Birthday

This week I turned 46. I actually feel like I’m 17, and there’s no particular desire to take stock of things, especially considering that I’m currently in a very transitional period into a new work and social role. A lot is being reflected on, but not in a taking-stock format.

On my birthday I was irritated because I wanted something special, a carefree day, but from the very morning everything went wrong and I had to be an adult. But on that day I learned to do an axle stall, which I consider an excellent achievement for 46 years old. Skateboarding in general is something that has been supporting me tremendously in recent years, but I’ll write about that separately.

I talked quite a bit with old friends who were congratulating me on my birthday, they’re all in other countries, we were separated by COVID, war, re-hardened borders, and I miss them very much, miss the times when we weren’t divided by losses, borders and beliefs. It’s hard to find new friends when you’re 46, give me back my old ones!

Cinema

We watched Ari Aster’s “Eddington” on my birthday, at first also irritating, gradually captivating, leaving room for reflection, but somehow belated, you know, you want to say: “But it’s already too late, we’re on the other side of all this and are already dealing with irreversible consequences.”

New Job

I continue to immerse myself in the new work, absorb information, talk to people, but it feels like it’s time to move to action before I absorb the established order too. After all, I was hired in part to change it.

Creativity

I’m trying to lower the barriers to creativity: turn off perfectionism, the fear of wasting time on something that won’t turn out to be anything worthwhile, and start creating. After all, when I look at other people’s work, I like precisely the raw works where you can see the nerve, the mess, the momentariness, I’m barely interested in polished lengthy grandiose works, it seems to me that they lose the initial impulse and sincerity.

So why do I deny myself the right to such works?

I was playing with Koala Sampler, and finally something interesting came out that I can possibly develop into a full track someday. Also once again admired (and listened to) the website of musician and programmer Alexander Zolotov warmplace.ru. This is what the internet is for, and I’m glad there are still such places in it.

Books

Started reading Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49”, and immediately remembered that I’m extremely irritated by the type of humor that permeates Pynchon. I would call it “absurdism as the city-forming enterprise,” pull it out - and everything falls apart. I don’t know why this pisses me off so much, I actually love absurdist humor and consider it one of the funniest. However, gradually the book is drawing me in and the irritation recedes into the background.

Looks like it was quite an irritable week!

Making Music

I’m trying to get back into making music. It’s hard for me because I have no formal music education, and it feels like I don’t have permission to do this. So for now, I just sit down with my DAW (Bitwig) and MIDI keyboard (Arturia Minilab 3) and play without any goal, just getting familiar with the tools, going through presets. I don’t even save the results - I haven’t created anything I’d want to develop yet. I’m just lowering the barrier to entry and teaching myself that I don’t need anyone’s permission for this. I hope this will help me start actually creating something later.

What’s also important is that having physical keys, pads, and all these knobs helps me get absorbed in the process. It reminds me of how I loved playing with all sorts of dashboards with buttons as a child: a typewriter, a toy cash register, all kinds of imaginary dashboards.

Cinema

I consider myself a cinephile, but I’ve watched very few films in recent years - didn’t have the capacity. But now I’m reading Tarantino’s “Cinema Speculation”, and the way he writes about films has helped me start watching them again.

This week I watched “The Last Picture Show” by Bogdanovich.

Job Search

After two months of active searching (and three months without work, one of which I spent resting and reworking my resume), I got an offer finally. I learned a lot about myself during these months - about impostor syndrome, about how important it is to reflect on your experience and know how to package it properly, and about how much I actually know. I think I’ll write a separate post about the job search, but I want to note that it’s an exhausting endeavor, especially when you’re running out of money.

But I only got the offer on Thursday, and before that I had several very different interviews during the week: from a clear and interesting first interview with HR to a very sluggish and tedious interview with a CEO who couldn’t care less about wasting my time and his own (he spent the first 5 minutes of our meeting setting up his background in the video call software). He didn’t know what he wanted from this interview, and I wouldn’t have worked with him even if I hadn’t gotten the offer. If he doesn’t respect my time in an interview, what will happen when we start working together?

Next week I’m starting my new job, and it’s hybrid, meaning I’ll be going to the office. It’s exciting and scary.

Mentoring

I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, learn to network, and also share my experience, so I signed up for the Mentor in Tech program. This week I had my first meetings with my mentees, and I was very worried about how they would go, whether I’d be able to help them since I’m doing this for the first time, but overall the meetings went well.

Interestingly, one mentee came with a request to work on impostor syndrome, but during our conversation we figured out that she doesn’t have impostor syndrome - she just needs help packaging her experience (which she does acknowledge) for the market.

I think that for a first meeting, reframing and clarifying the problem is a very good result.