January 2022 – An Echo That's Reversing

Sabbatical, 2022

Today is my last day at my current soon-to-be-former job.

The story is common in tech: new management, a resulting destructive reorganization of the development team, plans to outsource most everyone. It’s unfortunate because (most) co-workers were fun, but time to move on is time to move on. I’m very lucky that I have the option (DINKs!). Throughout my career, any unhappiness always resulted in an aggravating overlap of unhappiness and interviews and pressure. This is the dream. (And this is why we need UBI so that everyone can have such freedom and psychological calm.)

Plans for my 3-month sabbatical: music (of course), learn new and re-learn old development technologies and frameworks, German exercises, ear training (god I’ve lost so much ability with that), update my Ubuntu server to the next LTS build.

Oh, and shaving my head tonight.

The job market better damn-well be as strong in three months.

Coronavirus–13 Jan 2022–A new kind of surge

Confusion is the coin of the realm deep into this Omicron variant.

Taken from the CDC’s *Covid Data Tracker Weekly Review* for 7 Jan 2022

Taken from Johns Hopkins’ US map on 12 Jan 2022, with Utah and Nebraska standing in for North Korea

There not there

So I’ve had intermittent hypnagogic hallucinations for the past two years or so. They were really frequent two years ago, then became less and less but the experience was learned and now I don’t know when to expect them.

Suite for Turntable and Piano — Expression

I’ve been.. a week? into the final movement.

The title is stolen from the giallo film by Sergio Martino, starring the classic giallo actress Edwiga Fenech, called Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key. Like all giallo it’s expressionist thriller, and this title comes from a previous film of his (same year, also Ms. Fenech) where a hapless victim receives a written message saying, without context and never explained: “your vice is a locked room.” We all have our creative byways.

Edwige Fenech from *Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key* (1972)

End of Year, 2021

Today I finished the fourth movement for my suite for turntables and piano (coincidentally, but satisfying).

I’m terrified of 2022 elections and gerrymandering. We’re fucked.

I’m about to take a three month sabbatical from work. I am infinitely lucky I have the ability to do that.

Lisa is in Miami for a fooooot-ball game with Danice.

I’m at the start (~250 of 1,200) of Pynchon’s Against the Day (which I invariably translate to Gegen des Tages though I’m sure that’s nonsense-talk) whereas I started it a decade-or-so-ago and got ~300 pages in but stopped for some reason. I have an ever-expanding document of notes with character names and key events. It helps.

I’ve been back into Duolingo. Maybe it’ll take? I love those characters.

(Lily is a fucking bitch, though.)

I’m proud of what I’ve composed (this year I finished the symphony and string quartet), but have shame that I can no longer play what I had been able to. I use to be able to play an hour of my music, relatively cleanly and from memory; now I don’t play piano at all. I do have plans to ignore the deficiencies of hand dystonia and start playing again next year (this year (timestamp)).

We have made the condo much better this year. New bookshelves; new hallway lighting. Maybe even better next year. That makes me feel like an adult?

I created an @sstradermusic account in order to firewall my composer self from my personal Twitter and have new acquaintances (of a sort), but also gods-among-men individuals who I’m terrified of interacting with.

I bought some really cool artwork.

This is me tonight. I am 2021: