24-04-25:

Ahh I gotta finish all this work but I'm TIRED. Yesterday I had a big long meeting with the cofounder to argue that we should use env variables. I knew he wasn't going to be supportive to have a conversation about thinking about engineering work since he was too focused on deadlines. But after 2.5 hours he finally saw my side and agreed that we should do this really minor thing that required no extra engineering work. Later in the evening he sent me a message thanking me for a productive conversation? Weird.

I've been really focused on developing my own take on 'mise en place' but for the home kitchen. The rough idea of mise en place is that you gather all the ingredients before you cook them so the cooking process can be controlled/predictable. So I've been preparing ingredients after I buy them to be used over the next few days, but not overly preparing them so they become 'leftovers' or they lose their intrinsic qualities as ingredients. I'm favoring meals that have less cooking steps and more prep steps so I can throw together more complicated meals quickly. E.g. pad thai where I make the sauce ahead of time, or pancakes where I can make the batter the night before. I've been making some fruit reductions to be added to overnight oats. I've been peeling more garlic than I need and keeping it in olive oil so I can quickly toss it in tacos. I cut greens so salad is grab and go. I'm trying to form it more into a system and honestly it's been working really well so far. I want to further extend this to portion sizing but haven't figured out a way that I felt comfortable with. One other big aspect is controlling how much attention is required in the kitchen. I'm hoping to refine it so the steps for meals become more predictable.

24-04-23:

Problem-solving anxiety trying to figure out how to untangle this mess. It sucks I can't get support from my cofounder because he just whines about deadlines and tries to force the worst solution. I hate doing so much rework because of poor engineering decisions.

24-04-18:

Today I sleep. I demoed the thing I was working on all week and it went great. Finally got consensus with my cofounder that we shouldn't be assigning work on friday evening.

24-04-16:

I need to get back into the routine of morning reflection. I made a bunch of unnecessary work for myself so we can position the codebase better in the future, but it consumed me a bit.

24-04-09:

Honestly, I had a really good weekend. Now I'm just trying to catch up on some work but I don't really want to concentrate on it so it's dragging on.

24-04-04:

I think my cat doesn't understand when I want to get up and that gives him some cat anxiety when he lays on my lap. He hasn't been falling asleep on me in awhile or getting super comfortable. Sometimes I think we can just 'communicate' but I think maybe I've just taken advantage of the fact he can respond to me so well. I resolve to be more clear in the signals I give so I can be more predictable in my actions.

24-04-03:

Damn I think I'm done watching x-men and playing stardew valley. The work stress stopped and I stopped craving an escape, crazy how that works. Where are my hobbies at?

24-04-02:

New guy started today! He's excited and I'm excited! Otherwise I did some 7am yoga but now it's a new person at 7:30am. Work isn't too bad rn, the massive battles last week has paid off with simple requirements.

24-04-01:

Haven't posted in a bit, had burnout and a lot of work stress. Last week was almost daily 3+ hour calls with the cofounder but I hope it's all sorted now. The winning strategy was to go though a single user journey and then we could properly collaborate to improve the product. But we're onboarding the new guy this week! I have a lot of prep work so he can feel productive and comfortable when he starts later this week but I'm glad he's joining.

24-03-20:

Code was released! That was a grueling last few days of just constant coding, and it still needs more work, but I'm going to try to relax now.

I'm not doing well.

24-03-18:

My cofounder really fucked me over. He promised a release today to the client. The code is still so fundamentally broken. I've been working nonstop for days. I'm extremely angry with him. I feel like I've rebuilt half of the product. I could have just done my own startup so every idea I have isn't debated to non-existence. Also, I asked the client which type of config they would prefer for configuration, the new json syntax or plain flink sql. They said they would strongly prefer flink sql. So much so that they don't want to use my cofounders json config syntax and they want to convert everything to it.

Health insurance is going to cost me $600/mo for the lowest tier insurance. $7.5k deductible.

24-03-15:

Cofounder is leaving for vacation. He made a bunch of promises to our customer so now I need to get the codebase to release by Monday for the onboarding meeting at 11am Monday morning. I'm changing the codebase to basically unramp myself by undoing his paternalistic configuration settings. It's in a state where it can grow and evolve without me do anything, which is the way I advocated for over 2 years ago.

