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    Recently

    A reflection of the past six months.

    Work

    This new year started with a sense of guilt. Prior to the holiday break, I felt like I hadn’t been able to give my all to the new startup I had just joined. I was burnt out, and I was finally able to admit it to myself and my teammates. I requested a leave of absence to give myself time to recharge and work at my own pace until I was ready for an eventual return.

    After a couple of weeks, I was unsettled by the idea of being unproductive and, more importantly, unprofitable. I found freelance work through the crypto and NFT communities I had immersed myself in and kept busy. It was a relief having predictable income in a time where I was occasionally buying and selling for profit, though was by no means sustainable.

    Months pass and I feel ready to return to a more stable lifestyle after having had some fun in trading and building tiny projects, with ample of downtime in between. What I didn’t anticipate was the brutal downturn of the overall tech market which heavily impacts B2B (business to business) companies. The security I once had was now gone— they were unable to rehire me.

    Today I am in search of a full-time position in a time where hiring freezes and layoffs are increasing in numbers.

    Health

    All things considered, this time away from work has been tremendously beneficial to my overall wellbeing.

    I have made it a daily habit to spend at least 15 minutes outside in the hot Utah sun, usually by sitting in my backyard and drinking my morning tea.

    I found a therapist is both relatable but also great at probing with questions.

    I had my annual physical exam with all metrics in great ranges.

    I started taking a generic form of Lexapro to address my depression and pick me up from my slump.

    I even managed to achieve a long term goal of mine— gain a healthy amount of weight! Most would call it a dad bod, though I would attribute the increased appetite and slumbering to a known phenomenon as “sympathetic pregnancy.”

    Travel

    With baby on the horizon, Celeste and I have prioritized travel within reasonable amounts. We’ve gone to

    This will probably conclude our travel adventures for the foreseeable future. That is, until he’s able to (somewhat) enjoy road trips and flights.

    Family

    He’s real. Very real. His first ultrasound he was a mere blob. By the third he was a little bean, and maybe by the sixth he was indeed a tiny person! Today he’s gotten so big his profile doesn’t fit in the ultrasound view, so we see portions of him at a time. I can feel his kicks and barrel rolls. I can see his kicks. I am in total awe of this baby boy that we’ll soon be able to hold in our arms and lovingly have to clean his poopies.

    Consequently my relationship with my parents has been improving. In some aspects I’ve grown increasingly distant from them, but the passing of Matthew and their new roles as soon to be grandparents has brought us closer. I’ve been excited to show them all the little things we’ve gotten for him and all the prep we’re doing for his nursery. I can really feel the excitement in both of them and that rubs onto me as both their son and soon to be father of their grandchild.

    Zooming out further, I’ve been naturally more curious of my larger family and ancestors. I learned recently that it was my great grandfather who migrated from Italy to Argentina, to which I now have a reference point for my Italian surname. For years I’ve been in a Facebook group with people around the world who share our uncommon last name, and we each have fragments of our family history to piece together how we relate to one another. The idea of creating a proper family tree and bringing us together somehow is all the more alluring to me, especially as our son continues the lineage.

    Then there’s Celeste. She’s so ubiquitous to my daily life that it’s hard to understate her impact on my happiness. She’s always supporting me through my lows and celebrating my highs, as trivial as they may sometimes seem to me. Unfortunately the pregnancy has taken a hard toll on her— physically, mentally, and emotionally. I do as much as I can to help her through the discomfort and outright frustrating moments she’s had, but there’s only so much I can do for a person with a growing baby inside of them. Only second to my excitement of meeting our son is the thought of seeing her healthy and active again.

    As her husband I’ve grown more admiration for her as a person in still being able to do so much with so little energy in her. As a father I’m ever more delighted to see Celeste continue growing into motherhood and bring her undying love to a very blessed child. I actually was thinking about her as a mother in our very first date, when we were sharing our experiences growing up. She had shown character like no other person I’ve met, and almost four years later that awe and love I feel for her only continues to grow.

    Writing

    One of my goals for the year to which I have done a lackluster attempt at. I bought a terracotta colored bullet journal that I took along my travels, but could never bring myself to jot down even the simplest of notes. The maintenance and linear structure was always off-putting to me as I had to really think about what was worth writing. This was debilitating as a sporadic person with perfectionist tendencies.

    This hurdle changed overnight when I discovered logseq. Years of dabbling in note-taking, todo list, and/or writing methods led me to this holy grail. It was everything I ever wanted and more.

    I’ve spent the past few weeks consolidating Apple Notes, Google Keep, OneNote, Evernote, DayOne, Simplenote, bookmarks, and random text files into a personal knowledge base. These fragmented nuggets of information I’ve collected over years went from potentially useful to cumbersome to growable, actionable data points. It is delightful to have a central place for my thoughts of all shapes and sizes, for audiences of all types, though primarily myself.

    All this to say, life has been pretty good.