During yesterday’s visit to Luna’s pediatrician, I had a few seconds of panic. As we were walking into the hospital, at the main entrance, there is a “screening” point. They’s ask all the usual. Are you feeling sick today? Are you showing symptoms? Who is the patient? Do you know where you’re heading? All the questions. Besides that, one thing they require is to replace my mask with theirs, as per the hospital’s policy. I have Luna in my arms, and I put her down, right in front of me. While I was putting on the mask and adjusting she walks behind me, as she usually does when she’s shy, I did notice this. Furthermore, with the mask on, I can’t look down just by lowering my sight. I feel like Michale Keaton’s Batman moving my entire upper torso to look around. In my mind, Luna was still in front of me and I did not see her when I looked down. That’s when I started to panic a bit, I looked to my left, then my right and did not see her. It wasn’t until the lady said “Go with daddy” that then I realized she was right by my right leg.

Sidenote: I almost corrected the lady, “it is papa, not daddy”

Why not daddy? Well, that’s a post for another day.

Today was Luna’s two-year’s check-in with the pediatrician. And of course, as it always goes every time she’s getting a shot or two, I’m the one assigned with the task.

Luna is not a fan of doctor’s visits. The moment we walk into the office she gets nervous and edgy. I guess that’s expected, Marley was the same. However, every once in a while we need to see the doctor on-call when the primary isn’t available and, at least Marley, is pretty chill with the other doctor more so than with her primary. But that’s a whole another blog-post.

Luna’s check-up went as expected, she wasn’t happy, in order to get her weigh, I had to get weighed with her [Luna] and then again by myself. The things I do for my child, weigh myself on front of another lady that is not my wife 😅

The worse part was obviously the shots. She did not like that at all. Two seconds later she’s fine though, as if nothing happened.

Even mad and in tears, she politely said goodbye to the staff.

When Reeder 5 came out, along with iCloud syncing for feeds, I had decided at the time to “cut” the middle man and canceled my Feedbin subscription. It all went well until I noticed my unread items were way out of control. I do some reading on my iPhone and very little on my iPad (weird ha!). A lot of my reading happens on my computer, well, my work computer. When I am in front of my two bigbutt monitors. And if you have used Feedbin as a service before, you’d know how nice their web interface is — love it!

Today I re-subscribed to Feedbin, this time I did not import any of my RSS subscriptions. It is kind of nice to start from scratch. Also, I am doing a little bit of an experiment.

I am trying to degooglefy, trying to use fewer google services or not at all. The only Google service I can still see myself using is YouTube. However, I am not logged in with my Gmail account when I watch a video. This also means I won’t necessarily know when one of my “favorite” YouTuber(s) will upload a video. What I am doing instead is subscribing to their feed via Feedbin. We will see how that works. Another thing I want to do is get my newsletters on Feedbin instead of my email. I mean, if I am going to pay for this service, might as well take advantage of all its features.

I always dislike when I have the chance of a good night sleep but my mind goes on and on about all sorts of things. Like tonight, I know I am tired, so I had decided to go to bed early and get some needed rest. But then, all these thoughts and feelings come out and they want to talk!

I hear voices in my head...

— Voices in my head

Anything from personal frustrations, to work frustrations, finances and so on. Things I need to do, things I should do, goals, etc. How the world it's a clusterfuck, the pandemic, social issues and politics!

One thing that is having me restless more than anything tonight is work. I love my job, I am proud of working for the company that I am part of, proud of my team and what we do, and what I bring to it. But I still feel some disconnection in a way. When i started this job, I believe it was mid August of 2019 if I recall correctly. Like in any new job, for me at least, the first 6 months or so is all about learning the ropes and prove yourself worthy whilst still trying to buildup connections. Proving myself it's a big deal and I depend on relationships. That is my type of personality, I like to make fiends and have good people around me. Under normal circumstances, it is easy for me to build relationships and get along with people. This is how I have always been, I can talk to anyone and everyone, make jokes, have good conversations — I socialize.

Six to seven months into my new job the pandemic hits and we all get sent to work from home. Up to this point my "closest" relationships had been with my immediate team members or as I call them, the trailer dwellers. Maybe one or two activities in which I got to interact with other teams but nothing too significant.

Needles to say the pandemic made this worst. Then it was me, my computer, Skype for business and Zoom. And always with the same people. I get back to the office in august, close to my one year anniversary with the team. Still, it is not the same. Due to obvious reasons the company wants to keep minimum interactions between members of staff so, we have two shifts. I'm in the morning shift, from 5am to 12:15pm. In the trailer, instead of the entire team, it's just me and one other. At this point this is probably the closest relationship I have.

So I feel a huge disconnection from my other coworkers and the rest of the other teams. Still to this day, whenever we are having our zoom calls, they talk about people from the building that I have no friking idea who they are and it's weird to me.

It feels very different and foreign. In previous jobs there was always this dynamic in between teams and even when we didn't necessarily work directly with each other, there was always this sense of team and we were all teammates. There was good communication, for the most part, and everything flowed swimmingly. Also the fact that we had "team-building" activities helped with creating this relationships. And I am sure this dynamic exists and everyone else feels a part of a whole, it’s just that I feel like I never got the chance to be a part of it. I never had the chance to build those relationships, to build those bridges. And with social distancing and all that, it's making that even harder for me. This is adding to my ongoing stress and frustration. I feel very disconnected and not so much of a teammate. I feel like I've also become more socially awkward. It is, again, a very strange feeling.

All that being said, my team, is awesome. If I need help I can reach out and they'll help me out in any way they can.

As long as there's internet. 🙃

Today, thanks to the magic of “on this day” I was reminded of my “fitness” progress at the time. It made me sad in some way, since I haven’t been active as I was back then, at all. I have been trying. I do good for a day or two and then I’m back and being lazy.

Today, in the back of my head, I knew I wanted to start again — try this thing again. Also in the back my head, was the devil, as we say back home, el Diablo es puerco (the devil is a pig). I really didn’t want to do anything, that little devil was telling me to take a nap, play video games maybe. Still I dragged myself outside and went for a two mile run followed by a few assisted pull-ups (gotta build strength back up).

It felt good, as it always does, it’s just a matter of keeping at it. Ignore el Diablo 😈.

Diablo, que tú no puedes conmigo

— El Diablo by Ray Barreto

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