I think I'm at the age where having kids is a pretty high priority for me. It's sad that I'm late in this realization because I could have made it work in my previous relationship. I even decided to get an apartment to make it easier for me to do this but I haven't made a single step in that direction since I moved here. I don't know. Sometimes I think about Camus's The Stranger when his mother died and work was an adequate distraction to avoid grieving.

24-03-14:

My onlyfans application was denied. I need a better social media presence. How lame.

24-03-13:

I get such incredible resistance to get even the most minor change through. It takes literal hours of debating and pages of documentation. Just saying we expose flink configuration for a flink project to the user has already been 6 HOURS of debating over 3 days. So far he's accepted all my points but now he's hung up that we shouldn't generate the config by-default because he's received no feedback that people don't like the configuration format he just invented and hasn't shown to anyone.

He apologized.

24-03-11:

I'm in some sort of modernist coding hell where I have to deconstruct and reconstruct configuration because my cofounder has an aversion to doing anything straightforward and obvious.

24-03-09:

Disco dancing all night. Honestly I wish I was better at dancing but I find it so fun. I had bad work time all day today though.

24-03-07:

I could build homes for pigeons on my roof and be a pigeon man.

24-03-05:

Got in a 2 hour debate with my cofounder where he refused to write unit tests and it devolved into an entire philosophical debate about the nature of tests, mostly about his fears of people writing low quality tests. He doesn't seem to understand that when he shirks his engineering responsibility then it just falls on me. Then he was surprised when I said this big new feature milestone is going to take me until the end of the week to finish. I'm not upset about any of this, it's just obnoxious to have to deal with.

24-03-04:

Got 8 hours of sleep last night but now I feel groggy like I overslept. This week is yet-another-rush to do everything, with the codebase in even worse shape than before. My general goal is to compress all the work tasks I need to do to a 8 hour block to get better work life balance.

[ ] Mail in form to get title

[ ] Get health insurance

24-02-29:

I covered up my window with a dark sheet last night but still woke up at 7am. My circadian rhythm is strong af. I woke up in the middle of the night having a coding dream where I was rearranging code and trying to solve some (possibly) imaginary problem. I had to forcefully stop myself from thinking about it. These code dreams are very tangible, as if the elements in the code had real presence.

I ripped apart all these tests and started to make just one cohesive thing. I can probably finish it tomorrow, but I'm sad we're going to lose the granularity we once had. There's just no other way.

Sober week but I'm ready to dip into that pet nat. I need to quiet my mind.

Bad choice, bad times.

24-02-28:

Now I know why my cofounder was so obsessed with tests recently, his branch breaks almost every single test and then he just left it for me to deal with. I have no idea how long this is going to take me to fix, maybe weeks worth of effort.

Still not sleeping enough. If I go to sleep earlier, I just wake up earlier. I've never this problem before for such a sustained period. I'm usually a 9 hour guy but now I'm lucky if I get 7. On the plus side, it makes 7am yoga easier. I did a crow pose the other day, it was awesome.

The neighbors are doing band practice tonight, I wish I had something planned. I was going to do a thing but I ended up napping.

24-02-27:

I spent the morning generating a manifesto for the truck driver in the movie Duel.

24-02-25:

[X] Report income to california

[ ] Mail in form to get title

[X] Unpack some boxes

[ ] Plan vegan transglutaminase recipes

[X] Yoga x2

[ ] Marc Andreessen The Techno-Optimist Manifesto except it's an AI generated infinite scroll and becomes increasingly absurd.

24-02-24:

Biked to golden gate park and had a good time. The cofounder(s) are out next week so I'm looking forward to a low stress week. I'm going to try to journal more and do better goal setting this week.

24-02-21:

At lunch, a homeless man came up to me and said that God told him to speak to me. So we had lunch together and he told me all about the sword of damocles, what it was like to be in the homeless system, and what it was like to enter a catatonic state. He said it was like when you're in indecision, bouncing around between two different things, like a pingpong ball bouncing faster and faster as the walls close in until you end up frozen. He said it was comforting in a way because there was no way to get out of it so you just have to relax.

