#SummerUpdate

• I finished Summer Camp with the Copper as planned!
• in playing life I rolled a critical FAIL twice in a row but topped it with a critical SUCCESS
• I'm tired... I need vacation...

Thankfully, the preparations I made during the first week paid off. I was able to use all of the stubs to create articles that were enough to satisfy my nerdy perfectionism. In the process I learned to count to eight, as well, and the revelation of having three not four articles gave me a chill for a hot minute!

But all is well that ends well! I made it through and the Copper badge is mine! Some small things have appeared in the heat of it all -- one of the place names (Æchinnen) is the first Old Savenian word to trace it's origin back to Ašu. The conlanging part was pretty enjoyable and it sprouted new ideas on the ancient past of the world -- how to go from a tonal, mesopotamian-like language to a celtic-sounding one, while retaining the meaning? Hopefully more on the topic soon™.

Life ain't sunshine and rainbows would be one thing and understandable, but twice in a row in a short time subverted by expectations. The first week of June welcomed me with a handful of surprizes:

• my employer decided to stop employing me
• my family member was unexpectedly taken to the hospital
• my mortgage was finally paid

Admittedly, no. 2 was the one that was the toughest to chew. As the leave from the hospital coincided with the Summer Camp Prep and later on with the Summer Camp itself it needed to be shelved. The situation demanded a bit of playing hide and seek with my job loss to not make the things worse. It involved daily visits for as long as needed, a frickin' massive ton of commuting though a loud city in a frickin' hot summer. I expected to last until the end but at the end of the day it left me too exhausted both, physically and emotionally to even consider opening the laptop.

No. 1 was pretty bad on its own -- it was hard not to take it personally, even though it was my position that was not needed anymore, not me [i[per se. My team-mates were extremely supportive at that time and when the notice period was over (it was three months!) we all almost forgot about it and shared a few laughs, despite being sad a little. I'm going to miss them. It still feels bizarre to not kick off the weeks with meetings and oscillate between remote and on-site. To kill time I've sat down to some Docker projects, one WA-related. I do hope to be able to use it as soon as possible, but life can be surprizing and I treat these projects as something special to do in spare time rather than full-time commitments.

And last, but not least, as a cherry on top, with two disasters at hand there's the heart-lightening news of finally paid mortgage. Is it of the same caliber as the former? No... But it was enough to make me feel less insecure. It also meant I could focus on the problems at hand, no. 2 in particular, and on vacation and rest thanks to the abundance of time from no. 1. I am omitting the complexities here, but they would make the story drag unnecessarily...

I write and share it all, because I think it comes with a lining, silver or otherwise. Firstly, I learned my new limits and what my priorities are in times of a shit ton of stress. Secondly, it made me appreciate life and the quality of it a lot more. And as much as I see it a cliche story-wise, it's an experience I learned to appreciate more, emotionally speaking, now that it's become part of my life's story as well. Thirdly, and finally, it taught me the importance of being able to jump between tasks, a thing or two I neglected these past years. And for many reasons, likely some spectrum related, it brings me great joy to just dance between several tasks.

Now that the worst is over, positively speaking, I can finally have some well-deserved rest. There's a job to find, yeah, sure... But before that I'll go and relax with the abundance of spare time, without the overtowering shadow of mortgage to spoil my sleep.