Is this thing on?

It’s amazing how the dust piles up when you don’t post for a week or two. Or five years.

Last time I posted was the beginning of 2016. That was just before the celebrities started to die off, signalling the beginning of a pretty bad five years for many people. I think it’s important for me to acknowledge how lucky I am that I tend to be relatively isolated from the worst of what goes on in the world, be that economic instability or social upheaval or pandemics. May I never come to think that I ever did anything to earn that privileged position.

My last five years have been dominated by parenthood, which was pretty new to me at the beginning of 2016, but which I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of. It’s mostly about cleaning chocolate off everything and not going out, which prepared me well for 2020.

I somehow conspired to put on a substantial amount of weight while training for and running two marathons, which is an achievement in some sense.

Work continues to be work, though no longer at work these days, and unlikely to be back until deep into the second half of this year. I still try to write code every day, but a lot more of my job happens in emails and documents these days.

I’ve read some books, though never as many as I’d like. I’ve watched a lot of TV, possibly more that I would like. I started playing video games again, having bought a PS4 just before the PS5 came out. I did that on the grounds that everything on it is new to me anyway and should now be substantially cheaper. Spider-Man is good.

I’m still living in the same place, now by far the longest I’ve lived in a single place since I left my parents’ house. Its capacity to accrue clutter has not abated in that time, largely as a consequence of the aforementioned parenthood. We own a lot of Play-Doh.

I traveled a bit, though not recently. Maui was a highlight, for Christmas in 2019 (I nearly wrote “last year” – hah!) Going inside a glacier in Iceland was also pretty neat. These days I’d be lucky to get to an Iceland supermarket, so I’m glad we made memories while we could. Here’s to doing that again soon.

Anyway, that’s me. I’m sure I forgot a bunch of stuff. I might post again soon. I might post again in five years. I might not. I hope you’re well. Here’s to 2021.