025 – spring cleaning

Well, Friday’s here. I’ve had a good week so far. I’ve been wanting to write a post about photography but I think I want that to be a little more organized than most of my other posts. I want it to be readable and I want to be able to share it with a group of people who I think might want to read it or could get some value out of it. For that, I’ll probably have to put in a little more effort than simply writing on a whim. I have notes and content, so I’m not too worried about that, it’s just the structuring that’ll require some effort. 

One thing I’m learning about “good” and “bad” weeks is that good weeks require slowing down and reflection as much as the bad ones do. It’s quite easy to get carried away in the general easiness of things sometimes and I worry about how that might leave me in a worse place than a bad week by itself might have. While anxiety generally makes it hard for me to let things go, I at least end up completing my goals and tasks most of the times. When the anxiety’s not around, I often end up living “too” much in the present. I suppose it’s a constant battle to manage the short-term and the long-term. Or maybe this is just the anxiety talking again. 

I’ve got an apartment move coming up ahead, and the decision making over it has completely fried my brain. The budget decisions, the wants, the fitting my wants within my budget, it’s all quite exhausting. Fortunately, work’s been a little light this week so I’ve managed to do a bit of house hunting. It’s terribly windy outside, I wish that weren’t the case. I’d have loved to take a walk right now. I went downstairs and had to come back up within five minutes is how chilly it was. 

I finally figured out how to add “top posts” and “tag cloud” widgets to this webpage so that’s kinda cool. I don’t know why I’d been struggling with that earlier. The thing I’m unhappy about though is that I wanted to list out of my top posts based on views, but that only takes into account the views from 48 hours and not all-time views, so I had to list them out by likes instead. 

On the work front, my repressed interests in product management have come up to the surface again. I’ve always thought that I care more about the “what and the why”s of a product rather than the “how”s. But the thing I don’t love about product management jobs is that they definitely seem to involve a LOT of multi-tasking, organization and meetings, and I don’t know if that’s something I’d enjoy. Thankfully this isn’t a completely uncommon switch that people make, so I know I can find enough material to help me think about this and figure out if makes sense for me.

In other good things, my heart’s been warmed by how much great queer representation I’ve been seeing in the media these days! I was making my mom watch Atypical, which literally has one of the cutest wlw arcs. Followed by Ginny and Georgia, it completely blew me by surprise, and Sara Weisglass does such a phenomenal job in it. Lastly, from the motherland – Bombay Begums – again, very surprised they handled a queer arc gracefully. Have to say it again, my heart’s so full. I was thinking about how the word “representation” doesn’t fully capture the value it actually holds. Representation doesn’t just mean “seeing” more kinds of people and diverse storylines – it basically implies “resonating” with them. Quality representation of diverse emotions is probably an important goal that the word by itself doesn’t convey.

I think a cool thing about writing one of these is that often at some point halfway through I remember everything that’s bothering me about the “things I haven’t done” or the things I haven’t planned for, and I’m almost forced to step out of this and make that list I’m always putting off. Because if I don’t do that, I’d either end up writing out of my feelings about those tasks in the post, or I’d end up giving up the post at that point. And since I know I don’t want to do either of those things, I end up making that list. Which actually ends up helping a ton. 

Well, Sunday’s here now and I had a pretty great weekend. It was productive when it comes to my personal goals, it was relaxing, and it was social – it was everything I could ask for in a weekend. No crises this week and I’m quite happy about that. I don’t have much to write about tonight so I’m going to use the last chunk of this post to note that I’m in a good place with my “hobbies” now. I think I’m at the place where I can all all three of photography, music and writing a regular hobby that I find that I’ve been able to stick do and do somewhat regularly. Regularly enough to not really lose touch with all of them. I think the next thing I need to do is setup some good workflows for my work work, so I can make sure to not get lost or off track on that. I also want to set some financial goals and see if I can become a little smarter about my finances so I don’t have to worry about them too often. The next thing I want to take care of my health, I’ve been doing much better from a month ago but I want to take some time to reflect on it.

Word vomit’s done. What should I call it?