24-02-19:

What a hard day. Trying to get my cofounder to plan any amount of engineering work is like pulling teeth. He just steamrolls over me and refuses to even have a discussion about our weekly goals. We had to finish with "just do as much as you possibly can" for the demo that he's flying out to on Monday. Worst company to work for, there's no way we'll be able to retain anyone.

24-02-18:

Generally sleepy. Last week was crazy, my cofounder was out sick so I had to step in and manage the customer. This week should be better, but I such a big sleep debt. We're going to hire someone soon on engineering so that'll be a relief.

24-02-14:

Our new marketing term is 'operating system for data'. This is not to be confused with 'database oriented operating system' which is really popular in academic circles right now and is pioneered by google, stanford, and mit. When I brought up these strategy criticisms, I was met with them larping conversations with clients about how they will be so interested to hear all about our unique perspective. Hilarious.

24-02-10:

Watching Lawrence of Arabia, which will probably take me at least a week. Still trying to finish Hitchcock's Rope.

I coded all day until exhaustion. I like doing that sometimes but not today.

Reflecting on the interview I did the other day. He said that he expected an algorithmic interview and was surprised that did he didn't get one from me (the "cto"). My rational is that coding interviews have been gamified to the point where it now test experience rather than ability. As a hiring person, the only the that matters to me is ability, unless experience is critical to the role. Since he has some open source contributions, the matter if he can code or not is already determined. The only thing I have to now judge on is ability, do I think he's smart and would he be motivated to do the job. And my personal opinion is that everyone is hirable. My job is just to put a price on it. The bias comes from estimating future value, which is easier to quantify than a binary yes/no.

24-02-09:

Crunch time just makes me worse at everything. I try to get priorities from my cofounder but he holds back and then springs it on me. He said that "next week we're going to focus on delivering for <customer>". I'm like bro, I decide engineering work, you gotta tell me what their needs are so I can scope it in, I don't want to degrade to panic mode. This wouldn't be a problem if we had better planning. My cofounder even said he was working on the problem they had but I was the one who ended up doing the work on a friday evening. We're going to be hiring someone soon and I feel like I'll need to protect them from this fully unnecessary bullshit. I've been working to the point of forgetting to eat, it's 7pm and all I had today was a pb&j. I got a parking ticket yesterday because I forgot to move my car. When I get overly stressed I start to forget everything, I hope I'm not at that point.

I was reflecting on how one of my teachers humiliated me. On the first day of one of my 9th grade classes, I wrote "I hate this class" in my notebook. The teacher saw this and made me say it and post it on the front board, where everyone would see it when they walked in. It was up for weeks until I finally took it down.

24-02-08:

Busy with work. Interviewed a guy but he didn't seem like a good fit.

Spoke with my mom and my cousin about how they are not doing well. My mom is angry at her parents for abuse and she feels guilty about not identifying the abuse patterns that my step-father did when raising us. It was just a different time, healthy boundaries weren't a big of a thing back then and she shouldn't feel guilty. I'm glad we as a culture are better at seeing patterns of abuse now and we're more active to try to correct them.

I'm hoping to have a ghoulish next few days, going to go see Lisa Frankenstein and Twilight over the next few days.

24-02-05:

Watching the zootopia fan film "Return to Zootopia", which is hilariously more like cinema than a lot of films. Felt like throwing up a bunch today, my stomach is all tore up from whatever, probably all the alcohol last night. Did a bunch of amphetamines today again, which makes me drink a lot when I come down, which makes me tired the next day and repeating the cycle. I would do yoga tomorrow but I'm probably going to be too tried so I'm giving up on that this week.

24-02-04:

I gotta start recording how much I drink.

I woke up in the middle of the night with tachycardia. Had my apple watch on and it recorded about a 110bpm. It could be because I deep fried a few pizza slices for dinner.

A sex worker asked to use my bathroom and she gave my cat probably the best scratch of his life. He showed his belly and everything, I can never get him to do that.

