I spent last weekend at Lollapalooza, and I wrote about the experience.
I spent Monday in Bombay doing some much needed shopping, and then took the train overnight to Goa, where I’ve spent the last few days imposing on Deepti’s lovely home and hospitality, and overcoming my fear of dogs via proximity to Ira, the puppy Dee has just adopted smartest bestest puppy in the world!
Goa has changed so much. Most shocking to me has been the outsider sentiment. As early as 5 years ago, when I lived here, I was unable to speak Konkani to anyone because I speak only one of the eight possible Konkanis - and the one I speak is wrong for the region. This time, people were so glad to hear some konkani - any konkani! - that they actively engaged with me, responded with a smile, and made an effort to understand me. Many words have been written about who is allowed to call themselves Goan. I don’t call myself Goan because I’m not, but I am coastal. I so rarely get to speak my language, so I will take the crumbs I am offered.
I have changed so much in the years I have been coming to Goa. Here, in the past I have been
Today, I am tired. I was tired before Lolla, I have been tired since September, and I knew I would want to go home immediately after. So here I am, home in weather/clothes/eyes/food/loves. Today, I am tired but I am resting. I still spend ten hours a day working, but when I am done the empty trails and chirping birds greet me. I walked a dog and made small talk with the neighbours, and with the strangers at the tiny places I took myself to. I woke up with a headache for two days straight, and then Dee gave me a massage, I did my stretches, I basked in the sun, and I healed.
I publishedwrote four posts in three days! I am finishing what I started. After work, when I’m tired, I can actually pause and breathe instead of thinking about the next thing I need to do. I miss my friends when I’m eating a thali by myself, but not enough to go back. I can hear myself think after 5 months of just trudging forward. I think I’m going to spend the rest of this month here - accommodation, transportation, and cat care willing.
I have eaten strawberries and dipped myself in clean salt water. I ran into an old friend of an old friend and we were surprisingly vulnerable with each other. I have taken myself out to write these notes, and to work. I am so content.
This week, I had TWO bad headache days. They’ve become regular again :( But when it was happening, Dee was able to suggest helpful things because I told her to open my care page. That page is WIP, but did the job when it was needed!
No media. I’m just doing my crosswords, reading my rss feeds, and old fanfiction.
So much has changed about how I work in the last six months.
The consequences:
The last one is a problem because in a world where the efficiency of my workflow dictates how much work I produce, any changes I make to my processes will give me an outsized return in the work I do in the next week! The bottlenecks of traditional work are ten times more likely to hurt me because I’m ten times more likely to encounter them. But I haven’t had the chance to sit down and evaluate what I need to do at a meta level to improve those processes because I haven’t felt like I have the time. My hope is that I can use this break in Goa to better my internal workflows - for computer and brain both.
With Claude, it’s easy to just build features, but do that enough and the codebase starts feeling like a heap of barnacles all piled on top of each other, with no thought to design. That is okay to get to production, but is a maintenance nightmare. Can Claude help me tease apart everything that’s going on and re-architect this better?
I’m afraid of doing any kind of rewrite or major feature upgrades because I’m not actually confident in the integrity of the codebase. Yes we have e2e tests but are they good? Are they enough? I am afraid of making changes to this codebase. What do I need to feel better about it?
Claude has been great for me because I have realised that I operate with most things tech from a place of fear. Claude helps get over the starting problem, but it also helps me absolve responsibility (to myself) - I didn’t break it, Claude did! But because I know what’s broken, I can now fix it. Working in a codebase with Claude feels like using a large clawstick to understand the codebase. It’s just too far removed to give me any meaningful texture that I can hook my understanding upon. How can I then build in exploration of the codebase as it is into my reflective process?