Embracing change. Nursing a broken heart.
Returning to my garden after a long hiatus. So many things are different now than they were back in February when I had last updated.
I am in Poland, and I am staying at the apartment of my ex. We broke up a month ago and I am not over it at all. We are still good friends.
I am not sure if I should go home or not. I don't feel like it, but perhaps I should.
I am reading a book about a political party in Italy, the "5 stars movement", and it's a frustrating read. Progress is slow because I read one chapter and get annoyed.
"No more horses" by Garbage is stuck in my head. Fitting soundtrack for the current times.
Here are some things I would like to pick back up and work on:
- Learn Esperanto.
- Learn German (again).
- Pick up Python again.
- Run 10Ks regularly.
My goals for 2025 are:
- Document my life.
- Pension fund.
- Run again.
- Read every day.
- Eat healthy.
- Get my own car.
- Drive.
A couple of months ago, on the train to Strange Loop, I had the good
fortune of sharing a cabin with Anders, whom I had just met and who
shared with me a way of guessing at the correct settings for shooting with a
broken light meter using a technique called Sunny-16. Unfortunately, by
the time I had made it back home, I couldn't recall how it all worked.
I just spent the past few days anchored by Blakely Island, wandering into the
woods holding old film cameras with a few friends,
which I am now gladly counting Anders among them who spent
time with me to go through the motion once again using my own Voightlander and
its broken light meter.
Sunny-16 goes something like this: At f-16, with the shutter speed at
about roughly the film speed, should turn up a good picture on a sunny clear
day. From there, one can work their way down the f-stops, so that at the speed
of the film, f-8 would be a cloudy day, f-4 an indoors picture, and so on.
- I've read the Silmarillion, dear lord.
2025-06-21 - Beginners - Cutting Tofu
Before I met you I was so scared of dying. Was I ever happy? I couldn’t tell. I look at my hands and see new wrinkles forming. The weight has me weak in the knees, but just let me catch my breath, and I’ll keep holding on. In the dead of night I’ll let out a loud sigh as proof of life.
I wait for the sun to rise before I watch my distance. I see the redness under my skin glow against the light. It’s a universe inside of me and I can feel old cells die, and new ones born again.
I am always ending. And then beginning, once again. Again, over and over, again, and again.
Weather stayed capricious throughout mid-May; at least we're done with the political drama. Been working on my web directory again (got rid of so many dead links thanks to the spider mode in wget; highly recommended). Been talking to more people about my fiction, too. Oh, and blogging. Three times in a week, even. Between my paper journal and this one, I've been writing a lot lately. Too bad it's mostly ramblings. Spent some time doing research for my newest sci-fi setting, too. Worldbuilding is a lot of fun, but frankly unlikely to result in a story. Wouldn't be my first failed attempt this spring. Could still prove useful down the road.
In other news: courtesy of an infographic posted on Mastodon, I spent half a morning researching e-mail providers with a free plan. So far the winner for me is mailo.com, a no-nonsense French service; runner-ups were:
- mail.com, which looks good but is US based
- Mailfence, a Belgian company that's almost there but not quite
There was also a Swiss company, but they were pushing AI. Hard pass.
It's summer now, the last week of school, and I'm in a much better mood than last year when it was one bad thing after another. Even the weather has been fine, aside from one early heat wave. There's been rain and trees are leafy, so the ground hasn't started to burn yet. Let's see how long it lasts.
I’m at another low point. A couple days ago, my mum phoned me
and I had the chance to introduce the idea of quitting my
internship early, graduating and then spending the summer as an
audio/FOH engineer in some holiday village somewhere. She didn’t
like that idea, it was clear. She didn’t want to tell me directly,
but I could hear her struggling not to say “This is a terrible
idea, and you should aim to something else, something better”.
I can’t blame her: after all this work, after going to university
and so on, who could waste all of that and go towards a job that
pays poorly and has no real carreer?
I’m tired. So tired.