I really want to date again but I still have some body issues that prevent me from doing it. I was looking at some pictures of a friend of mine who a family man and has 3 kids and I'm jealous.

24-02-03:

PiHKAL was pretty cool, specifically the magical half-dozen.

24-02-02:

I feel like a mess tbh. The past few days I've got no work done, I've been drinking heavily, doing amphetamines, gabapentin for high anxiety, welbutrin to help hangovers, consuming a ton of caffeine, and I'm sleeping like shit and I'm tired all the time.

Dance bar all night made me feel better

24-02-01:

Just ruminating on my feelings.

Sometimes it's hard to not be afraid to feel.

24-01-31:

Got it all sorted out and had some tough conversations but I'm feeling good. I don't think I'll make any of my goals this week though, bummer. I think I want to do a movie night tonight with some wine. Need popcorn though.

24-01-30:

More disagreements. After asking for the ability to talk to the accountant several times and him stonewalling me, I had to scream at him to make the introduction. He then pleaded with me to not scare them. Incredibly sus. Before that, he said that the software we've been building for the past 3 years is 'not a product', it is 'pure marketing' for our consultant business so the tax law doesn't apply to us. I told him I don't think he understands this correctly.

Now he's angry at me and sent me a message effectively saying to not question him in front of other people b/c 'Somebody might interpret that as you and I are not on the same page.'

Rebuilding trust is difficult. I know what I need to do, I need to have an open and honest conversation with him about what happened, but it remains to be seen how we can improve our communication so this doesn't happen again. I felt like he was stonewalling me from talking to the accountant and it made me frustrated. I think I suspect him of being dishonest, I feel like he found this on some random blog and he didn't actually talk to the accountant. I know this likely isn't true, but it's tough for me to give him the benefit of the doubt. I asked for more transparency, maybe that will help.

24-01-29:

Ugh. I am very uncomfortable.

Okay, apparently new tax guidance came out 2 weeks ago which resolves the ambiguity. Thought we were committing very blatant tax fraud for a second. It doesn't justify what was said though, it's still worded like we're committing tax fraud.

24-01-28:

Pretty happy with the progress last week. No alcohol or other substances, which was great. Got some stressors out of the way and was mostly successful at planning tasks. There were a few times where I felt absolutely terrible, but so it goes. I went to the gym 4 times, did some nice long walks around the city, and stretched for a total of about 2 hours. No yoga yet, but I'll try again next week. I crashed mid-day in the early days of the week but I attribute that to a new exercise routine and eating habits.

My stress around my job is still bad because everything is a toxic power struggle, but I need to work on rebuilding trust with my cofounder or it's going to get worse.

I may be overcompensating with pointless research tasks. Like I spent the past 2 days just reading and playing around with bread enzymes. DIY hobbies are good, but if it ends up stressing me out more then it's counterproductive. I think I may do it so I can feel a sense of control in my life, idk.

This week I want to continue trying to reduce stress:

[X] Do yoga

[ ] Talk with my cofounder about recent issues

[ ] Complete a stressor

[ ] Do a new social thing, like a meetup

[ ] Go to a place I haven't been

[ ] Read some fiction, avoid nonfiction and academic material

Maybe I should try a float tank. Just lock me in a box for an hour to force myself to relax.

I keep thinking about when therapists would ask me what I do to relax. I never have an answer for them. I still don't.

24-01-25:

Damn, getting those task out of the back of my mind feels great. Going to meet up with some old biohacker friends today, maybe they can spot me some centrifuge time.

No fuge big enough :(

24-01-24:

Stressors:

[X] Get car serviced - Service date is Feb 13 @ 2:30

[X] Cancel oregon health insurance

[ ] Report income to california

[X] Completed CA written test

[X] Track down my car title

[ ] Mail in title replacement form to Oregon

[ ] Make DMV apt for CA license and car (just go twice? It'll take about a month to get my replacement title)

[ ] Find a dentist

[ ] Exit Oregon lease

[ ] Transfer xfinity service

24-01-22:

Upon some reflection on this journal, I realized that my stress is a bit out of control. I'm feeling particularly empowered to fix my life, so here goes.

