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life

Journals

Getting Behind, Getting Ahead: A Personal Journey of Transition

by Yasin Ghasemi

Good day everyone.

Yesterday at 6 pm, I had an online tutoring session. Right at the start, my student said he didn’t wanna continue since he had to go to work and didn’t have time. And I said OK. Right now I’m officially unemployed. Hadn’t been like this in a very long while.

I can say that in the past 10 years, I have actively been working. I might have worked part-time, but I have been working nevertheless. It feels weird. And I see it as a sign. A sign that reads, “Work on your own stuff, boy.” Yes, I should work on my own stuff.

I went to Postex yesterday to collect my personal belongings. I saw my old colleagues and said goodbye to them. It was surreal. It wasted a lot of time just going there and returning home. I went for a run after going to Postex. I went to the Azadi sports complex. It had been a while since the last time I was there. The run gave me good feelings.

I came back home and had an online session with Pouya. We talked back about a possible backlog for developing BluLexi. We’re using Trello to manage this project. Until I went to sleep, I was busy adding the backlog to Trello and reading about the usage and rate limits of OpenAI. That was yesterday.

This morning, I went to Pas Stadium to run a track session with the coach and a few of my mates. I broke my 1 mile PR, shaving 11 seconds off my previous record. It felt good. I returned home and had some breakfast. I took a nap. But the nap turned into a 3-hour sleep! It’s around 2 pm right now.

Aside from running and setting a new PR, I haven’t done anything fruitful about my day. And that makes me sad. I’m sad because I feel like I’m much behind my schedule. Whenever that happens, whenever I get behind my schedule, I feel like the matter I’m worried about is a lost cause, like my coding project. I had set to finish it off by the end of this week. It’s the third day of the week, and I haven’t even opened the file to see what’s happening.

I’ve been like that most of my life. It’s just basically a vicious cycle of fear of being left behind, getting sad for not doing what I had to do, watching a movie or getting busy with something trivial, getting even sadder, getting tired and going to bed, waking up the next day being the saddest, start repeating the cycle.

What the fuck, man? Why the fuck am I like this? I’m not a loser – that I’m sure of. But why do I behave like this? Why am I so much afraid of not doing something, that I completely stop doing that? It doesn’t make sense! When people are left behind, they just do their best to get ahead. Isn’t that the logic? Why do I quit so fast when I get behind? Does this look counterintuitive to me, or is it really counterintuitive?

Spending so much time on this post is another way to procrastinate. I have to stop that. Let’s get to work, baby.

See you tomorrow with some good news.

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Shocks come in all sizes and shapes. But it is an art to remain stoic and respond wisely.
Journals

Being Dismissed: The Start of a New Chapter in My Life

by Yasin Ghasemi

I have much to talk about today!

Yesterday started all well: a cold but lovely autumn working day. I arrived first at work. I immediately came here to write my journal. Made a short to-do list for the 5-hour workday. Had some breakfast. And started working. 

At around 9 am, the CEO furiously replied to one of my text messages in a group chat and belittled all of us. I was shocked and angry. How does a person – CEO of a company here -almost unaware of a matter, think they have the right to shout out at others? He wrote his messages in the group chat, but I was reading the messages with his shouting voice.

I sent a text message to our marketing director. I told her we needed to talk. She didn’t reply. I left her a message saying the CEO needed to know he was wrong and didn’t have to shout at us. It finished work and left the company. She called, and we talked about it for a bit. She was upset, too.

Later, the Chairman of the Board called. He started talking about SEO optimization. I was like, dude, I’m not the owner of this shit at work; you’ve reached the wrong person. Then suddenly, he said I was fired and wasn’t performing well at work. I was fucking fired over a phone call! I admit I was shocked a bit. I didn’t see that coming. At least, I thought if I ever got fired, I’d get a warning before it, not that I was fired like I’d committed a violent crime. I felt like Sam Altman. It gave me some stupid confidence.

I remained stoic. I wanted to quit for a long time. A few weeks after getting hired, I witnessed things that made me rethink my employment. But I had to stay there because of my military service. I had plans to leave the company after serving in the military. So, it is almost a month before I go to serve in the military, and I have become jobless.

I didn’t do much. I just came home, relaxed, and shared this news with my parents and close friends. This was just on time. I needed one month to handle some personal matters. And this time was given to me on a silver platter. I was happy. It is time to rest and recover. It is time to publish an academic paper. It’s time to morph BluLexi into something serious. It’s time to focus on me more than ever. Let’s aim for the best and shoot for the moon.

Let’s see what happens tomorrow. 

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Coding, tea, and friendly get-togethers
Journals

Workday Adventures: Coding, Tea, and Friendly Get-togethers

by Yasin Ghasemi

Good morning, beautiful people.
Yesterday’s bitter cold made for a slow start, taking me a good two hours into late morning to feel warm. I spent most of my morning writing yesterday’s blog post and experimenting with DALL-E 3.

The good news is that the coding issue has been resolved, and the bug is fixed. Before resuming my coding work, I remembered solving a similar problem four months ago. After checking my old files, I found a beautifully written Python script that worked well but didn’t interact with other files.

With some help from GPT and a substantial prompt, I identified the issue—just three lines of useless code ruining a DataFrame. A warm cup of tea and a chunky prompt later, I had a beautiful Python script. Testing it will have to wait until today since I was in a rush; let’s hope I finish the project today.

The atmosphere was surprisingly good at work, partly because senior directors were absent. They were either working remotely or elsewhere, sparing us from sudden delegations of unpleasant tasks. I relished the focus.

The day’s highlight was meeting a friend after work, our first get-together in nearly a month. We delved into various topics, from my trip to Istanbul to her struggles as a young woman in the Iranian community and the influence of society on life choices. It was enlightening.

I realized that societal pressure often drives major life decisions. People find partners or immigrate to fit in rather than out of genuine desire. It’s frustrating. I, too, am searching for a new romantic partner and contemplating immigration, but many around me do these things to maintain appearances, not fulfill true needs.

Enough of the philosophical musings; let’s dive into work. Today promises to be a beautiful day.
Hasta la vista, amigos!

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