diegopetrucci

[diegopetrucci]

A promise for 2021

I've thought long and hard on what are the causes of some of my recent mood swings, and I've realised that it's the internet. Not all of it — there are incredible reddit communities out there, twitter spheres, and youtube channels that add lots of value to the world — but some places are incredibly toxic.

Not only controversies affect my mood, but they occupy a lot of mind space and consume energy, the same energy that would be better of being spent on work that matters or my relationships. Toxicity is a leech that drains you of your life spirit.

For the past half-year I've started muting or blocking everyone that has made a career out of outrage and controversies (so lots of journalists, twitter/tiktok personalities), and so people that are actively encouraging pessimism and cynism as a way of virtue-signalling.

My "feeds" are still not great — the algorithm is built for controversies, and somehow it still manages to sneak in various pieces of inflammatory content every day — but it's improving daily.

However, this is not enough. My role in the world cannot be one of a passive moderator: I also need to actively change it — and for the better.

Hence, this is my promise for 2021: I will not post a single tweet, reddit post, or facebook comment that does not add value to the world (or is just straight up nice to someone).

Critiquing something is fine, as long as it comes from a place of trying to get to a better place. Shitting on things is not. I don't have a hard rule, but it will be like the saying about porn: I know something is toxic when I see it.

If you care about me and you see me posting something snarky on twitter call me out — nicely, but let me know I'm not keeping my end of the deal.

I will give it my best.

[diegopetrucci]

An honest retrospective on 2020

Earlier today I've come across this post on an Italian facebook page, it's sort of a nihilist post that says something along the lines "it's dec 31, you're about to write a carefully curated retrospective post about 2020 with just the positives, when in reality it's been a shit year spent in ways that you really didn't want to spend it in. but you're still celebrating with a prosecco glass showing that not only you have a good life, but you know how to enjoy it too".

Let's do something else then, let's do an honest retrospective.

2020 has been a mediocre year for me.

Let's start with the positives so I don't get too sad. I've changed jobs, leaving a place that had become toxic for me (and many others, sadly). It was scary, leaving a stable place during this pandemic, especially for me, I always feel like the biggest impostor not having a college degree, but I had slowly realised that that environment was eating me inside and making me feel miserable — and I have to say thanks to my partner to nudging me to make the jump. I'm now in a good place, a bit chaotic maybe, but chaotic in a genuine way, surrounded by good people.

I've moved in with my partner — it's been hard, stressful, and a big change of the status quo. Our first flat was a dud and we've moved again after just eight months, but now we're in a much better place.

We got a cat. It's been just three weeks, and she's a lot of work, but Mononoke is giving me more than I'm giving her.

I've started paying more attention to cooking, and slowly learning how to do it properly. I'm not good at it, but I enjoy it, and that's all that matters.

I've gotten closer to a person that was already a friend, but not that close yet. In my last big retrospective [1 and 2] I was lamenting that I had loads of friends but no one really close, and moving out from my flatmates made it worse. Luckily it seems like I've found someone that is filling that gap. I just hope I'm gonna be a good friend for them too.

~

Now the not so positive things.

I'm bad, mentally. The second half of 2018 and 2019 have probably been the best years of my life, but 2020 has been among the worst. I've lost a lot.

I'm incredibly shitty at texting, I reply too late, if I ever, and it's my fault, and yet I can't learn. Because of this, I get progressively more distant to the people I care about. I really care about them, and yet I'm shit at talking with them. I am sorry, genuinely, and I don't know what to do. I even have a reminder every day to reply to people but doing it still consumes so much energy that I struggle with it. I am really sorry to everyone I've hurt. This has made me grow more distant to a lot of people, and I'm feeling the repercussions now that I can't meet people face to face. I talk to very few people these days, and it's slowly getting worse.

Moreover, a big factor contributing to my social circles was the bachata and salsa dancing, and that's gone for obvious reasons. I thought I could do without it, that it was just another hobby, but I was wrong. It was not. It had that mix of positives — being surrounded by people; doing physical activity; releasing serotonin; providing me with an anchor, something to do most nights, to fall back on — that nothing really has, so I haven't been able to replace it in any substantial way.

A similar fate has been happening to the gym — I haven't gone much this year, again for obvious reasons. And not only something that I was enjoying has been taken away from me, but some health issues have already started to creep in: as an example, there's been a period of a couple of weeks where I was barely able to sleep due to lower-back pain, and it was making me miserable during the day.

