Category: Blog

Few weeks ago my cat died, he had some heart disease we didn’t know of. When we found out it was too late.

It took two weeks to see him die. Two weeks going up and down to the vet, trying to guess the problem, never having a solution. Leaving it all night while feeling the emptiness in the house, knowing that he might not come back.

And he didn’t. After one of the many night rushes because of his short breath it was the time. Heartbroken we had to let him go.

While this was happening my wife was pregnant and our baby was expected around march 24th. It was the 27th of February when our cat died.

During pregnancy my was commonly had some moments when she expressed some pain through the “Ahhh” during the days. I was always alert when that happened, when we crossed the “One month till birthday” mark, each of that “Ahh” raised a question in my mind “Is this the time when we’ll have a baby? Or is this a problem?”

Many if not all were neither of those.
Then it came march 7th. Rushed to the hospital because of some pregnancy issue, which led to the baby being born earlier than expected, that same morning.

On March 8th the Hospital was locked down thanks to coronavirus. Each and every time I has some coughing I was thinking if I was a possible issue, same for everyone around me.

Now coronavirus is still a problem, and I realized that the sudden death of my cat and the overall pregnancy condition of my wife (+ corona) led me to have some kind of over worrying. If she shout something along the lines of “Oh my gosh” then I’m suddenly thinking at the worst case scenario. If my baby is too still I think “Is she still breathing?” I touch her because I don’t have any signals.

And this because I didn’t have any signals before, neither during the cat disease nor during the last day of pregnancy. No evidence that something was wrong until it was too late.

All went well (well, not for the cat), but I still am too reactive to these things. It’s like death is still asking me to pay a toll, a toll I didn’t knew existed in first place. A toll that each day reminds me of how fragile we are, how we can disappear in one day, with one rush to the hospital.

And this also reminds me how much we should care for the people we love, how much we should cherish them. Because the past is always sure, while our future might not last as much.

Being a father changes everything. It changes how you view the world. Things that before looked uninteresting, like the smile of a child now they’re nuggets of gold.
It changes you because it enables a zen mentality.

As a developer I’m inclined to find and fix bugs, bad behaviors, errors.
But the behavior of a newborn child is not the result of an issue.
If they cry there’s a reason, and even if they cry just to have your attention, you can’t blame them.

They’re not doing it just to make you sleep deprived. So there’s no way you can be angry at them. It’s this. This sort of mentality.
The fact that, whatever you’re gonna miss, you’ll handle that.

If you get less sleep, it’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.
They fine tune your senses, and show that what seemed important before it’s not as important now.

Years ago, when a friend lost his cat I didn’t understand it. To me it was like losing a used ticket. Not worth it.

Few days ago I lost my first cat. I understood the difference in losing something you don’t care about and something you care about.

We even feel in despair if we lose the keys of our house, how could I even think that there was no possibility that losing a cat you lived with would be a problem?

It’s because we’re narrow minded, we think based on our experiences and what we don’t know we can’t understand. So, growing, is a little bit like dying every time. Because you leave a part of yourself behind, to make space for a new one.

The you before today is different and all those differences are cells, dead in the process, changed into something new: You.

My wife once said “I became what I hated the most. I own a house, I am married and will have a baby”.

Which is true. She is now becoming a stereotype of what was she thought was a “predefined” life. But is it true?

It’s like indie. You want to stay away from the majors, you want to be different because all that mainstream is labeling you.
Yet you’re indie and the indie music has some vibe you can easily recognize.

It’s not about labels, it’s about growing and having some ideas. Finding out that we might even like that life we hated. That’s what happens.

It might seem stereotypical that it happens to a group of couples together but in fact it’s quite normal because we all age together. We are linked by that kind of aging, the time passes and we all feel like we should have babies. Maybe some of us won’t., but many will and the reason for it is that we grew and found out we wanted to have children, a following, people to build a better world for.

Where’s the limit? When it’s your job of employee and when you’re landing onto the entrepreneur’s land, by finding solutions that are more fitted for a different state of mind?

“If your goal is to be the head of an area then…” It’s a common phrase. We’re linked to goals, to remuneration, to advance in role and jobs.

The advance in role is so individual, so personal.
It ends where you stops, it stops when you surrender.

What if we don’t care about it? What if we care about doing a damn good job, doing our best and leaving some guesswork for others?

It’s a fine line that no one can really trace or own, but it’s also what defines us. We might be in the group of the ones that cares about the status, but if we don’t care about it, if we’re more interested in results for the team than for our status, then what we should do?

It’s easy to be trapped by these illusions, by these dreams, but they’re just that: Something that can break easily.
Good work on the other hand is stable and strong.