Jérôme's Blog

My parental leave is almost over, and after five months of being able to spend time with my daughter as much as I want, I will have to take a big portion of it for work.

I love my job, and until the last day of not being a dad I couldn't imagine not working for such a long time.

Now I find it difficult to imagine how to balance my time to do justice to both my work and my family.

Having a remote-only job helps, as well as my wife and I supporting each other, no matter what.

What I like is that my priorities have shifted since five months ago. We'll manage!

I uninstalled all the games on my phone.

That's the post.

Hint: I have a baby.

For the first time in months, I woke up early, but late enough, during a light sleep cycle when the baby had a fart across. Her mom and I helped her, had a little chat, and I felt refreshed and like not going back to bed.

Now I'm sitting with a coffee on the terrace, the weather and light are pleasant, and I actually hear a rooster crowing in the distance.

Life is good.

You're just one person away from being part of the “this only happens to others” group.

I finished writing a 30+ pages documentation to make my case to Airbnb against the host of an apartment in Palma de Mallorca last night.

For the past 14 days, I've been messaging back and forth with the host and with Airbnb support: one of the rooms was moldy and we couldn't use it. The apartment was in bad shape and hat partly severe water marks on walls and furniture, and rust on the appliances.

We did everything by the book – we immediately contacted the host directly, Airbnb support in parallel. The host promised fixes, and started by sending someone with a paint can. We were flabbergasted but, after four days, accepted that we shouldn't have trusted the photos, the assertions of the host or that Airbnb valued the guests more than the hosts.

Then came the day before our departure: heavy rain turned the terrace above the apartment into a sea. Water leaked into the apartment everywhere. We left, now understanding how the water marks came to be, and fearing to be electrocuted by the wet electrical appliances.

We reported this to the host and Airbnb. The host ended up filing a damage refund request of half the rent, accusing us to have clogged a drain with soda cans. (We had already paid a few thousand bucks for the horrible stay so far)

Now I'm hoping for the mercy of Airbnb, the self-proclaimed “neutral arbitrator to achieve an amicable solution”.

If I'm ever to use Airbnb again (I won't if I not absolutely have to) or if you plan on doing so:

• Check the cancellation policy of a listing: if it's not cancelable until x days of the arrival, stay away from it
• If the host has anything but stellar reviews, stay away from them
• Document every. single. detail. of anything wrong with the place and let the host know. Show today's newspaper and a clock on each photo. Make videos commenting what you see.
• Check water drains for soda cans.
• Don't forget your own soda cans on the terrace.

#airbnb

This has been said countless times.

In fact, I see it in my mental health related Instagram feed every now and then.

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”.

And sometimes people who are used to be treated like an authority say “if you won't respect me I won't respect you” and they mean “if you don't treat me like an authority I won't treat you like a person”.

And they think they're being fair but they aren't and it's not okay.

– Source unknown

It is put so well that, when I read this the first time, it blew my mind.

What I would add is that “respect” means to me “treating someone as they want to be treated”.

I do this with every new person I meet, and with people I regularly interact with. Especially when I'm in a position where I think someone could see me as an authority, for example at work.

(Perhaps I'll write about why I don't care about the “Senior” and “Junior” prefixes in job titles in another post.)

And I wish I had the strength to show this post to people who don't treat me how I'd like to be treated: as a person, as an adult, as someone with a different character.

People who say “You don't let me tell you anything anymore” just because I say “I don't agree” or “I want to do it differently”, and who then say: “I don't want to talk to you” when I want to talk about it to align our understandings of each other.

The older I get, the more my feelings change in this regard. I used to feel crushed and miserable for weeks, even months, when a situation like this occurred.

This is now changing the more often it happens. I'm getting increasingly angry. At them, and at myself for letting it happen although I shouldn't because I can't and don't want to cut them off.

In a way, I still feel miserable. I don't seem to be able to change this conflict and development, and I'm afraid that they will cut me off because of it.

#respect #authority #MentalHealth

Hi, I'm Jérôme, a professional software developer and solve complex problems every day.

Each week I become more and more annoyed seeing tracks of artists I didn't like in my “Release Radar” playlist on Spotify.

I hit “Hide song” each time and roll my eyes the next week because Spotify's algorithms don't get it.

I finally bothered to web-search if it's possible to block artists, and of course it is.

As it turns out, all I had to do is to go on the artists profile page, hit the three dots and then “Don't play this artist”.

I could have thought of this myself, but it obviously was too easy.

Before becoming parents, I used to insist to my wife how little sleep I needed.

