The Engineering.

Look. We don’t have a promotional video. We don’t work in a beautiful, well-furnished office in a highly hyped location. The last time we needed company t-shirts we just hand-printed some. Some of us work on equipment considered ancient, using operating systems way past the end-of-support date. Our JTAG adapters can easily get confused with scrap electronics. Our keyboards get so filthy it’s forbidden to show photographs of them to minors in 17 states. But ask us about the product – and we’ll show you something that fucking works.

We are not cheerful, glittery and fake. We don’t give false promises. We are not your typical Kickstarter kids.

And we don’t care. We are not a marketing department; we are engineering. There’s no time for all this nonsense. We’ve got a product to build.

Get well soon

I woke up to a phone call from my mom.

– Kosma, could you check flights to Toulouse for me?

Yup. The world never slows down, even when you do.

I’m recovering from the flu; give or take three or four more days and I’ll be up and running once again. I had an idea in my head that the life slows down in October; of course, the world proved me wrong. I’ve been ill for two weeks and I’m missing out on so much fantastic stuff it’s not even funny.

Given I have way too much free time on my hands right now, I’ve been thinking about my life even more. I can’t quite grasp the moment I went from unhappy to happy. It happened in the last 12 months, but when? I have a little photo project on the way which may bring the answer.

Save as draft

I have a rule concerning blogging: a post has to be finished and published in a single sitting. With an absurdly active brain like mine, the subject matter changes like a kaleidoscope; yesterday’s topics ofter seem nonsense today and saving a post for later inevitably means it’s never going to be finished.

My drafts folder stopped growing once I realized the stuff there is never going to get published simply because it went out of date. I operate on a strict rule now: you start it – you finish it – you publish it.

Or trash it. But never leave work laying around, unresolved.


The same principle applies to code, probably. Every time so far I used git stash I ended up rewriting the code from scratch later simply because it was easier than trying to figure out which parts of the half-finished contraption still need work and what exactly did I have in mind while writing them.

Another day spent in front of Lightroom, scanning, sorting and editing my old photographs. The process is so arduous it seems never-ending; it’s only the librarian-grade bookkeeping that reassures me I’m actually going to finish this task some day and that I’m indeed making progress.

It’s my way of facing the past. The story of the last three years of my life… I’ve never told it to anyone; at least not the whole of it. I think I’ve made more mistakes than I ever wanted in my life; caused more pain, confusion and tears than I’d ever wish upon anyone. It wasn’t like that all the time – but the joyous days, parties and summers were inevitably intertwined with episodes I’d wish I could save for myself… while at the same time I fucking wish I could just get it all out, in the blue, and lift this shameful emotional baggage off my shoulders once and for all.

Painstakingly tagging arranging the photos and folders in chronological order, a story starts to emerge. What has been a tangled mess is straightening up; periods that were a haze start to emerge in scraps, in snapshots often captured by strangers, snapped on mobile phones and long forgotten. People, places, situations, good and bad times… everything, captured on film, coming back to life a little bit every time I look at the recorded memories.

Perhaps this is why I’m carrying the camera with me all the time.

Patching up the pieces

Another Monday and the same story repeats itself: there’s so much happening in my life I can barely think about just how much is happening. I’ve been patching the memories up from photographs, blog posts, calendars and letters. It’s going to take me some time to really appreciate just how beautiful this summer was.

Perfect

It’s one of those rare evenings when things seem so perfect I can hardly believe it. There I was, curled up under a warm blanket, drinking ginger tea, the happiest man in the world. And then, browsing the net randomly, I came upon a music store selling rare post rock LPs for bargain prices. I checked the address.

Wrocław. Literally two blocks away from my house.

I’m living a fucking dream.

Equinox

Then that morning comes when you run out of coffee; when the alarm clock doesn’t ring but you get woken up by the cold anyway. The morning when you turn the heaters half a notch up. The morning when you don’t bother to open the blinds because well… you know it’s raining.