Things have really changed for me, a little over five years ago at the end of 2019 my life was quite stable. I had my apartment that I had been living in for over six years and I had been working with the same people for more or less the same time. I still spent most of my free time with the same old friends, and as the nerd I am, plenty of time on the computer. I was also long time single. I was comfortable and my life felt familiar and safe and it can be a little tricky to get out of the comfort zone.
I have been working for most of my 30:s on that comfort zone. I had pushed myself to travel, be more forward at work, involve myself quite deeply with two different organizations. Focus on my self esteem and improve my English.
Maybe all that paved the way for me to feel that I needed something more in my life, or maybe it was my age. I had started to be more serious about dating. I realized that I actually really enjoyed this kind of dating where you meet someone new, a blank slate, and get to know someone over a cup of coffee, a drink or a walk.
I had always thought that I would just meet somewhere at work, university or friends. In hindsight my social circle was too narrow and the pool of candidates was depleted a long time ago. The safe, familiar comfort of the routine.
One of these dates became a second, third and fourth date and just like that I had a girlfriend. Then the pandemic hit Sweden.
I'm glad that I met Anna before the pandemic, I'm not sure I would have been comfortable hitting bars and cafe's during the outbreak of an pandemic. But for us it turned to plenty of nice evenings just us two in front of the TV, walks along the shoreline and dinners at home.
The pandemic was, for me, a great time where Anna and I took the car and traveled north, and next summer south. Discovering new and fun parts of the country, and we formed a tight bond together.
While things were quite bright in my personal life, at work there were plenty of issues. I was hand picked during the pandemic to solve a prioritized issue due to the pandemic. I had been promised a quite good position after that assignment, a position that vaporized before my eyes, to me and my current manager's surprise, we all assumed it was a done deal and my old position was gone at this point. I drifted between a few temporary assignments for about a year, until I found myself with a development team again.
Our mission was impossible to achieve within the allocated time, pressure on me and my developers, a lot of absurd situations. Plenty of mistakes, some of my own, and the entire thing went sour. They did not trust me, and I did not trust them.
I moved along to a role as a project manager. Was nice to work with people that gave me energy. Talked with journalists over the entire country to coordinate the transformation and deployment of a new publishing system. From a technical standpoint, it was boring, but the people and connections I made made this a really great year.
No bad things happens without bringing something good. I grew and best of it all, I found my way out of my comfy spot. I made new connections and I'm now an IT-architect with plenty of new connections in the company. I'm quite certain that this will evolve even more next year because there are a lot of changes at the company's organization structure that I'm sure will affect me in some way. New directors over both my department, and neighbor department. Together they contain almost all development and technology related people.
About four years ago I made another large step. I moved in together with Anna. We made the decision to buy a house. It was a risk to go directly from separate households all the way to a house. But we felt quite safe in each other's at this point and we were willing to take the risk. We both loved the idea of a garden. Worst case, we could always sell.
Then the post-pandemic inflation hit and our interest rates skyrocketed. We had margins but they disappeared quickly. To make things worse, that winter was expensive. The electric prices skyrocketed as a result of the energy crisis, a fallout of the war in Ukraine. Our house is from the 30s, a time with plenty of cheap oil and no need for that much insulation. Oil had been replaced with electric heating (heat pump) a long time ago, but our insulation has not.
Really high interest rates, about five to ten times the normal electric rate and of course inflation driven prices made it a few interesting years. We had to save on all non essentials and live on a much tighter budget than we both were used to.
The final thing that changed for me, and this is the large one. About a year and a half ago my household's dynamic changed forever. We turned the duo of me and my girlfriend to a trio. My son was born. He is now sleeping in an airplane seat on my side after our first airplane trip out of the country together as a family. Last time I did this Anna was three months pregnant with him.
The last year and a half has been really different. What I spend my time on has changed. What I have time to do have changed. It has been interesting that I have passed the six month mark of parental leave. Left during Christmas and it's now the middle of the summer. I'll not be back until early September.
I have been writing this since November. I started writing this standing outside in our garden waiting for Leo to fall asleep in his stroller. Since then I have restructured and rewritten parts of it plenty of times when I had some dead time. Now the flight home from Mallorca finally gave me the time and motivation to finish this. I will give this a final read and publish it when I get home.
Next chapter here I come! Now seven weeks of vacation for us. Then Leo starts daycare and I will be back at work. It will be interesting to see the state of things at work after all that had changed when I'm gone. New boss, quite sure about that. But what exactly will I focus on, and at what direction is the company pushing at. Time will tell!