Party #1. The old one. Farewell fika at tretton37 for the twelve (!) people who will be leaving the company around the end of the year. And that’s just for the Stockholm office. Someone likened it to a funeral feast. Usually these events have an element of excitement, because the person leaving is going to something, but now we’re all going from something.

My last day isn’t until the 31st, but this feels like an ending.

Party #2. The new one. Christmas party at Active Solution, with a “Wild West” theme. (The symbolism of photographing a pair of doors closing behind me and another pair in front of me was unintentional when taking the photos, but it fits rather well.)

Nice people, relaxed atmosphere, good vibes, decent food. One obvious difference to tretton37 is the higher average age here. At tretton37 I am older than the majority, and I believe there are few who are older than me. Here, I feel that wasn’t the case.

For a “Wild West” theme party, you could get by with just a pair of blue jeans and a plaid shirt, and wouldn’t need to buy anything at all. Assuming you own blue jeans and a plaid shirt, neither of which is present in my wardrobe. I tried on five or six pairs of jeans at a charity shop, and one of them fit me like a second skin, which is a very rare thing with trousers, so I might actually keep these! I don’t wear blue during the cold season, not out of any master plan but because it just happens, but I can see myself using them in the summer. The plaid shirt… eh, maybe. It has weird epaulette-type things that I’m not too fond of, but on the other hand it is very soft. The suede waistcoat will probably go straight back into the circular economy. It’s done its job.

Got a fresh haircut today. A colleague’s first, spontaneous reaction when he saw me in a Teams meeting was that I looked like a five-year-old boy. I chose to take that as a compliment: clearly I look youthful and playful.

Also, here’s a splash of afternoon sun.

The weather was bleh, my mood was meh. I had no energy and I didn’t want to do anything. So I forced myself to exercise.

I have learned by now that when I least feel like working out – not because I’m physically tired but when I just *don’t want to* – is when I most need to, and will get the most benefit from it. And that was the case today, too. In the afternoon I felt a lot more lively.

FitnessBlender videos, which I was recommended four years ago, are still just the right fit. Sometimes an old favourite works best to motivate me; other times I pick something new because everything else feels boring. Either way, I feel renewed afterwards.

There’s still snow and ice outside, and my comfy barefoot shoes are slippery, so I put on my winter boots.

I hadn’t even walked ten minutes before my feet were cramping. Narrow toe box, stiff sole… and the fact I was struggling for grip on the ice didn’t help.

Do I really have to buy barefoot winter boots as well? Are my feet now completely spoiled for conventional footwear? I got by last season somehow; maybe I can persevere.

Eric, Ingrid and Adrian are all full of new home energy, busy with furnishing and equipping the new apartment. Taking full-day trips to IKEA. Trying out sofas and beds, checking out kitchen tables, choosing cutlery. Sketching out their rooms on grid paper, placing out paper rectangles for beds, armchairs, desks. Scouring the internet for vintage furniture at bargain prices. Getting deliveries of kitchen equipment.

Me, meanwhile… I feel like I’m in limbo. I’m not even planning any major changes, except for the bedroom/library/office, where I will have more space. And I will be going to go through the cupboards and basement storage to get rid of old stuff. That’s about it. It’s not like I have grand plans. Still, I feel like I’m in waiting mode, very much looking forward to it all being over.

I feel like an outsider in my own home – even though it is more mine than ever. (The transfer deed was registered yesterday.) Perhaps it is because there are all these goings-on that I am not at all part of. Choices and decisions that I have no interest and no say in; purchases that won’t affect me in the least – but all of them happening right in front of me, impossible to ignore.

It’s barely past four o’clock in the afternoon, the workday isn’t even over yet, and already it’s dark. I do not like this.

I had a chance to go visit the Sortera facility in Rosersberg, while users there were trialling a new feature in one of the apps our team is working on.

Piles and piles of garbage. And loud, clanking machinery.

High-viz clothing, steel-toed puncture-proof boots, and safety helmets.

Self-portrait in woolly sweater.

Mostly this October has been unseasonably warm, but today was actually a bit chilly, so I got to wear my latest, thickest sweater.

I also notice that I am looking more and more like my grandmother. I only had the one, my father’s mother; I never knew any of my relatives on my mother’s side. I remember her round cheeks and the distinct creases between her cheeks and mouth. Now I have the same.

Me holding a talk about how to survive when you’re thrown into a super messy code base. With a sample size of two (Urb-it + Sortera) I must surely be an expert, right?

The talk was originally about being thrown into legacy code, but having had an intense philosophical discussion this morning about what actually constitutes legacy code, and not wanting to invite a repeat of that discussion during/before/after my talk, I renamed it.

The talk was well received. As a consultant, your assignments will involve messy legacy code more often than not.

There’s no recording this time, but here’s a very brief summary of my five-step approach:

1. Learn the code – read it, draw it, play around with it
2. Clean it up – fix typos, warnings, dead code, etc
3. Set up a safety net – nullability, types, end-to-end tests
4. Bigger refactorings – making sure to finish one before starting another, to not leave the code in a worse state than it was before
5. Don’t forget about the people – talk to your users, celebrate your successes

We had a team lunch with the Sortera team today, and walked from the office to the restaurant, with nice views along the way.

During dinner, our project manager – very clearly the most “people person” among us – kept the conversation interesting by throwing out questions. One of them was: what major event in your life has affected it the most?

Lives are, of course, full of pivotal events that make it change course. Had I gone to a different university, things would be different. Had I not met Eric, had I taken a different job, had I not quit my finance job for software engineering, had I not moved here and there – all of these changes would have ensured that I end up in a different place.

However, with all of those counterfactuals I can still imagine what life might be like. But there is one event so pivotal that, had things gone differently, I cannot even realistically picture how my life would be, and that is moving to Sweden.

The move was not my decision – I was only fifteen at the time and it was more or less just decided for me. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, because I wasn’t thinking in such terms, but the move was traumatic. As a teenager – a sensitive time in life – all of a sudden leaving behind my father, all my friends, what little extended family we had, everything that was familiar. New town, new country, new language, new school system, new teenage culture, new everything. And that in an era without internet or email or video calls or even normal phone calls back to Estonia (because international phone calls were prohibitively expensive). I remember regularly collapsing on a bed and sleeping for a few hours after getting home from school in the afternoon, because it was mentally so exhausting.

I coped, and I managed, but that one change has surely coloured everything that I have done since. Without it, I imagine would have lived a much steadier life. It took many years for me to feel fully confident and comfortable in Sweden, to stop feeling like an outsider trying to fit in. Plus for years we only had temporary residence permits, to be renewed every year or two, so there was always the threat of potentially being uprooted all over again and having to start over. And there was nobody to lean on. I had friends at school, but they were all new and thus superficial relationships, and I didn’t feel that I had much in common with most of them. I was very alone. I don’t think I can even pick out all the ways that this fundamental lack of security and support has affected my choices later in life.

There’s no control group to compare to. Have the challenges made me stronger in the end? Or would I have grown more if I’d had stable ground to stand upon? Who knows.

The move did of course broaden my horizons. One move led to another, and another – I spent a term in Belgium as an exchange student, seven years working in London, and months New York. I’ve travelled more and experienced more than I would have done if I had remained in Estonia. I doubt that I’d have climbed the Kilimanjaro, or gone diving in the Red Sea, or seen Yo-Yo Ma live in concert.