We covered what happened (with me), now let's cover what is happening (with me) now.

It happened so suddenly my friends worried how I was doing. I'm doing good. I put my WHOLE ASS (both cheeks! I did not half ass it!) into turning the situation around, and I have the post-midnight (la madrugada) Loom demo threads and the sleep diary to prove it. Even some extra shit - I called the managers from my previous team, and they couldn't bail me out. I traded whatever embarrassment to have minimal regret.

I don't mourn not becoming the perfect engineer; I mourn the person I became toward the end of my tenure. I left my penultimate company so I could have more space to live my life outside work. I made new friends, experimented with new hobbies, and went to so many new restaurants! Yet in the past few months, like a slowly boiling frog, I slipped into working post-midnight (la madrugada) and weekends.

I now have an especially good opportunity to travel. I'm subletting, so I don't need to break a lease, and I already have the rest of my stuff in storage. I want to travel across the US, and then across the world, because I didn't give myself that opportunity when I was working. And when I come back, I have a “beautiful” resume, as others have put it, and I'll find work that will allow me to live my life outside work.