I’d walk to get somewhere. I’d walk to reach a destination. I’d walk out of necessity. I’d never walk to simply, walk. Until Covid-19, walking was just another mode of transport. But when the pandemic kicked in, it swept my legs out from under me. It confined me to the seated position. I’d sit for over 12hrs a day. I’d spend hours sitting and working. Then spend hours sitting and gaming.…

I watch the paint slowly harden. I stare intently at it. For hours and hours. Day after day. I watch it. I must see it dry. I don’t really care why I must watch it. I watch it anyway. It pays well. I could watch something else. I could use my body instead of sitting and staring all day. But then we’d be apart. And I don’t want that. So I’ll keep watching.…

Circa 2015 I accepted a shitty web developer job for a salary of £25k. It was to be the first of many shitty web developer jobs. I was hired because I was dirt cheap and could just about code in Python. Immediately everyone realised I was not a good hire. Not a good fit. Not even an adequate fit. No, the new hire will not be able to build a CMS in Drupal 7 by themselves.…

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a CircleCI customer. Probably a trusty pair of Birkenstocks. They login and they’re greeted with a “Dashboard” which looks a little something like this: I’m going to dissect this page, feel free to open up https://app.circleci.com as your own user if that’s easier to follow. Let’s hone in on a section of this page: To the left of the word “Dashboard” is a sort of, broken mirror icon.…

I specifically stated that I wouldn’t do this. I stated that if I wrote about this, then I’d consider my goal of “writing things” a failure. This was supposed to be technical blog damn it! Well, I figure goals are like rules. Sometimes you gotta bend ‘em and sometimes you gotta break ‘em. Plus, now I get to write about the fuzzy line between addiction and obsession and how to waste your life.…

Thankfully I’ve never had a long distance romantic relationship. I imagine Zoom isn’t really up to the task of replacing snuggles. A hug emoji isn’t a hug. This had led me to believe that any kind of long distance relationship was inferior to a short distance one. I was wrong. How could I bond with my colleagues to any meaningful degree if I couldn’t fist bump them after they deployed a new feature and say “ayyy that was lit fam”?…

I’m not really much of a goal setter. I don’t make new years resolutions. I don’t have a budget, I don’t track my workouts and I don’t keep a journal. There’s a quote “What gets measured gets managed” and I don’t measure anything at all. In school I didn’t even like using a ruler. My lines were all wonky and my bar charts made people shriek. But they were still lines and they still worked.…