www.byjp.me/content/now/index.md
JP Hastings-Spital 3419061560 XFN friends
2023-08-02 07:39:49 +01:00

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---
title: My world, these days
emoji: 🤓
draft: false
type: timeless
---
Being intentional about what I spend my time on has been consistently rewarding through my life, so when I learned about [the Now movement](https://nownownow.com/about) I knew I'd be publishing [my own /now page](https://www.byjp.me/now) too.
I'm a little apprehensive about being _too_ openly public with lots of personal data, so this may be sparse at first. In 2023, before I knew of [the Now movement](https://nownownow.com/about), I started using a curiously similar mechanism at Deliveroo, as my duties as Principal Engineer stretched my context across a lot of different headspaces and teams. It's been extremely helpful, so I'm embracing this too!
---
I live in a lovely flat in North London with my fiancé {{< friend yvette >}}. We still feel like we're only recently home from our travelling Sabbatical, which took us through South America, Western Canada, Japan, and Singapore — we're missing the travel enormously! We were blogging (for part of that trip) at [adventure.awaits.us](https://adventure.awaits.us).
The biggest news from that trip was [Yvette proposing to me](https://adventure.awaits.us/a-patagonian-love-story/) at the top of the Torres del Paine mountains — I'm so excited to be marrying her, even if the wedding planning is triply complex because of our mixed nationalities!
{{< figure src="engaged.jpg" alt="A photo of Yvette and I grinning at the camera, with the engagement compass Yvette just gave JP" >}}
The second biggest news from that trip was my Mum discovering she has a terminal cancer. I'm struggling with this a fair amount at the moment, but I have a superlative support network, and Deliveroo embracing my choice to move to a 4-day work week to spend more time with her has been wonderful. I'm (clearly) being quite open about this, but I'd appreciate your efforts in finding quieter times if you'd like to talk to me about this; I hope it's easy to understand how this topic can emotionally blind-side me!
My work at Deliveroo is very internally-facing at the moment, so there's not much high-level context that's worth sharing here, but I'm always open to sharing what I can about my role and my company, if you're interested in knowing.
While London is trying to remember what the definition of "Summer" is, I'm spending time making things. I recently finished a 4-week throwing (pottery) course, and had a lot of fun making bowls and cups and vases — I'll post some pictures here when I pick them up from their final firing! I'm also putting a fair amount of time into this blog right now (you may have noticed) as a way to trying to find a faster way to ground for the regular lightning strikes of ideas I seem to be having since returning from my travels!
{{< figure src="sunset.jpg" title="We had a glorious sunset last night!" alt="A golden sunset over North London">}}
I'm _really_ enjoying slowly playing through [Viewfinder](https://thunderfulgames.com/games/viewfinder/) — it reminds ne a lot of Portal!
{{< openlibrary "9781782394464" >}}
I just finished reading [Ajax Penumbra 1969](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21518724W/Ajax_Penumbra_1969?edition=key:/books/OL29181691M), the prequel to a book [I adored reading](/posts/reviews/books/robin-sloan/mr-penumbras-24-hour-bookstore.md) back in 2013 — I properly stretched out the reading of it, but it was gone too fast! I'm really considering re-reading that original book, as Robin Sloan had me chuckling and giddily page-turning right through this one again!
I'm also struggling a little to stay interested in the audiobook version of [The Dark Forest](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL39524585M/Dark_Forest) by Cixin Liu (the sequel to [The Three Body Problem](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17267881W/%E4%B8%89%E4%BD%93)), but perhaps some weekend walks will get me back into it.