjoy my role. My current challenges are building a team by elevating everyone, and learning to be a good mentor and manager for an intern. When it seems easy, that might be a clue I’m missing something. Manager an intern has proven a bigger challenge than I imagined, by far.

Health

I haven’t come to terms with my diabetes diagnosis.

I hate it. I hate that I drank all the high-fructose corn syrup. I hate that I ate all the Cheetos and cheese puffs and Doritos and tortilla chips. And French fries and mashed potatoes and baked potatoes and white bread and rice. I crave the carbs hard. Still.

I’m moving a little more, in general, eating better, in general, but not enough to compenstate for poor choices. I need to eat more fiber and eat fewer carbs. I’m having difficulty and I’m not proud of myself.

By comparison, avoiding wheat because of being Celiac seems easy.

My hearing is stable. Hearing in my left ear is greatly diminished but hasn’t changed in a year. And that ear is still more sensitive to loud noise.

I heave learned this is consistent with Vestibular Schwannomas, or Acoustic Neuromas. This means I have a small “benign” tumor in my head, which has caused nerve damage. My hearing will never return to what it was. The tumor hasn’t grown in the last 8 months. The good news is that it does not demand immediate surgical remediation. I’m in for annual MRI sessions to see if it remains stable or not. If not, then an intervention will be required.