I've been getting fatter, too. I gained ~5kg, not too much, but still. Leaving aside considerations about my physical appearance more weight is not good for my body, especially for my sleeping (this is the weight where I tend to snore and have sleep apnea which affects sleep quality a lot).

But it's on mental health where I've got the biggest hit. I've talked about it, and I don't wanna go too much into it, suffice to say that if someone is extremely outgoing (5x/week), has a couple of good and stable social circles, does physical activity 3 to 5 times a week, well, what has happened this year is a recipe for disaster. Bad habits of mine have come back too, habits that I had not solved but greatly diminished with therapy and other good habits — I am extremely stress-prone these days, and I get angry for the smallest of things. I'm not that good of a person to be around for my partner sometimes. And I hate it.

A while ago I read that to have a good life you should have a few streams of things that bring you happiness (or at least content-ness) so that if one goes down the others can keep you afloat, at least until you get it fixed. Streams like family, hobbies, work, friends, physical activity. I've lost the hobbies, I'm far from my blood family, I do no physical activity, and I've barely been keeping up with friends. It's not good, and the way I get so easily stressed, the anxiety, and the anger, they all show that my "table" is missing too many legs to stand on.

~

But I don't want this to be just a list of things, it needs to have some action to take. And again, it's clear what to do. I need to stabilise the good things that I already have and work on getting back the ones that I don't. The restrictions are not helping, and so the general environment, but I need at least to try what I can do —— things like pushing more into developing new hobbies, and keeping up with friends. It won't be the same but it should be enough, at least for a while.

Since I wrote that I might be depressed I've not made a lot of progress yet, but already having Mononoke has helped a lot, and I've booked a few appointments for a therapist (it's been two years since the last ones, time flies!). I'm also gonna try doing some yoga classes, I hate running so that's the next best thing. I've done a lot of yoga at my previous job and it was such a nice activity (especially for the social aspect, I've made so many good friends in the classes, but oh well…).

By the way, the idea of having a few streams of "stuff" to rely on is common in therapy, but I've read it the first time in How will you measure your life by Clayton Christensen (RIP). It's a good book, I recommend it wholeheartedly, and there are some videos too on youtube.

So yeah, not a great year, a regression on so many aspects. But I feel like I've finally come to a good level of awareness about it, so I'm ready to start tackling the problems. Let's see what happens next.

[diegopetrucci]

