Week of the rollercoaster

“30” by Bo Burnham

This week had a musical start as I finally got to see Dear Evan Hansen before it ends its London run this month. It was a fantastic experience; vastly better than the film where they managed to make Ben Platt even older than he was, and even better than the studio album I've spent over a year listening to. I was worried that I wouldn't enjoy it as I spent two years listening to the Hamilton album before I got to see it in person, only to be largely dissapointed when I saw the live act.

Seeing it was a very important bit of closure. My ex-girlfriend and I had tickets for it in February 2020, but it was cancelled (and rightly so) due to the emerging pandemic. Two and a half years ago we were very different people and were in a relationship with eachother. Now we're dating other people and are fundamentally different humans. Seeing it together was a pleasant close to a rollercoaster of a life chapter.

I am re-entering the working world in November as I was offered a very lovely gig as a Senior Frontend Developer with [redacted]! I've only worked for large companies (100s-1000s of employees) and as my career went on I became further removed from the people I was building products for. Not only that, but I'll be working in a small team in a small company where the user is the point.

The place I'm going to (I'll tell you once the contract is signed) actually seems to want me and are excited about me joining, so much so that they asked me to start earlier (I can't). I'll also be doing a four-day week, and it works out to me earning the exact same money as I did at my previous job, for a better quality of life.

I'll also be frontend rather than full-stack, and damn I'm excited to be building pretty and accessible websites again.

I've been on a deliberated-but-still-impulsive body mod kick for the past few weeks. Esther is a bad infuence on me. I got a tattoo of a goth cat a couple of weeks ago and just got down with two fresh helix piercings. This brings my total to two tattoos and seven in-use (nine including unused/semi-healed) piercings.

Once my right ear is healed, I'll get another two helix piercings in the left ear, so both ears will be symetrical with three helix piercings and one lobe piercing each. I've also booked another tattoo for this week. Then I should probably have a break!

I was feeling really happy this week as I have a lot to be happy about, and it felt like life was mine to conquer. Of course this made me vulnerable to some retraumitisation from past events which hit me like a tonne of bricks. As I write this I don't feel very good about myself, but getting out of my depression cocoon and writing this has been very helpful.

I finally got to meet a bunch of london-dwelling friends from my “we all have ADHD” WhatsApp group! We went for a roast dinner, and it was just wonderful to finally be surrounded by the friends I've been talking to most days since early 2020. I spent most of the day talking with one of my friends babies, and I got to hold her. Holding a baby is an immediate cure to any bad feelings, she was a wonder.

It's spooky szn aka. Halloween! I've never really cared about Halloween but I could do with some routine to prepare me for going back to work, so I'm going to try to watch some horror films most nights.

I'm not sure whether I'll follow through as I am easily scared and hate watching scary movies alone. I got Esther to watch It Followswith me over a video call, so I could make it through. I've seen the film once before, so it wasn't as scary as the first watch, but still uncomfortable.

Last night we watched The VVitch which I wouldn't class as a horror film, but it had a couple of scary jumps and beautiful cinematography.

What should I watch next?

Despite some difficult feelings toward the end of the week, I'd say this week was much better than last. Long may that pattern continue.