--- date: 2020-02-23 weight: 1 --- 
Dad,

It's been a while since we've had the chance to catch up on things. That's on me; not only has life been pretty nuts of late, but I've also kind of lost track of keeping in touch with family and a whole slew of friends.

There are a bunch of reasons for that. Chief among them is probably that I'm struggling a lot with figuring out where I stand with folks. It seems like there's this whole class of people that I'm just not sure how to interact with. In our case, it's sort of, "Are we friends? Are we family? Is it cool for us to just chat? Should our relationship be cordial? Friendly? Chatting only when necessary, or regularly?" Lots of questions like that.

I think a lot of the reason I've been asking myself a lot of these questions lately has been that I've kinda hit one of those mid-life crisis moments. I know 34 isn't exactly a number preceded by 'the ripe old age of', but I suppose this is the type of thing that can strike at just about any time. At least, that's what my therapist promises me.

I burned out pretty hard at Internet Archive, and left after only a year to go work as a contractor for a small software company based in the UK (still working remote, natch) called New Vector. They work on encrypted communications stuff, with their primary selling point being that their service is federated - anyone can run a server and talk to anyone else on other servers. It makes for a much more robust network.

Neat as the opportunity was, I hated it. Every time I opened up my code editor, I'd just stare at it and think about how much I hated my job. Then I'd start feeling hopeless, because this thing I was hating was my chosen career path.

Burnout's a hell of a drug, I guess.

Neither work nor I were happy with me there, so rather than renewing my contract, I decided to start looking elsewhere. Rather than looking for yet another software job that I'd probably hate, I started looking at tech writing positions. It'd be a lot of working through a piece of software - both using it and looking at the code - and writing documentation, blog posts, etc. My biggest lead right now is actually for a company I used to work for, helping to write the curriculum for their certification program, similar to Microsoft's A+ cert.

I've been writing and editing a lot lately. I've got a small publishing publishing company that I run (very small; only have three books out so far), and three books of my own out, with another one coming out in a few months. I figure since that's the direction my hobbies have gone, might as well find a synthesis of that and the thing I'm good at in terms of dayjobs. Tech writing sure as hell makes more money than publishing, after all.

Things are going alright on my end other than that. Found a meds combination that is working really well for bipolar (and doesn't cause any more of those movement disorders!), and a hormone regimen that's been stable for a few years now. We went down to San Jose, CA around my birthday for a convention and to meet up with some of our polycule (if you graph them out, polyamorous relationships start to look like molecules, so the name has stuck). Was good to have a little vacation.

James is doing alright as well, though he's moved to working almost entirely with property management and real estate these days, rather than machining. He's been working through some health fiascoes. Found out he was low on testosterone, and supplementing that helped out a ton. He was back to the James I met back in 2005 or so. Then he found out he has celiac disease, so we had to go gluten free. Now he's got twice the energy he used to, since his body is actually digesting nutrients.

The dogs are both slowing down. They're getting pretty old (at least for German Shepherds), and both have arthritis. Still, they're happy and lazy. It seems like a good life. We also adopted a piece of shit cat, dumb as dirt and soft as hell. I love her.

How are things on your end? Been a bit since we've caught up about the day-to-day stuff. Curious to hear how work is going. How's Maurine?

It's a bit early yet, but happy upcoming birthday! Hope it treats you well.

Love,

Madison