Why I write about personal stuff

I just love to write.

~~~

Joking aside, I do like to write. It's theraupetic. Sometimes you don't have someone to talk to, or don't want to talk with someone because it feels like it's too much, and writing helps clarifying what's on your mind. Sometimes I write and I end up figuring out stuff that I didn't even know it was there. Something about my self.

Writing though is not publishing on a blog. I've written loads, but only a small subset ends up here. Mostly because it was crap, I try to keep this blog updated as a 1:1 reflection of what's happening and what I think, trying to not censor much.

Why I write about personal stuff, and why I publish it, is because it keeps me honest, and accountable. I've spent my late teen years and early twenties trying to hide my problems, to project a persona that was better than what I was. It's created more problems than the ones it solved, so I've sworn to not do it again. If I fuck up I say I fucked up, and move on. I'm an open book.

However there's another reason why I write here. Every time I post there's lots of people replying to me on twitter (publicly or in private) sharing their experiences, explaining how they're going through something similar. And I feel that writing about my problems, problems that cannot possibly be just mine, helps other people to see that they're not alone, and especially for men that it's okay not to have everything figured out. Something silly like me saying that I cry, you'd be surprised how uncommon it is for men to publicly admit that. Someone has to start saying it so that it becomes normalised.

At the end of the day I write for me, sure the feedback is nice, and it helps a lot, but I write to stay healthy. It's like exercising, right? You do it for yourself first, and how your body gets shaped is a side effect — however pleasant. Writing is exercising for the mind.

[diegopetrucci]

Greyed out

I've realised I'm probably depressed. I'm always a bit wary about using that word, I feel that I don't deserve it, that there's people having it worse than me that should use it — not me. So maybe I'm just down, in a dip. I don't know. It's not being long, just a few weeks, but I recognise it now.

My best description of what I feel right now, what I'm experiencing, is that I still see the world in front of me but it's like it has a grey layer that dims its colours and makes it a lot less interesting.

It's funny that I'm feeling this after I wrote on being a man. In that piece I reached the conclusion that I need to protect who's around me, give them a better life.

I cannot do that how I'm feeling now.

I'm crying often. Spontaneous bursts. And it's not exactly crying of pain, it's crying of release, a way to cleanse. It's not helping long-term but it makes it easier for a while.

Looking back there's been a spectacular confluence of a lot of things that could go wrong at the same time that are taking me down. Health news from a person close to me that I'm not ready to digest, some big chrunch-y project at work, putting a lot of expectations in something silly like adopting a cat and seeing it delayed, another lockdown. And I had one big hobby, a four days a week one, dancing, that I haven't been able to practice for a year now.

I'm sure that a lot of this is shared, we're all in this together. And I'm worried about other people too, reach out if you need to talk — you should go to a therapist but in the meantime we can talk a bit, I'm happy to do that.

This situation, the depression, if it is one, I know how to solve it. I've been there before, for longer. And that's maybe what's scaring me, for now it's small, and it hasn't been long, but I'm worried about letting it continue and growing bigger. There's more people and beings relaying on me now, and I cannot let it eat me like that.

Let's see how it goes, and I promise to write here again to hold myself accountable. That's what's worked in the past for me, hopefully it does the trick once more.

[diegopetrucci]

An alias to free up space taken by Xcode caches

There's a nifty alias shared by Fabio Giolito on twitter to free up a lot of the space that Xcode automatically uses on its caches. It's really useful when setting up a work or personal machine.

I'm going to repost it here (including Julio Carrettoni's extra two commands) so that it's easier for me to find it in the future, but again thanks to Fabio for sharing it.

sudo rm -rf /.DocumentRevisions-V100/ rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS\ DeviceSupport rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/watchOS\ DeviceSupport rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/tvOS\ DeviceSupport rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode xcrun simctl delete unavailable

And for whoever is not familiar with aliases, you can create one by writing alias yourAliasName='yourAliasCode' on the Terminal.

Update: Beautiful human being Olivier Halligon on twitter: > Note that all of this is done automatically by Xcode 12 and BigSur when you're low on space now apparently  I personally haven’t been able to test this yet, but hopefully it works as advertised so won’t need the alias anymore.

[diegopetrucci]

On being a man

I’ve been thinking quite a lot of what it means to be a man the past few weeks. Nothing in specific has triggered it, maybe reading MensLib a bit more, but it’s something that has come through my mind every now and then lately.

To put it bluntly, I don’t know. I don’t know what it means to be a man, and I’m searching for answers as much as anybody else. I just don’t know.

First thing that comes to mind, I think, is to provide. I need to provide for my girlfriend, for my family, I need to make sure that they’re okay and living a good life. But is it? Am I subconsciously projecting some structure that comes from the past, that is linked to how things used to be? Maybe I am. Maybe I shouldn’t, I should let my partner take care of herself. She definitely can, she’s strong, I know it’s a cliche-y word now to say, but she is, or maybe even better, she’s resilient. It’s funny because I don’t think I am, but she is. Whatever.