In fact I certainly could have done with more sleep, but I most often went to bed late and left the bed early.

This way, I could squeeze out as much of a day as possible and have time for work, quality together-time, and, at night, quality me-time. Every few weeks I would go to bed early and sleep in to recharge my sleep-battery.

Now we've learned that while I'm fine with little sleep, it's only if it's uninterrupted. I sleep like a stone, but after a few times, my wife started thinking twice if she should really wake me so that she could get some sleep, because – and I remember it now – I'm obviously grumpy when I don't choose when to be sleeping or awake.

I chose to stay up late. The baby, of course, doesn't care, but my wife shouldn't be the one to suffer from my choices.

Will I be able to change my habits? I don't know if and when, but until then, the least I can do is to show my loved ones that I care (because I do), even when I'm roused from sleep.

#sleep #habits #support

I take issue with the expression “Sorry” (in German: “Tut mir leid”).

I'm adding the German expressions, because I noticed it there at first, but it's similar in English.

You could at least take the time to say “I'm sorry” (”Es tut mir leid”).

Instead of telling me how you feel about what you did, you could address my feelings.

You could tell me what you're sorry about, just so that we're on the same page.

In addition to telling me that you're sorry, you could ask me for my indulgence (“Nachsicht”) or my forgiveness (“Vergeben”). These are lofty words, but only because they're not being used more often.

I'm not sure if it's the same with “forgiveness”, but in German it's common to say “Entschuldigung” (which is as lazy as a simple “sorry”) or “Bitte entschuldige”, which translate to “De-guilting” and “please free me from guilt”. I can't do that: it's your feeling and I can't take this from you, as you can't undo what you did.

If you're able to make amends, you should make or propose to make them.

You should be prepared to not receive what you asked for. I might say “Don't worry about it, it didn't hurt my feelings or just a little bit, but I know it's not what you intended”, but it could as well be that I need time to process what you did, or that it was unforgivable.

So, what would I like to hear is something like this, of course depending on the severity:

“Uh, that's not what I intended, please bear with me, I'll try to do better next time”.

“I broke something of yours, let me replace it”.

“What I just did was wrong and not okay. I can only hope this will not have a long-lasting impact on our relationship, but I understand if you can't see over it, and I will do what I can to make amends”.

But show me that you care. Take the time to choose your words. Don't put it on me to act upon the thing you did.

If it's just about a trifle, a simple “sorry” might be enough. But please consider that what you see as a small thing could mean the world to me.

Of course, I often say just “Sorry!” myself, especially in the spur of the moment, and I'm not saying you shouldn't say it at all! But when it's about something substantial, take the time to choose your words, it can mean a lot!

#apologies #words #sorry

Starting this blog with a lie, great!

I was an avid blogger in the early 2000's, writing posts at least once a day and pouring my heart and soul out.

I had no filters and wrote about my co-workers, my boss, my (most often lack of) relationships, really everything that currently occupied my mind.

It was embarrassing, and yet it was the best time I had on the internet so far. My website was hand-crafted, I had poems on it, and MIDI-Files of my compositions. A livecam Java applet was mostly for my parents who, at the time, were living in the Caribbeans.

I had quite a following – the blog was powered by Movable Type, every single post had at least one comment, and my phpBB forum grew constantly. I even met some of my girlfriends there.

When my mom passed away (while being in the Carribeans), I felt the need to change my life. I moved to Cologne, started studying and became a freelance developer. My studies didn't come to fruition, but I thrived as a freelancer.

This, together with the emergence of Facebook, has sucked my drive and creativity out of me – I shut down my website and was never able to regain it since.

Every few years I tried to jump start a new blog, and failed after one or two posts. I thought I had to provide some kind of value, but I didn't think I had something valuable to say, neither personally nor professionally: everything I wanted to write about, others have already written about it, why should anybody read my stuff?

Also, I had too high expectations of myself: being a software developer, I had to build my site from scratch or at least find a WordPress theme that supports everything I needed, not knowing what I actually needed.

I was doomed to failure.

Yesterday, I remembered why I had so much fun with my first website:

I didn't care.

I didn't care if I might come over unprofessionally. I didn't care if what I wrote was useful (back then, it mostly wasn't). I didn't care who might read it, just that they don't have to if they don't want to. I didn't overthink it.

Long story short: this is another (and probably final) attempt to restart writing down what's on my mind when it's on my mind, and to not care (too much) what others might think.

I stumbled upon write.as a while ago already, and now bought a yearly subscription. Let's see if I can re-find the drive I had when I was half my age!

#personal #introduction