What I Did
2021 has been a particularly difficult year for me. I’m working to get past the absolutely traumatic experience of a legal battle I didn’t deserve, my professional reputation destroyed, and the aftermath of it. At this point, I’m not comfortable talking about it, since the internet is a very unsafe place for the realities of nuance.
Nevertheless, my solace is in producing. While I get irritated seeing that trait in my father, there’s value in finding that you left something better when you go to sleep than when you wake up. It doesn’t mean I’m legitimately better off from it, but it’s a good coping mechanism. I’m sure finding a support group is a good start, but being on the spectrum makes it difficult to find common ground with most people.
This Christmas is particularly difficult, since my contract ended spontaneously without warning a week ago. My family will survive for at least a month on what we have, assuming nothing weird, and it’s likely they’ll need more cable runners come January, since the employment cycle never changes.
However, in all of this, I’ve built a few things, and plowing through more of them:
- I was able to sift my pile into 1 box, with some one-off side-loaded notes elsewhere. And, as of yesterday, was able to get below the 6,900 mark.
- While I talked up the importance of tech primitives, there’s another reality that moves laterally to it: not understanding something technical is often a good thing.
- UX is a critically important matter, so I rebuilt and added to it. This will likely not be the last time, either.
- I’ve captured the trend-minded culture of the tech industry as well as best as I can. I’m mostly unhappy with the essay, but it’s the best I can do right now.
- Since I’ve been unemployed for a week, and job-seeking is a largely non-technical experience, I’ve decided to start my tech-based addendum to my job-hunting guides. It starts with knowing when to quit a tech job.
What I Learned
Nobody and nothing is fully trustworthy. However, if we let our fears of adverse consequences define us (i.e., distrust), we become recklessly impulsive. Driven to its farthest conclusion, people react in sophisticated idiotic ways. When you combine this fact with how we tend to trust others when we’re in groups, it’s the reason a large group can become a collective monolithic moron of immense power.
The only cure is each person individually thinking things through, but people tend to be preoccupied with “doing” more than considering whether that action is a good idea. Chesterton’s Fence applies here. Not that anyone these days will listen. We’re too preoccupied with the subconscious fear of death that we
What I’m Doing Now
I’m currently withdrawing into my writing, unemployed and waiting for someone else to need my plethora of expertise.
- I’m working through a meta-project of ~6,900 hyperlinks to grok everything in the tech industry, with the proof of concept expressing as TechSplained.
- Making a set of guides that run parallel to my AdequateLife jobs guide.
- My wife and I have custody of two small people, who become legally allowed to vote in the late-2030’s, and have been making a nurturing home for them.