I don’t need to provide for my girlfriend, I don’t need to protect her. But I want to. I love to.

A while ago we were on the tube [the metro, for the non-Londoners reading] and some teenagers/twenty year olds started harassing us. A very light form of harassment, they were throwing us candies, M&Ms I think. They were being kids. I think I’ve probably done something as stupid when I was younger. They were throwing us stuff, and then more towards my partner. And she gets pissed, and my friends get pissed, they’re not stopping, and at a certain point my vein closes, I get up, go to the face of one of them, and tell them to stop. Or else.

I’ve never been in a fight in my whole life. I’ve gotten close, I’ve got quite the temperament, but never actually punched anyone. I’m sure I would get destroyed in one, I’ve never trained for it and I have zero sense for this kind of things. And yet, when something I feel is not right, especially when it has to do with other people in my life, my blood tells me to stop thinking and going. I just go. It’s happened before and, sadly, I’m sure it will happen again. It’s risky, it’s unnecessary, and it’s stupid. Like that time, they were kids, the smart thing would have been to leave and go sit in another carriage. But I reacted. My DNA told me to.

There are some things that are a biological fact. Men are (on average) stronger than women, taller, faster. We also are more “built” to do physical activity, more energetic, and my guess is that that’s why we have more of a temperament. Either that, or we’re stupider in average — but that leads to the same result, so whatever the cause, it is what it is. It goes both ways, women are also (on average, again!) better at tending for newborn and kids, better at reading people’s emotional states, and so on.

The other day I shared on twitter a couple of links, one was a discussion about men in traditionally women-y jobs, like being a kindergarten teacher or a nurse, and how men in those jobs are often ostracised and feel isolated — even by their own coworkers, leading to even fewer men choosing to pursue those careers, creating an even worse feedback loop.

Would you trust a man to be a nanny for your female kid?

Would you trust a man to be a nanny for your female kid even though 99.99999% of men are not sex offenders?

I want to say yes, but I would be kidding myself. And this makes me a disgusting person, because I’m being sexist and generalising to an individual the behaviour of a few bad apples.

I read the other day that a guy, a divorced dad, wanted his daughter to have sleepovers with her friends, but the mothers of the friends never allowed their kids to sleep to his house. They never said why, but it’s pretty clear why. He said that he is in a lot of pain because he will never be able to have memories of his daughter playing in his house with her friends. Ever. A therapist told him to carefully explain this to the mothers, that they’re being sexist and discriminating, but to be careful about the words that he uses. It’s heartbreaking. It shouldn’t be like this.

I feel like in the past, being a man, was easier. Not better, but easier, because you knew you had to provide for your family, go out and work, be “strong”, and so on. Now, now I don’t know. I think (think!) I’m still supposed to provide for and protect my girlfriend, but I also shouldn’t do it because she’s her own person and she will be whatever she wants to be. But where’s the balance? If I work and earn more and I pay more in our shared expenses, am I patronising her? Making her feel bad? If the opposite happens, and I mention it to people, how do they look at me? Do they see less of a man? I think so, and it shouldn’t be like this, but it is like this.

I’ve been doing more of the chores lately as my partner’s university classes have started again, and she’s working as well, while I have the privilege of working from home. I have more free time so I cook, clean, go groceries. Does it make me less of a man? I don’t think so. We’ve been joking that we’re the only European + South American couple where it’s the European that’s the house wife. House wife, what a terrible name. House person. It sounds weird, but it’s for the better.

It’s my duty to do those things, because I think that’s — also — what being a man is all about. But does everybody think that? And who’s more attractive, a man doing chores or one doing a physical job? I want to say the former, but the reality is that it’s the latter. And the actual good answer should be both, because your job does not define you. But it does. It always does.

I regret getting pissed at the kids, but I also don’t. Like I don’t and will not regret being a house person. I’m doing what I need to do. I love my partner, and my family, and will always do what I think it’s best for them — and I’ll often make mistakes, but that’s part of the deal. I think that’s what being a man is all about. Sometimes it’s being the strong, tough guy; others is surprising her with a cooked meal when she comes back home after work. They all share the same underlying intent — love.

[diegopetrucci]

The universe truly has a way

It’s 10am here in Italy, I just woke up. I can hear my mom cleaning the house. My head is hurting a bit. We were late yesterday — not crazy late, but still. I think we ended up going to bed at two in the morning. We spent some time with some of my friends yesterday, Summer and me, some time to catch up with people I’ve known for ten years. During the night I kind of half joked “We should go to dance”, and Summer saying “Yeah I’m kind of missing it”. We find a place that’s actually close. Ten minutes drive from where we were. The night is over, the one with my friends, and when it’s over, we say fuck it let’s go. And we do. The dancing place it’s the weirdest place we’ve seen in a while. It looks so far away from everything, in the middle of random houses and fields. She says that we’re probably going to end up getting killed by some mafioso. I can’t really disagree. But fuck it. We go in. The crowd looks older. The