We all wound up getting COVID, with the possible exception of Galila. Whatever’s going around the house now is some presumably less novel preschool-transmitted gunk. We’re taking turns with it, Galila included.

A few weeks ago my mom had her shoulder replaced. I’ve been making her one quick recording of a tiny piano piece just about every day. Here’s the YouTube playlist. It was all Scriabin Preludes learned on the fly until yesterday, when my first and only moment at the piano was before the kids got out of the draining bathtub. So I switched gears to a Mompou Cançó i dansa (just the song, not the dance) that my hands had met before. It’s good that there are more of those, as the set of quick-learnable Scriabin Preludes has shrunk considerably. Then I’ll either have to play more snippets of pieces I’m already familiar with, uncover more readable-enough miniatures, carve out some piano hours (ha!), or adjust the project.

The 1923 Baldwin is finally starting to sound its 99 years. When my tuner visited last, he noted that everything’s so loose it can’t even stay where he tunes it, and he might decline to tune it next time I ask. When the machine is no longer any fun to play, it’ll probably be too expensive to restore. So it gives me a warm feeling to see and hear it recorded, busted C sharp/D flat and all, while it’s still functioning well enough to produce music.

Our well-loved German-speaking babysitter is off for the summer, ending my brief respite from handling getting Taavi dressed and delivered to school in the mornings. Camp for both Taavi and Finias starts in a week, at which point my days will start to have a shape. Some of my newfound time could be allotted to piano, I suppose, but there are more urgent needs: going for daily walks, otherwise taking care of my health, and getting back to work. I had a 30-minute meeting this week with a potential client, my first professional conversation of any kind in half a year (!). I’m sort of surprised how effortlessly I found my feet and my words, considering the time off, but also sort of not: my work centers on being human together, and that’s always a full-time assignment.

Hey, about full-time assignments: I’m seeking regular employment for the first time in 5 years. We needed every bit of the extraordinary flexibility afforded by my being an independent consultant, but stability and predictability have become more important family needs.

It turns out this doesn’t cause inner conflict for me. Since I started consulting, I’ve always believed that for me to do well on my career path, I personally need to alternate between doing it and helping others do it. I’m not sad or disappointed in the least for my personal pendulum to finally be swinging back toward the former. If anything, I’m hungry for the experiences I miss when I’m just visiting: being part of a team, making our shared code-home more commodious, tuning feedback loops, investing in human relationships, seeing how our business performs better over time. All the things, really, that can only be felt over time.

If there is some inner conflict here, it’s about what exists vs. what I want. I want a job where I fully exercise (and grow) both my leadership skills and my software-development skills. I feel best at work, by far, when the work makes use of my whole self. These jobs aren’t ubiquitous, but they exist. I’m hopeful that there are enough people who know and appreciate my work that I’ll get good help thinking about what exactly to want, and good connections to places where I might find it.

What’s this?

It’s a /now page.

nownownow.com is a directory of people with /now pages. I’m listed there.