I laughed uncontrollably recently because I caught myself - while driving beneath blue skies - thinking that nothing bad had happened for the year yet. This was on the fifth of January. The fact that I considered this a milestone is a testament to what the last few years have been like for me. I'm trying to delay the period of my life that I'm addicted to painkillers, but occasionally I will relent and let myself swallow some codeine and twenty minutes later a layer of tension will be sheared off of me and I realise that I am constantly living like that. It's disconcerting.

So when I revisit Summer 22-23 and its soundtrack will I want it to remind me of the warm and also cloudy days that are starting to be consumed by chilly dawns that penetrate deeper into the mornings each week? I didn't hate my summer. I enjoyed the occasional submersion in the ocean, rounds of Chameleon, eating salads, walking up steep hills, reading books about Paris and eating a lot of passionfruit. The injuries and illnesses of myself, Vanessa and Nash only served to make me crave more of the good things that life offers. The adventure, the flavours, the photographs for later.

Music has always been important to me, but recently I've been using music as a link between the past and the present, a medium for nostalgia. This summer music has not been a channel as much as it has been a release. Like a milligram of codeine, a song can displace the tension and be a reminder of the perks of living. Just little moments during a day when my other senses are demoted by the vocal range of Caroline Polachek over smooth synths. Or the pulsing rhythm of Urban Funk. Dre-like piano paired with dubstep wobbles. French disco-house mixed on 2022 computers promising bonus summers of glossy sophistication. Simple, catchy melodies. Atmospheric trance. The lick of guitars and the memories of fully-intact summers of my youth. Keyboard pop and emotive vocals. The songs on this summer's playlist are not related to memories, but distractions from them. Music is one thing that hasn't been taken from me yet.

The biggest challenge associated with multiple clients isn't remembering all the business capabilities and enterprise architectures of each organisation. It's not different project domains or Oracle Integration vs Boomi. It's not even having to have four different O365 accounts and always having to sync up my calendars. The biggest challenge is the distinction in tap pressure in different bathroom sinks. Door handles that you turn versus door handles you push. Detergent that shoots out watery or in thick, soapy gel. Remembering the names of multiple stakeholders that are some variation of "Jason".

All of these offices have one thing in common at least. Every time I sit in their shitty chairs for a day my back ends up fucked.

I'm going to make more of an effort to focus on the good things in life and less on the shit things. There still are a lot of shit things, but dwelling on them isn't going to make them less shit.
For instance, Alex got engaged on the weekend. That's exciting.
I got to wear a black hoody and feel warm but not hot this morning, and it was then temperate enough in the evening to cook some discounted lamb chops on the barbecue for dinner. There are birds and fish and cherry tomatoes in my backyard, and just enough fallen, yellow leaves to make things look cosy without requiring twenty minutes of scooping every day.
I may have lost a lot of my hobbies but I still have programming to keep me entertained and distract me from the urge to play video games and watch television. I'm going to Europe soon and will hopefully have many nice days to experience and photos to take.
There was a beautiful sunset tonight, the colours of fireworks and fairy floss, and as the sun set I finished the last Zooper Dooper of the summer. Appropriately the same flavour.

Daily dildo rehab sessions let's go.

My physio is very expensive. I force myself to go and pay because what good is a life in pain with money in the bank? You have to treat health like an investment. That said, it's a bear market, and for the price of one 30 minute session you can buy two business class rail tickets between Venice and Milan. If I sold the house today I could literally just ride the train around Europe for like 27.39726 years.

There was a study this week that showed a correlation between consumption of magnesium and brain size. I was pleased to read this because, as the Bradism archives will attest, I am a huge almond stan. Unfortunately, I cannot find the exact entry from my early life where I discovered the benefits of almonds (by trying to eat half a kilogram of them on a train ride home) because a lot of my older entries are removed due to my childhood ignorance and dumb opinions.

Of course, having consumed more reasonable volumes of almonds in the decades following, I instantly correlated that my dumb childhood Bradisms might actually have been because of my low almond consumption! It would explain a lot, like my terrible grammar back then. And driving a VK Commodore until 2007.

The passing of time can cloud a lot. I think I've been remembering myself as a smart kid, but now with context maybe I've only become smart since I started eating almonds?

I assume that a larger brain size results in higher intelligence. I only read the headline of the study.

One of the benefits of marriage is having a day off and parking in Adelaide places that are always busy on the weekends.