guy at the entrance says We play all kinds of latino music. Even dembow? Summer asks me. No, I don’t think it means that. The night ends up being lots of salsa and not much bachata. But it’s still fun. It’s a good couple of hours. And then it’s time to go home. An endless stream of salsa is playing, we want to go, but we also really want to dance one last bachata. So we stay. The tempo changes. It’s bachata! And amantes comes on. Amantes is our song. It’s the song of when we met for the first time. We were doing lessons at BOS in London, and during the lessons, we awkwardly met there. It was a Saturday, a Saturday that none of use really wanted to be there but we still went because why not. So we’re there, dancing to Amantes, dancing to our song. And we don’t realise it in the moment, but it’s past midnight, so that makes it the 29th of December. We met the 29th of December, last year. Dancing Amantes. Sometimes the universe has a way. It just works like that, and it puts everything in its place. As it should be. We’re dancing our song, on the day we’ve met, in the middle of no where in Italy, without having planned an inch of it. This time the universe has been kind to us. We need to pay our respects. It’s been a good year.

[diegopetrucci]

home

I read this somewhere:

You will never be completely at home again because your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place. ❤️ No one tells you this.

When you’re moving, like really moving, a lot of people give you tips. They tell you don’t forget your roots but be open to new things, find a place that’s cozy, let yourself be yourself with the people you meet so that one day you can call them friends. But they don’t tell you that you wont have a place that you can truly call home. You’ll have many homes, sure. It’s ten in the evening and I’m looking around at the bright lights and sure this London I see, this is my home. And when I think about my mother’s food, yes, that’s home too.

But I don’t have one, specific home. And the tricky part, the one that gets me every time, is that every time I’m in one of the two homes, the other one, the one I’m not in, is whispering in my ear, why are you not here?

I don’t know why I’m not there. I belong there. But I can’t be in two places at the same time.

I got into a fight with my parents the other day. I told them that I envy my friends there in Lucca, the ones that get help from their parents to build their homes. They said you could have had that here, you too, if you had stayed. Yes mom, I could have had that. You could have helped me. But I belong in London now. I pay almost a thousand pounds a month for a tiny place, and that’s crazy, but I belong in London, because that’s the only city that can give me what I need right now. I pay a lot, but it’s a small price to pay.

But money is not the only thing that I pay. I went back for a dear friend’s 30th birthday the other day, with the people that I used to hang out with. I loved it, but it felt like my grip was slipping. A lot of conversations that I did not understand fully, a lot of context that was missing. Everything was how I left it, but nothing was exactly how I left it. And every time I go back it’s a tiny bit more different.

And it hurts.

It hurts a lot. I belong in two places now, but I don’t belong anywhere anymore. I do, and I don’t. It sounds like I’m making this up, but I’m sure that I’m not the only one that feels like this. I cannot be.

But I have someone here in London, I have someone special waiting for me. A smile when I come home. And it makes it easier. It makes it so that maybe, just maybe, I know where I’m supposed to be.

[diegopetrucci]

Be a cat

Out of all advice I would give to my younger self, I think the most important would be “be a cat”. Yes, a cat. Cats are mostly domesticated, but they still do whatever the fuck they want — not necessarily in a bad way, a cat can be loving and sweet, but they still retain their independence.

So, yes, be a cat. Do your own thing, always be progressing towards your goals. Do the things you enjoy, regardless if they’re cool or not. Be as authentic as possible and filter as little as you can. That doesn’t mean being a pseudo stoic narcissist that does not care about anything or anyone except themselves. The trick to solving the independence equation, to me, is making sure you have a clear path in your life, but always be welcoming and loving to those that happen to cross it, or be with you whilst you follow it.

I can make an example. Last weekend I read that cool things were happening at the Southbank Centre — food and live music, mostly. So I mentioned it in a group chat. No replies. The next day I woke up, drunk my coffee, and left for it. But before that I got a text from one of the people telling me that they were coming as well. Cool. When I got there, while waiting for the friend, I spotted two other people I knew and joined them. So it ended up being the four of us spending a few hours together having fun.

This might read like a corny diary entry of a teenager, and in some ways it is, but I think the important thing to take out from it is that even though no one initially replied, I still went to the place. I wanted to do it and I did it. It was nice that people joined me, but spending time there by myself would have still been satisfying. This is what I mean by be like a cat: do the things you want to do, and if you’re fortunate enough that people join you, that’s cool; if you’re not, well, you’re doing what you like, so who cares.

I also think the same applies to love. I’ve spent a few months alone last year, on purpose, because I fucking hated being alone (and was scared of it). I realised that to be a healthy person I had to start liking being alone. I had to find my own path, understand what I wanted, and who I was. And I did, and these days I love my life and what I do. So, well, I don’t really need a lover, a significant other. But not needing is a lot different than not enjoying one. I am in a relationship right now and I enjoy it — a lot. However, and we’ve spoken about this at length with each other, we still are our own persons. Each has their own path, we just happen to be sharing it for the time being. Maybe we’ll share it for a while, maybe not, but it does not matter. What we have is enjoyable, but if it ends, we’re going to cry and sad about it, but then we’ll move on. As it should be. We do not complete each other. We are not souls mates. We just love each other’s company.

