Another very social week here in Stockholm with the Midsummer holiday on Friday. The equivalent to me in America is the 4th of July, with almost everything shutdown Friday-Sunday. I celebrated with my girlfriend and her family eating shrimp, herring, and some steak (not Swedish style, but good on the grill). We also played a game called “Kubb” where you throw wooden batons and try to hit wooden blocks — a proper Viking game.
A lot of Swedes are on vacation now, there are summer hours, and everyone is asking me what my summer travel plans are. Out of my habit I have several places that I rattle off that I very well might go to, but after a few conversations like this I realized I am already at a summer holiday place. The location of my apartment in Stockholm is amazing, I enjoy the cooler air, and I have a great life setup walking distance from the apartment. The only difference is that I’m working regularly, going to the gym, and not getting drunk every night. It’s not a vacation, but it certainly doesn’t feel like I’m “working”. With that said don’t be surprised if I’m writing this in France next weekend 🙂
Living like this you invariably work a lot less. It’s tough when people want to do lunch, dinner, watch World Cup, go to the islands, etc. to be uber productive. There’s a time for everything though, and I recognize this. A lot of my work is creative, even/especially my crypto work. I have to let ideas gestate and come to life in my head before I can fully analyze them.
I daydream about what I’m writing, or whatever I’m working on in the crypto space. I’m currently more focused on crypto as I’ve had a few potential breakthrough ideas, as well as tinkering with a new algorithm I implemented at the beginning of the month. Eventually once I’ve sufficiently back and stress tested my new crypto ideas, and figured out the best way to get them automated, they take up a lot less of my energy. My new algorithm that I started in June has been working, and I felt very confident it would as I tested it over the past year with many tweaks, but still you never know. I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that the algorithm has rules and logic, and to let it do its’ thing without absorbing the ups and downs of the daily performance. I have two other ideas: one very fleshed out but needing to be programmed properly, and the other one I’ve been daydreaming about figuring out both the logic as well as how to program it. Once I have these out in the world I imagine it will be a fun lull tweaking them, but less of the hardcore building from the ground up.
I’ve been reading a lot as usual, but getting back into novels again. I read “The Postman Always Rings Twice” by James Cain. Very entertaining and short, two qualities I’m big on. It was written in the 1930’s which made me slightly concerned it would feel watered down, but I was wrong. The violence, sex, and jokes were intense, and it was a page turner. I read it in two days (it’s probably around the length of a long short-story I admit) which is rare for me these days when I flip between books.
I like an eclectic mix of genres and it’s been a struggle for me to figure out if there’s one genre I like more than others. I don’t read much fantasy, but I loved Lord of The Rings and the Game of Thrones books amongst others. Same with Sci-Fi. I have a few ones that I enjoyed a lot like “Ready Player One”, “Daemon”, and “The Three Body Problem”, but when I tried deep diving into the genre a lot of the other recommended works weren’t for me. Crime is my latest genre I’m deep diving into, and so far really good. I really like plot twists/surprises which is one of the hallmarks of the genre. One of my main focuses for when I write now is to write more of what I personally like to read, but sometimes it’s really hard for me to even know what that is. I like to read for enjoyment, but now try and stop myself sometimes when I’m really enjoying something to figure out why.
Because of all of my social activities I’m a bit behind on my mentioned crypto and creative writing, so will keep this brief and get back to work! Here’s a pic from where I stayed last week on one of the Swedish islands:
Andrew Manser 