Not “tears of joy” level, but I just got a promotion today!

Tears of joy? Nothing, ever. But this moth is really cute.

My Autodesk login is attached to my old student email, which I guess finally got deleted by my old college. I was incredibly grateful that I had a PC that was still actively logged into Fusion 360 when I learned this. I was able to preserve and export all the 3D design and modeling work I’ve done over the last 8 years before I get locked out of that login for good. I don’t use 3D modeling every day, so it was very lucky that I realized my login was now sitting in limbo while I still temporarily had access to everything.

Very grateful for that. There’s hundreds of hours worth of work there.

The Tate Brothers being arrested.

The Tates being arrested.

Back when my son was a baby, I used to play cricket with him. I’d take his feet and rub the soles against each other and go “CHIRP CHIRP!”. But as he grew older, he naturally didn’t enjoy this as much, and we’d do it less and less. He’d sometimes still ask me to do it, but occasions got scarce. He’s almost six years old now, and i had kind of accepted that he had grown out of it. Well, yesterday in the evening, just before he went to sleep, he asked me to do it again, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it, and we laughed, and it was beautiful. It may be the last time, as he grows older and won’t want to do such childish things anymore, but the pure fact that I got to experience it one more time AND KNOW it was the last time and I got to experience and savor it very consciously made me enjoy it just SO MUCH more, it brought tears of joy to my eyes. Yeah OK, I’ll admit it, I ugly cried. Hard. And I’ll cherish this memory forever.

My band played a show recently with a bunch of more experienced bands and we got a lot of really nice compliments after our set. More than one person made it a point to make eye contact and say something like “seriously, that was really original and cool”. I’ll ride this high for weeks, if not months.

I haven’t cried in decades, but I got very excited last week when I get a call back from a company I applied to without even a vacancy. Not the first time I applied there, I just like the company. I’m a SWE with 0 YOE, so the market sucks for me. I’ve been job hunting for 6 months, with a couple interviews, but no concrete offers. I do have a couple years of semi-relevant experience (where I’m currently employed) and that’s what they liked in my profile. Now I’m excited to see if this leads anywhere.

A friend of mine that I’m growing closer to asked if I wanted to borrow her house while she was away on vacation so I could feel a bit about being a homeowner. I have recently started looking at buying one after living in apartments for the last 20+ years. Just that invitation and handing over responsibility made my heart melt. Made me all woozy-warm-cozy inside.

Tears of happiness is such a rare thing that it has only happened twice in my life, at the birth of both of my kids.

My daughter sprinting across the playground to give me a cuddle when I collected her from preschool.

That was earlier in the week.

The manager of customer service at work stepped down. She is now a cashier. She sucks and I’m so happy she is gone. Just happy, not tears of joy. Sorry I can’t share a more uplifting story.

Towards the end of last year I bought a home. It wouldn’t have been possible without my father’s passing just a month into his retirement and leaving me everything he had; it wasn’t much but just enough. He was never very close, to the extent that all I have from him is a couple of small statues and photographs – and now my home.

Two days ago I invited some new friends to a rave and one of them said they were actually already on the fence about going, but if I was going it must be cooler then they thought. I wish I could frame that.

The rave was also lit and we had a great time, but I usually enjoy those.

I don’t have good news but I think many bad things can have positive effects as well. E.g. the Ukraine and Hormuz conflicts are excellent reminders for everyone that depending on fossil energy is not sustainable.