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       Two months, an eternity
       July, 10 2023
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  I know this looks like one of those posts saying "oh sorry I
  have been absent for so long, here's a catch up and I hope I
  will be more consistent from now on"... Well, I've been
  through this multiple times in the past and I just made peace
  with the fact I am never going to be consistent, so one thing
  I can guarantee you at least is that I will make no promises
  :-)
  
  A catch up, though, is quite required I think. Mainly because
  these two months have been so dense of events that, despite
  passing so quickly, they have seemed like an eternity to me, 
  and I would like to log, share, and remember them somehow. 
  Time ago I was watching a documentary (I think it was one 
  episode of "The World According to Jeff Goldblum") where they
  talked about the perception of time and how it changes with
  aging... And if there's one thing that is making me feel so
  old now is how fast time seems to pass by!
  
  Another thing they said is *why* perception changes this way,
  and how the fact that the more people age the more they tend 
  to do fewer and fewer new experiences, which seems to be one
  of the factors that influences how we see time flow by. Well,
  the last two months have been packed with experiences, perhaps
  not all new but definitely quite heterogeneous, so here they
  are for the records.
  
  May started with +Fravia's post (if you are reading this on
  my gopherhole, you will probably find it quite easily). That
  came a bit out of the blue, with style and content quite
  different from what I used to write here. If you knew me you
  would have probably predicted that I would have remembered
  him, but I myself was surprised by the fact that I managed to
  put together this mini-tale, something I have been working on
  each year for a while and never managed to complete. I guess
  it required some level of introspection (and will to share
  its results) that only managed to reach now, probably thanks
  to this feeling I managed to find again in the small web. A
  feeling of... Homeliness? Safety? I feel naive just to say
  those words, but the thing is, I know I am still posting more
  or less personal stuff in the wild, but I also feel better
  about not making it directly available to any troll in the
  world.
  Well I guess I am digressing, but the main message here is
  "yay, I managed to complete an emotionally *huge* task from
  my mental todo list, and I feel grateful for it".
  
  The month continued with a heartwarming week with my kids
  and family in Italy, then a quick stop in Paris (just before
  coming back home to London) for the very first meeting in 
  person with some of my new teammates. Describing work now is
  a whole other story (which would require something more like
  a whole book than just another post), but I can summarise it
  with "a beautiful mess" as all the startups I have been in 
  were.
  There's no better word than "bootstrapping" to give the idea
  of what is happening now, and this team is doing everything
  which is required to build a great company out of nothing.
  I have been quite lucky to always work in startups which,
  despite their differences, were always successful. And it
  does not take much to understand that people played an
  essential role in each of them, which is why I am optimistic
  about this one too.
  
  The subsequent month in London was longer, without trips
  until almost mid-June. The main highlights were our move to a
  new place, a visit from a friend, great weather, and getting
  a decent amount of compute for our team :-) 
  As stressful as a move could look (and well, it has been at
  least a bit), and as tiresome the work month might have been,
  I think being most of the time in the same place helped me to
  recharge for the following period (mid-June to now), which 
  included one trip to Italy to stay with my kids, bringing 
  them to London for one week of summer school (which has been
  both a great and tremendous experience for all of us), going
  on holidays with them for one more week around UK, and doing
  a super-intensive work week in Toronto from which I literally
  just returned.
  
  Each of these different week-long activities had some good
  and bad moments: between Italy and London I was beaten down
  by a flu whose aftermaths are still bothering me after almost
  one month, but the end of my kids' school year and the
  excitement for bringing them to our new place and seeing them
  experience their first summer school abroad compensated for
  it. The holiday was memorable and during it I managed to 
  handle a narrowboat and operate a canal lock, which made the 
  young nerd within me as happy as a kid on Christmas day :-)
  The work week was intense to say the least, and I wish I had
  seen more of Toronto because it really looked like a great
  city, but at the same time I am super satisfied by the work
  we did and so happy about the dynamics I have seen within my
  team.
  
  I know, that's a lot of stuff to process... That is perhaps 
  why my brain is trying to tell me there is no way all of this
  could have happened in such a short amount of time. For 
  instance, I cannot believe that two months ago I was still 
  living in a different apartment, as I already feel like I 
  have been here forever. With so much moving, guests, and
  diverse experiences, this feels like the dual of COVID times
  and I hope that, in retrospective, I will perceive it like a
  longer period in my life. One thing is sure though: longer or
  not, though, this period will be remembered as one full of
  things I am grateful of.