I have started searching for a new job. Today was my first interview. (I took this photo in the lobby of the building where that company has their office.)

I’d been postponing this inevitable task, mostly because I didn’t want to take the first steps. One of the first steps would be to update my CV and I find that both boring and difficult, so I kept not doing it. But now a (soon to be ex-)colleague put me in contact with the company he is going to join, and that was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss, so now I had to start working on this stuff.

It’s just the CV and letter-writing part that I don’t much like. And it turns out that even some of those boring steps have been stripped away from the job search process, on some recruitment sites for the IT industry at least.

I do quite enjoy job interviews. At “good” companies, with “good” people, there are often interesting conversations to be had. I get to learn about an interesting company and their product(s), and to talk about things that interest us both.

Balancing my two main areas of responsibility by trying to do both at the same time – cooking dinner while providing support to the devs running the deployment at work.

With about five weeks to go until my employment ends, I am focusing on so-called “knowledge transfer” to the team in India that will be taking over. It feels quite futile – trying to hand over during a few weeks all the knowledge and experience that our team has accumulated over the years. The Indian team is understaffed and (frankly) underqualified for this, and they mostly don’t have any time to practice what I’m showing them, so it feels like we’re just going through the motions.

The project not quite a train wreck yet but I can see one looming on the horizon. I wonder when the others will see it. I hope I’m wrong but all the signs are pointing in the same direction.

I have invested so much of my time and energy in building something good. Two good somethings, even – the team and the product. And now I get to see it all squandered.

About halfway through my three-month notice period, my most important task at work is “knowledge transfer” to the team of developers in India who will be taking over after everybody here leaves. This process is not particularly organized, so meetings crop up at short notice and with no flexibility about timing, and get cancelled with equally little notice.

I used to have a regular gym schedule and now it’s all in shambles; I keep having to cancel my bookings, or vice versa, I don’t book a class because of a meeting in my calendar and then that meeting disappears.

This affects my well-being more than I had expected. I’m no gym nut; I am relaxed about my workouts – but especially this time of the year, and especially with the depressing work situation, not getting the exercise I’m used to is not good for my state of mind.

I did get to go to the gym today. Yay!

I have no energy. Nothing seems like fun. There is nothing in my life that feels like worth taking a photo of.

This tends to happen each autumn, so it’s no surprise. This time, work is particularly unfulfilling and drags me down even further.

It will pass.

Gåsen to Sylarna.

Today was a repeat yesterday, in the best of ways. Beautiful and wild. (And just as windy as yesterday, and with clouds so low I was walking through them. I almost ended up skipping lunch because the wind was so strong, but then I finally found one large, lonely boulder in the otherwise open grassland and huddled in its lee.)

A new experience for me today was fording a river. I crossed one yesterday as well, but that one had enough rocks in it that I could get across with a few agile hops, keeping my feet dry. A group of runners came along just as I got to today’s river, and some of them managed to get across by jumping between rocks, with their light packs and long legs. But with my pack, the risk of losing my balance was too great, so I had to wade through a part of it. The water was shallow – up to mid-calf maybe – but ice cold of course. I’m glad I only had to take a few steps in it.

I wonder if the word vad, which means “calf” in Swedish, is related to vada which means “wade”.

I was also very grateful for my walking poles. I hesitated when packing them, but decided to bring them after all, and I’m glad I did. I didn’t use them much on Thursday, but on yesterday’s and today’s rocky, uneven paths they were great to have. Not that it was difficult to walk without them – but with them, I could walk without thinking so much about the actual walking.

Most hikers seem to use poles the same way as when skiing: the arms swing back and forth in the same rhythm as the legs, and the poles help propel you forward. At least on uneven ground, like here, I plant a pole once every two steps, roughly, but in fact I’m not even sure my arms and legs really move in sync. I use the poles less as extra motors and more like feelers or tentacles. They provide extra contact with the ground, so I have two or three points of contact almost all the time, which means I can be somewhat sloppy about where and how my feet land. They allow me to “flow” forward over the ground, if that makes sense.

