Since coming home from Tokyo, work on gossip slowed down quite a bit. I had lost my groove.

I have some excuses or rather explanations. Partly I had cluster headaches (I don't get them as bad as online sources describe, but they definitely come in clusters, feel like stabbing my eye or near my eye, and make it hard to program). Partly I had trouble with jet lag. Partly I had lost my place, having not programmed for 6 days. Partly I was working on my relay. Partly the work needed next didn't seem like fun. Partly I didn't want to step on the toes of my UI team. Partly I felt a sense of urgency and being a rebel at heart I rebel against my own sense of urgency! Partly I felt overwhelmed with all the new information from the conference. Partly I felt overwhelmed with all the NIP changes. Partly I felt overwhelmed with other clients pushing out features far more rapidly than I do. Overall, I had lost my groove.

But I kept at it. Put in the hours. And luckily, over the last few days, somehow, I'm back in the groove. Back to being unable to type as fast enough.

Hello world! #introductions

Opsec is especially important when practicing civil disobedience

Leffe is such a good choice 💛

#Youは何しにNostrへ

Losing someone young, or losing an older person while you are young, is always hard.

When my father passed away from cancer while I was in my early twenties, it wasn't surprising at all. This fact had been coming for two years, slowly. But when it came, it hurt just as bad. And till this day it still hurts.

I was at work and got a call; it was a hospital. They said my father had been suddenly transferred to hospice, and it wasn't looking good. He probably had a week at most. He was in another state. The doctor transferred my father to me on the phone and my father was weakly like, "hey...." and I said hello, and I said I'm coming now. He said, "No don't... uhh.... don't worry... you are far and have work... I'm fine...." I asked then why was he transferred to hospice if things were fine. He was like, "uh well... well you know.... uh.... it's fine...." And I was like, "holy shit I'm coming right now."

So I went to my boss and looked at him. I had previously told him that there might be a moment where I would have to just immediately leave without notice, no matter how important the meetings and such, because of my father. So in this moment I literally just looked at him in the middle of a busy day and was like, "I gotta go" and he was like "of course". So I drove there, two hours away and went straight there. My father weakly said on the phone not to go, but he never sounded like that, so I went immediately.

I got there, and my father was in a hospital in the death ward, and the guy who greeted me was a pastor rather than a nurse, which was not a great sign. I asked what was going on and he told me straight up that this was not good, that my father was likely dying within a week. So he brings me to my father. My father is barely awake. His memories and statements are all over the place, but I just hold his hand and tell him that it's fine and I love him. I'm just there. He kept fading out and I was like, "it's okay, just relax". He could see me and talk in a rough sentence or two and thanked me for coming, but started to fade away.

And then after like 30 minutes, he went fully unconscious. He was still roughly gripping and shaking the bed headboard and so forth but wasn't conscious (and I was like, "Are you all giving him the right pain medicines, this doesn't look good", and even the pastor was like, "yes I have seen many and this is not comfortable" and I was like an angry 23-year-old so I went out in the center area like, "what do all of you even fucking do here?! He is shaking the bedframe and looks in pain, and even the pastor agrees. Holy shit." So I went and got medical attention to deal with this, but felt slow and ineffective at this. They gave him more morphine and it calmed him down, but while it relaxed him, he ultimately didn't wake up again.

I spent the next couple hours there, and then left and called various family members for my second round when he was unmoving. I said if they want to see him, come now, in the next day or two.

But a little while later after I left, I got a call and was told he had died. Only I (and the nurses) saw him while he was still briefly conscious.

During that call itself, I was stoic. I was like, "Yes, I understand. Okay." and then hung up. And then I sat there for like five minutes in silence... and then cried. I got over it quickly and we did the funeral in the following days. My father had been struggling with cancer for years, so this wasn't fully surprising.

But what lingered was the memory. It has been 13 years now, and yet whenever I am in my depths I still think of my father. The memory never gets weaker. I think of his love, or I think of how attentive he was, or how accepting he was, or what he would say about my current problems.

People we love, live on through us. We remember them so vividly, and we are inspired by them.

If he was a lame father, he wouldn't have so many direct memories 13 years later. But because he was a good and close father, he does.

All of those memories are gifts. All of them are ways of keeping aspects of that person alive in our world. It's how we remember them in the decades that follow. Their victories, their losses, and everything in between. Virtues they quietly did that you find out later. Virtues you realize only in hindsight how big they were.

おはよう！