JTK says - The upswing
Career Stuff
Sadly my time as Team Lead was to be short-lived, as my company just went through layoffs :/ the new resultant team is not big enough to require any leads. It was a bit depressing to lose half of a team of people who I felt responsible for, and I felt some survivor's guilt seeing people I consider more talented than me caught up in it. It would be a lie to say I wasn't shaken by it (I assumed I'd be let go, my tenure is < year), but I'm trying to move on and play the hand I was dealt.
Being no longer responsible for a team freed up my interest in my own IC development, and I was pleased to find out that in addition to management and Staff Engineer paths in our career ladder, my work is adding one for people who want to stay heads-down in code. That's me! With that said, the layoffs also shook up who my manager is, so I'm working with <new manager> on a timeframe to make this happen.
I also enjoyed responses to something I wrote this week about the emotionally grueling aspect of learning to code, which you can find here. I also wrote a little bit about a tool I newly learned of called Algolia, which you can read here.
Watch/read/listen stuff
Have kind of been on a spooky tear rereading Silvia Garcia Moreno's Mexican Gothic and Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House. Both excellent, and Ninth House I believe has an upcoming sequel and TV series on Amazon coming out.
I've also been enjoying glassblowing reality TV competition Blown Away on Netflix, for some reason glassblowing has always fascinated me and it was a dream to get to see glassblowers in Venice, Italy when I was there.
For games, I've really been loving Unravel Two and this weekend I'm about to FINALLY start Horizon Forbidden West, wish me luck!
Life Stuff
It is fair to say the last month or two have had me in a bit of a funk. Having the company layoff, getting moved to a new manager when I loved my old boss, a heat wave, a new monkeypox pandemic threatening to overlay our current pandemic, and Roe among other terrible US news and politics developments have battered down on me like a toxic hail.
While I felt immediately sure I was going to leave, I also felt deep sadness. I never thought I would be able to be a homeowner, and I've loved my home. At first, I felt an additional pain at the thought of walking away.
As I mentioned earlier, I have rounded the corner to a "new phase of depression" though, which for me means all a sudden I feel done with the house. Knowing I have months ahead of me of repairing things, selling things, donating things, and just biding my time here feels like a morose months-long chore staring me down. So feeling done with the house, penned in and cagey, that's the new phase of depression! But hey at least I'm keeping it moving.
I feel similarly unenthused and put upon contemplating a trip to Nashville next month to take my English language test for my attempted relocation to Canada. It is obnoxiously spread across two weekend days, including one day of testing which starts at 8 am on a Saturday.
Buuuut if you have any recommendations on hot chicken or dog friendly attractions around Nashville definitely let me know! I'll try to make the best of it when I arrive, however grumpy I may feel about this trip now.
Recipe stuff
I can't help but plugging this recipe for pastitsio which I made again recently and is always a hit.
I also recently have apparently become a completely different person than the mayo hater I grew up to be, and finally put down a recipe for my thai curry inspired chicken salad.
Bonus content/pet stuff
The JTK household pets say hello and that you look great today! Thanks for reading