Recently, I've been really missing my nomadic life, at least the times where I could be properly nomadic. I had really healthy habits and just always had a ton of fun. Sometimes I feel like I have a hard time staying in one place for too long, I start to pick up bad habits and get depressed. I think what I really liked was that everything was an adventure. I would discover new grocery stores, new vegan restaurants to explore, I would check out the local culture by finding local events, and I could go on amazing hikes all the time. I got to see so much of the world. But since I've been in SF, I haven't been making plans after work. While I would like to be type b and be impulsive, but this hasn't been working out for me here. I still struggle to find things I want to do here, but I think I just need to try a bit harder. I want to do more culture stuff, I'll make some plans around that.

I've been ignoring my health goals recently so I'm starting to get back on track with that. I want to get back into running. I had a really good running habit when I was a nomad, as I could just go to the best places to run in the city or do trail running. I've been doing some more brisk 3-5 mile walks, trying to keep my heart rate in a good target zone, so it'll take a bit of time to get back there but I don't think I'm far. I want to get back to the point where I feel like I can just run indefinitely, then running is a blast.

I've been doing more stretching so I can get back on track with my flexibility goals. There's a power lifting gym down the street but I'm still not flexible enough to do olympic weight lifting, which is what I want to do. I just need to start going to the yoga class at my gym, since it's free and I should be taking advantage of it. I'm sure it'd help with my stress too.

My substance abuse problem is pretty bad right now. I keep having having withdraw or hangovers from whatever. Welbutrin helps considerably with those urges, as well as with my seasonal depression, so I'm back on that. One thing that's hard to stop is my caffeine abuse, which is a lot more real than it sounds, which centers a lot more around how I consume caffeine rather than how much.

The last big one is sleep. I've been waking up throughout the night, multiple times a night, which is probably a combination of stress and substance abuse. I'm hoping that will go away on its down since I can't really do anything about since I already have good sleep hygiene.

I won't set any goal structuring here, but I'll commit to including these things in my morning goal planning.

So to recap:

1. find things to do after work

2. stop taking so many drugs

3. do more yoga

4. work back up to a running habit

24-01-19:

Was up all night with a fever and chills from the vaccine but felt fine in the morning. I haven't been sleeping well recently. I'm trying to have a chill weekend because I'll have a busy next week with preparing for upcoming conferences / meetups / partner blog posts, and a ton of coding. I personally want to get out there and try to help people solve their problems with help of the tech I made. That's really rewarding to me. I did this startup because I wanted to challenge myself and I think this is part of it.

Went to Rainbow to get everything I need to make a red lentil Ethiopian dish (Misir Wat), which will be a first for me. Forgot to check if they have injera, but really I need to start making my own. And also kombucha, I miss having a big jug of it around. I want to find a nice container for it that I can put on my countertop.

24-01-18:

Covid vaccine, thinking about habits, put the new battery in the car, and put air in the bike tires so I can romp around. Feverish from the vax so I feel like I'm already on borrowed time.

24-01-17:

Holy fuck. My cofounder wanted to dilute me more than him to bring on the new guy. This guy really makes every play to put himself in a better financial position with this company. I had to say no f'in way. Like the bonus thing, he just put in $100k into the company and it would have just been paid right back out to him. Borderline fraud. Some people really go nuts and burn relationships when they think there is a lot of money involved.

24-01-16:

Had fun trying to write poems for the first time since high school. I enjoyed taking the time to find symbolism and attempt analogies.

My cofounder has new shenanigans he's trying to pull, he wants to do a bonus structure that is 'performance based' that is up to 100% of our base salary. We just got money and that would be basically all of it, killing our runway, and would be effectively at his discretion. I'm going to have to tell him no and he's going to get all upset that he's not getting his way.

24-01-15:

New Buzzballz hang,

A sweetness anew.

Old ornaments break,

An era fades through.

She's here healing,

In jovial stride.

Friendships deepen,

With burritos at five.

24-01-14:

Somber in light,

Laughter at night.

Choices echo, deep,

In our hands, futures keep.

