________ ________ ________
2023-08-24 / \/ \/ / \
/ __/ /_ _/
if you don't hang in #comfy you're / _/ / /
probably not privy to what's going on in my \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
life at the moment. the short story is it's / \/ \/ / \
a nightmare but read on for the details. / _/ /_ _/
/- / _/ /
let's start at the start, this year \________/\________/\___/____/
started pretty tough, my job was
excruciatingly stressful and not showing much sign of getting better but was
still paying the bills so I was sticking with it, mostly out of inertia. to
add to that, TDK was closing in on two years old which is exciting, she's
hitting milestone after milestone and developing incredibly fast. I want to
say she's really advanced but what dad doesn't think their kid isn't amazing?
hahaha. it means she's very high maintenance. needs lots of time and attention
and doesn't really understand compromise and patience yet.
that was my basic high-stress day-to-day.
then we got the news: Dani's dad had been diagnosed with stage four cancer.
it started in his pancreas and spread all over. that on top of his body
already being slammed from a lifetime of chron's disease and other ailments
and then on top of that the medication/treatment associated with those has
thrashed his liver. a perfect storm of bad things.
the initial outlook was grim, a year or two, completely heartbreaking, but
they were going to run more tests to be sure and then decide on treatment.
while we waited for the results we resolved to make our way back over to the
United States and started planning that out.
then the tests came back and sadly they were even worse. in the space of a
week we'd gone from all the time in the world to years to live to probably
three to six months and a general diagnosis that treatment was not advised
because the impact of chemotherapy on his body would do more harm than good,
all we could do was make his life as comfortable as possible in the interim.
we dropped everything.
a week after getting that news Dani and TDK were on a plane back to
Washington alone and I was staying behind to pack our lives into boxes. I
tried to negotiate with my employer to work remotely but they were unreceptive
so I had to quit. a career of 12 years gone in an instant. we had to break our
lease, leave our friends and family and most of our belongings.
two weeks after Dani and TDK left I was on a plane to follow them across
the Pacific. a life now derelict, in total free-fall, having to trust the
promises of support until we get established would be honored.
I've never felt so helpless in my whole life. I've always been fiercely
independent and capable and now my whole existence was in other
peoples' hands.
it's been really hard and I can't even comfortably complain about it
because what does it amount to? what is all my fear and discomfort and stress
when weighted against what my father-in-law must be going through and what my
wife has yet to go through?
all I can do is keep moving forward, and keep patiently swirling the filth
and mud in my pan until I catch a glitter of gold in the slurry.
a treasure that I haver found is that what I've lost in income and autonomy
I've now gained in time. I have a lot of time to work on my own junk and
projects and daydreams.
one idea I've circled back on is the idea of an open co-working space for
people like me that are isolated in their own office spaces but would like the
company of other people while they work. either for background chatter or to
engage with on projects or just to goof off with. we've kinda done them off
and on but with no real regularity; Gibs on hackers.town did office hours for
a bit and when I was in Washington last year, dokuja, jns and I kept late
night vampire hours.
doing things that haphazardly is proving tricky though, because we've all
got our own schedules and we're all on vastly different timezones so what I'm
going to trial for B4UDW3RK5 is a scheduled set of office hours. times when I
will be in the group office come hell or high-water, even if I'm in there
alone, and people can come and go as they please, participate if they like, or
just idle.
in the future I'll advertise it more broadly, putting the details up on the
baby and maybe posting on Fedi, but for people reading FAX SEX here's the
tentative details;
WH4T] B4UDW3RK5 0FF1CE H0UR5
WH3R3] https://meet.jit.si/B4UDW3RK5
(if it asks for a password: TDK)
WH3N] Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday 22:00-0:00 Seattle time
(you can check ya local time here[1])
WHY] to create a comfy space to hang out, talk shop, share finds or
projects or just idle.
H0W] Jitsi Meet will should work through any browser but if you're
using a PC I recommend this Electron application[2]. there's
apps for your smartphone and dial in details if you're really
remote but still interested in participating. you can give
yourself an avatar using Gravatar. be as involved or as quiet
as you like, it's up to you.
there's already a nice, small community of hackers, artists, musicians,
tinkerers and characters growing around our comfy Jitsi co-working chats and I
hope to see you there, even if it's just to pop in and say "hi".
[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20230825T050000&p1=234&p2=1440
[2] https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron
EOF