Vålåstugorna to Gåsen.

This! This is what I came here for. Wide open views of rolling rocky hills, grassland and shrubland in autumn colours.

A narrow thread of a path cuts through the shrub. Lots of little streams cross the path or run parallel with it (or in some cases, on the path).

Because the path is so narrow, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist. There is just enough of it so I can put my feet down on somewhat level ground and don’t have to watch every step – but no more. The vegetation comes right up to me, so I can see all the lovely tiny plants, and really feel that I am right in the middle of them.

I thought waterfalls would be beautiful, but I loved the little streams best. Waterfalls are noisy, whereas the trickle of a stream over rocks was truly like music to my ears. I made a point of pausing for a moment to listen and enjoy each one.

Apart from the streams, the only thing I could hear was myself. I saw and heard a very few little birds, but apart from that, no one.

The day was overcast and drizzly and windy, so there was no avoiding the waterproof jacket or its hood, which rustles, unfortunately. Luckily I had the wind at my back – I rather pitied the few hikers I met going in the other direction.

Adrian has been asking for fingerless gloves for a long time – since last winter I believe. I haven’t seen any in shops. Maybe I could find something online, but he also has very specific wishes regarding the gloves, so I decided to knit a pair for him.

Plus, I want to knit something anyway. I have the cardigan project that I spent so much time on and then had to rip up because it didn’t fit… and while I do want that cardigan, I feel a resistance. What if it won’t fit this time either? Maybe I should pick a different pattern? It’s easier to work up my courage with a small and simple project first.

Adrian picked the yarn. A variegated one, with blue, red and dark yellow. It’s woolly and warm and soft, but it doesn’t look that way when I see it up close like in this photo. It looks all scratchy.

I’m cycling to work almost every day, because current conditions at work rarely leave any room for lunchtime gym sessions. Our number one focus right now is knowledge transfer to a team in India, and with their office hours and our office hours being as they are, our meetings often end up being scheduled just before lunch.

I’ve only been to the gym once in the two weeks since I started working, which is a bit disappointing. But on the plus side, the cycling is very pleasant at this time of the year – the mornings are cool, bright and dry, and the afternoons are not too hot.

I am not fond of shopping for shoes or clothes. When it comes to shoes, I’m not especially interested in how they look, or at least much less than I am with clothes, but I am very particular about how they fit and feel. (Which is why I stopped buying and wearing normal summer sandals years ago, and now wear hiking/walking sandals the entire summer.) The vast majority of shoes I try on are just plain uncomfortable.

The bothersome thing about buying shoes (or other things that I want to be “just so”) is that fashion never stands still. I find a great make and model, and then they wear out, and there is no way to buy the same thing again, because it’s out of fashion and the producer now has totally new and different designs.

So imagine my happiness when I discovered that Teva still makes the exact same sandals that I bought in 2013. That old pair is really, really worn, and is about to start falling in pieces because the outer sole is nearly worn through in places. I have been putting off buying a new pair because of the hassle of finding something that fits. And now it turns out I don’t need to!

I had forgotten that the sandals once had a layer of nice, comfy microfibre on top. That fiber-y softness has all been worn away a long time ago. And I had forgotten that the soles used to have a bit of bounce to them – the arches of the old ones are much flatter and the soles noticeably thinner than on the new ones. They old sandals are actually about half a centimetre longer than the new ones, because of the way the arch has flattened out. But even as worn out as the were, they felt great. The new pair feels even better.

They feel so good and I am so pleased that I didn’t have to do any shoe shopping, that I actually bought a third pair as well. I will now put them away in the basement, and when this current pair wears out, I can get a new pair of sandals with no shopping. What a luxury!

I quit my job today.

What a liberating feeling!

All the stress and rush; all the annoyance and irritation. They all evaporate and leave me more relaxed than I’ve been at work in a long, long time.

All the decisions von oben that take no account of how development actually works, the reorganizations and downsizings and unrealistic expectations. I can just think “meh” and “not my problem any more”.