24-01-12:

A lot of anxiety today. I started a new ritual at work where once a month before our weekly demos we write down at least 3 nice things to say and also any grievances. We then go around and read them out. I borrowed this from my last job and it always felt very safe. We probably don't reward our peers enough for the great work they do. I generally don't like receiving positive feedback but I feels nice in a structured environment.

My ex reached out to me today to resolve a billing issue since my name is on the internet. I don't feel bad, but I don't feel great.

24-01-11:

The lair of the white worm (1988) today with Matts cat. No more Bumble, I'll figure that out later.

24-01-10:

Watching scandi's cat which always a joy. I'm just watching the original max mad while he gives me a snug.

I'm doing Bumble again and I think I'm ready.

24-01-09:

Spoke to the potential new cofounder (the 'new guy') about him joining. Just right off the bat, he is smart and I have no doubt that he is good at his job. However, I expressed my skepticism about his effectiveness in the role considering my cofounder is a bully which, in my perspective, has resulted him in being exceptionally less productive in his role than he could have been. My cofounder has him trying to find a unicorn customer that I don't think exists and he has been going along with it. The new guy agreed that this is not a good strategy. I told my cofounder on day one of him joining that he needs to let him do his job, and he does not seem to have done this so it's really hard for me to evaluate him. My cofounder has not set him up for success, he has set him up to fail. Considering the new guy isn't officially on the team, it is completely understandable that he doesn't want to rock the boat or get in an argument match.

Also, I worry when people agree with me too much. He seemed to agree with all my concerns, and even worked in some stories about how my points were correct and how my concerns were valid. I think he just really wants to join the team so I'm trying to look past it. When it comes to the pushback and conflict currently required to work with my cofounder, this personality quirk worries me. He said that he likes to take a different strategy for conflict and tries to slowly nudge people along. Maybe I'm worried that he isn't brash enough to work with a bully? Is that even valid? Perhaps I should evaluate how well my cofounder has accepted influence from him as signal of the effectiveness of his strategy. I'll formulate some questions about this.

There is also an issue about how we grow as a company. The new guy phrases it as being pivotal to him being successful at this startup, which I agree with his perspective. However, I know my cofounder strongly doesn't want to take this approach. If we don't align here, he will be miserable.

I think my general perspective here is trying to determine if he will be happy and effective. I really want him to be happy and have the autonomy he needs. I scheduled a meeting with my cofounder and a followup with the new guy so we can get this sorted out.

--

I think I found the right abstraction boundary for my game. Since the ai can't generate anything worthwhile, I'm writing the story by hand and using it as a parser and a way to allow some limited exploration. I crafted a single puzzle that seems to work well and I have a rough outline of the story. It currently centralizes around an exploration of emotions, with a focus on loneliness as the main character arc.

Tuesday Trivia is shaping up to be a thing I really look forward to. It was a small group this time, which was nice.

24-01-08:

I turned up the heat way up in my room and took the coziest nap. I did self care today - went to the book store to look for nothing in particular and did some stretching. I ended up in a fey mood last night and wrote some stanzas about how I felt. I think they came out pretty well, I'm going to rope them into my text-based adventure game.

24-01-07:

Some guy said that I look like the lead guitarist from the band Deuce (sp?) and said that I must get that a lot. I have no idea what he's talking about.

24-01-06:

Hung out with the gang to see Poor Things. I was caught off guard the server asked if it should be on the same tab and I said 'sure'. Money can be so awkward, oh well. Glad I could sit next to em instead of being by myself. It was nice seeing Jack too.

24-01-05:

We had a 2024 goals meeting where the first half was just business jargon and it felt completely superficial. I feel like I got it all sorted out in the end though so I'm feeling positive about the next year of work.

I had a really fun time with friends last night, which I really needed after the meeting with my co-founder.

24-01-03:

Co-founder is flying down tomorrow to do planning in person, which doesn't sound reasonable because we're a 3 person team. Maybe he'll reveal an ulterior motive.

24-01-02:

I was looking forward to trivia to do some socializing, but no trivia this week.

Also, I appreciate Emilye showing me this lovely site.

24-01-01:

Last night's party felt less like idle chatter and more like the start of meaningful connections.