~ where cinders lie ~

a new year and a cruise adventure!

Hey there! It’s been a hot minute.

2023 is gone, and with it a metric ton of stress and burnout. A nice year nevertheless; as I’m new to the profession, I need and welcome the experience. I closed the academic year of all my students more or less satisfactorily. I intend to write down a well structured report of expectations and results, focusing on the school where I taught programming in Python and Ren’py. In short, it was a success, and many cool things came from that. And I learned a bunch of things to polish the way I teach and about learning resources.

I want to make more reports in general, to be honest. I like the idea, and have made some custom notepads for that. Very stoked to use them!

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I married my wife a year before COVID19, as we set our sights to live and work in Sweden.

I ain’t even gonna bury the lead. It went like big shit haha, but I grew a ton, and many of those experiences made me a better person and crystallized me into a sort of final form. Fast forward to the beginning of 2023. My mother-in-law approaches us and tells us that, as we never had a proper honeymoon (due to the world immediately exploding afterwards and almost stealing a car and driving with my wife, the cat and probably firearms from Sweden all the way through Russia to Chile and then to Argentina because there were no planes and the airports were closed), so she gave us tickets for a cruise. My wife was very hyped up about it, but I must admit I wasn’t too enthusiastic. I am a dirty leftist and dreaded the sight of spending 10 days on a ship full of white trash Argentinians. But it turns out that if you ask on the first day for a table for two to eat at night at, there is no other moment in the entire trip in which you’re required to talk to, or perceive, anyone, ever. So we just worked through the year, the day came, and we hop on board.

The ship went from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro making a few stops. We went down on each of them to swim a little and eat stuff with the reales my wife had saved from another trip. We had asai (a fruit water-based icecream, very nice), and pasteles. And, by God.

Look at the size of this fucking thing. It’s basically an empanada, but the size of a clown shoe. Mine had cheese and bacon. For a few moments, I reached a different kind of heaven right there.

Besides that, we didn’t do too much tourism. The special, and truly fantastic part of the trip, is that we did fuck all for eight days. We just slept on the cabin like three times a day, and went out only to eat. No cooking, and very basic cleaning (we pretty much left the room 100% tidy so the guy that had to clean it had basically a free pass with outs). For eight days. A variety of food. Live music at the bars. It was fantastic.

It downed on me that I never went on vacation. Of course I’ve gone with my family places, but it wasn’t my choice, and they did do a bunch of activities. My wife and I are of the thought that if you go on vacation to do a ton of shit, you’re just doing sports far from home, not resting. We are two balls, and we like to lie and read shit together. And man, we had plenty of it.

In those days, I read all Naruto Shipuuden by Masashi Kishimoto, All Systems Red by Martha Wells and an introductory book for English Majors I cannot find right now. Naruto was pretty good. It was an important part of my adolescence, and I feel like I closed a loop there. All Systems Red was a short and fantastic read. Didn’t outstay its welcome, and the concept of a security android that hacked its own governor module and achieved sentience that binges dramas in their spare time and has big issues interacting with full flesh humans is just up my alley. Both thoroughly recommended.

The third one goes back to me feeling insecure about my own reading experience. I graduated from a technical school, and they did not give much value to Literature as a subject. We also bear the curse of the tragedy of the Malvinas islands (the Falklands) and all literature had to be about it. I’m not against it, those books were great, but that’s literally all I read. The following year the same teacher gave The Hobbit. I was fuming. Anyways, I read it front to back, and now feel confident that I haven’t somehow read books backwards for some thirty odd years.

Also advanced a few more chapters of The Box by Marc Levinson, as recommended by Justin Roczniak. Brings back to me the realization that the world has changed so, so much in the last two centuries, and as with the digital age, we haven’t seen the lasting impact of it yet, culturally speaking. Back home, I read To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee Harper. Nothing to say, really. It’s a masterpiece.

So, I’ve read more in eight days than in the last few years. Pretty proud of myself if I may say so.

Not having internet, or any way to continue any project I had for that period of time made me effectively reset my brain, something I knew I needed, but didn’t realize how much. I still take my daily medication for dysthymia, but I’ve rediscovered a level of clarity of mind and purpose I honestly missed. I can read and immerse myself in books again, something that I simply could not do anymore for the longest time. And something that helped me further disconnect and reset, so I have reclaimed some basic tools for everyday functioning. Once we got back, I still did not touch a computer for a few more weeks. Took up embroidery, ordered and cleaned the house, and just read books or played some Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead on the Tooter. My mind is a lot more at peace now, so I don’t need to half-use a computer to fill time, I guess.

Back home, we made a big effort with our diet, and bought some things to help with that. Now we have a yogurt making machine and an air fryer. It has changed things so much for me. I’ve not touched a cookie for a month, and replaced that with a bowl of yogurt with oats, hot mates and maybe a coffee. Besides that I tried to restrain my urge to eat more than I really needed. Now I… do not get ravenously hungry anymore. Like, tummy slightly ache, but I can bear it easily for hours, and if I maintain myself hydrated, thanks to the morning oats and yogurt I have essentially infinite energy for the day. It’s fantastic.

Now we slowly start with the school year again, and thanks to a course my wife took, it is very possible that she can get a bit more long-term employment in education giving some specific subjects. I plan to do at most half-time (in education, 18 hours a week plus the same home planning and grading) and keep the fort in order. We work very well like that.

I think that’s a good summary of this past month or so. I hope you’re doing great, and have a nice 2024!

Here’s some pictures I took as a bonus: