Back to school, back to work

Where I share some of the things I've been thinking about, learning about, and exploring across work, tech, wellness, and life.

Hey Friends,

Shhhh…. listen. Do you hear that? That’s right! It’s the sound of peace and quiet because my kids are finally back in school which means my productivity has skyrocketed this week.

Finally some peace and quiet to get some work done

My kids are older now - two teenagers and a tween. They make their own meals, clean up after themselves (mostly), make their own plans, and the oldest one even drives now. Because of their independence, I like to think I can be just as productive at work when they are home, but I know that’s just a lie I tell myself. They’ve been back exactly one week and it’s pretty remarkable how much of my to-do list has been whittled down this past week. I had a great summer but I’m excited to be back to the grind and have a lot of things to look forward to for the remaining 106 days of 2023.

Some of the things

Here is a rundown of just some of the things I’ve stumbled onto across the internet or things I’ve been thinking about or getting into since my last update 3 weeks ago:

• The DevOps Enterprise Summit in Las Vegas - one of my favorite tech conferences - is just a few weeks away. Here’s an overview of what to expect this year. If any of you, dear readers, are attending, please let me know so we can meet up. I’ve been a speaker at two past events and I’m excited to be a normal attendee this year so I can just focus on the fabulous networking and learning. My past talks about D&I and DevOps: A Match Made in Heaven and Leading With Heart are free to watch.

• The NYC skyline has changed a lot since I moved to the suburbs in 2008, most notably the number of super tall high rise buildings, which I learned are called Super Talls in this video about billionaires row which also explains why so many of the tallest buildings are all on 57th street.

• Learned about a local company that sets up canvas tents for a glamping experience. For years I did an annual car-camping trip with some college friends and their families but we missed the past 2 years. Bookmarking this company for a possible experience next year. https://www.thecanvasexperience.com/

• I love this paragraph from an interview with Linus Torvalds, the creator of open source operating system Linux, about why he has no regrets about not getting mega-rich by creating a proprietary Linux: “I do what I care about, and feel like I’m making a difference”

  

  Excerpt from interview with Linus Torvalds

• I’m trying to make progress on a children’s book I’m cowriting with my sister. The story text is 90% finished and then we’ll work on illustrations. Looking forward to sharing more updates as we continue. I saw this great Madeleine L’Engle quote this week that’s giving me a little nudge to keep going:

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if that book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” — Madeleine L’Engle

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Let’s talk about grief

My mom died earlier this year. She was one of my favorite people. I miss her. A lot. I’m sad and I’m grieving and if I let myself go there I feel actual heart ache in my chest. But my mom always taught me to accept things as they are, to be mentally tough and not overdramatic so the way I’m coping with her loss is to keep reminding myself that her death was not a tragedy. Her death was not a tragedy. She got her cancer diagnosis at age 74. People die of natural causes in their 70s all the time. This wasn’t a tragedy. She told me she was proud of her 3 grown children, that she wasn’t worried about any of us. We’re lucky if we get to bury our parents, and not the other way around. A child’s death is a tragedy, my mom’s death is not a tragedy. The pain I feel is because I love her so much. What about the many people who have more complicated relationships with their parents and didn’t experience unconditional love. That’s tragedy. My mom’s death was not tragic. When she got her advanced stage pancreas cancer diagnosis, the first thing she said was she’s not afraid of dying, only afraid of pain. Well, she went quickly and peacefully with no pain. My brain keeps telling me again and again that her death was not a tragedy. But it feels tragic to me.

A friend sent me a podcast this week - grateful for grief - a raw and powerful conversation between Steven Colbert and Anderson Cooper talking about grief. Towards the end, Steven Colbert says that talking about grief is a way of accepting it and making it real. It occurs to me now why I’m finding it so much easier to write about losing my mom than it is to talk about. This newsletter has been a suprising comfort during this time, a creative outlet for emotions I’m not yet ready to make real.

Speaking of writing about grief, I recently learned about a form of poetry called Tritriplicata invented by Arjan Tupan, a poet I met on Farcaster. I had been finding a lot of comfort in poetry this year (particularly The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang) so I decided to take my turn at writing one to capture these complicated feelings of conflict between my logical brain that tells me everything is fine, and my sensing, feeling brain that just feels pain.

It doesn’t

matter she lived fully,

no regrets and was ready to sleep,

not a tragedy yet

it hurts so

A tritriplicata is a simple poem that uses syllable count as it’s structure, similar to a haiku. It’s a 5 line poem with syllable count as 3, 6, 9, 6, 3. But you can also break the rules if you need to. Try to write one!

A note to my subscribers:

I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing a habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide any other benefits. You can read about my original intentions in my first post here.

I plan to continue to write about twice a month and will be sharing musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out my consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.

Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here, or find me on twitter and farcaster.

Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️