This might sound a bit cold and un romantic, but I think how we think about love, the romcoms, it’s a very unhealthy place to be in. Needing another person, like really needing it to be able to live a normal life, is fucked up. I need sleep and food and water, not another person. I want another person, but I don’t need it. I believe a romantic relationship should be like “I’m doing my own thing, you’re doing yours, and when we’re together we make our lives better it, we improve them”. No neediness. Just a pure enjoyment of each other’s strengths and flaws.

Of course this stems from my experience. I was in a relationship with a great person, but it was a toxic one, because neither of us was truly independent. We started merging and becoming one — same hobbies, same goals, same friends. Which sounds sweet, but then you realise that if something goes wrong in the relationship you have nothing left. If the relationship is your whole life, and one day your relationship cracks, what happens? What’s left?

I’ve sworn that I will never make that mistake again. I will never change who I am to fit to another person’s ideals. I will compromise, sure, but I will not change who I fundamentally am. I need to be my own person first, and love that person, and then, just then, welcome someone else into my life.

So, yeah, the cat thing. I am a cat. I want and strive to be. Maybe I still not am, but that does not matter. Young Diego, out of all the things, try to be a cat. Discover who you are, be it, embody it. And then, just then, if someone happens to follow a path that works with yours, welcome them with open arms. Enjoy it. Feel it. Live it. It’s going to be exhilarating.

[diegopetrucci]

A strategy to pick up girls

Don't mind the clickbait-y title. I thought it was fun to have it, but the content is not. I've written a lot of thoughts on mental health and what I've done this year, and I thought it would be interesting to have a few words as well on how I approach meeting girls.

I've broken up with my long time girlfriend earlier this year, and so after almost ten years out of the market I had to re-learn all of this stuff. It's been a fun experience. I've asked friends for advice and recommendations, gone to the internet to find resources, and so on. There's a lot of stuff out there, but I have to be honest, most of it I've found to be pretty dumb. On one side there's the ever present "just be yourself!", which is pretty useless if you don't know what yourself is or if yourself is not a great person; on the other, the internet is full of pickup guides and tricks, which only reinforce you putting up a fake persona, thus making you avoid your longstanding issues and problems.

As usual, I've found that experience is the only way to learn. Which is kind of funny coming from a blog post trying to teach you something. Hopefully, though, this is more of a framework than a precise sequence of steps.

I think there are three pillars that you have to follow to be successful in your romantic endeavours: you have to live an interesting life, you need to be centered, and you need to be direct about your intentions.

The first two are related to my previous posts. The first person that you need to care about to have other people in your life is yourself. I'm sure you can have one-night stands, or even relationships, if you're in a bad place in your life. I had too. But if you want something more, you need to have your things sorted out. I did this by focusing on both my physical and mental health first. I've written a lot about this, so I will be super short: exercise, eat well, go to a therapist to help you fix your issues, find a job you like, find a hobby you love, socialise a lot. Easy on paper, harder in reality, but there's no way around it.

The socialising bit is crucial. I'll be very candid: unless you're in the top quartile looks/body/mental-health wise, you won't get many girls straight up approaching you, if at all. So you have to be able to put yourself in an environment where girls are plenty and you are able to screen for matches without feeling like you're missing out. (Oh, and for the record, I'd give the same advice for girls looking for men.) The worst behaviour I've seen — both in myself and others — has come from having a scarcity mindset, where you feel like the one person you've just met is the only one that could be available to you, and so you become extremely attached and needy. This is so not true. I am not that good looking and yet with a bit of fixing my physique, style, and emotional intelligence I'm able to "meet" a new girl (that something could evolve from) basically every week. So go out, do it often, and "use" your social circles. That is how you fight the scarcity mindset.

Being centered is about knowing what you are, what you like, what you want, what you believe in. And not moving from it to please someone or something. That doesn't mean you can never change, change is great! But forgoing your core values is not okay, especially if under external pressure. It also means having a full-filling life that you can always fall back to — essentially, not being dependent on one thing for your well-being, but having abundance and knowing it. A centered person is one that is confident at saying no to others when necessary — always gracefully, of course — and that is not affected by setbacks because they truly believe in what they're doing.

Being direct is another matter. When you know what you want and need from another person, you should be very clear about it — it’s healthier for both parties. Just yesterday, for example, I’ve met an interesting girl at the NYE party I was at. After a bit of talking and flirting I’ve asked her directly if she had a boyfriend. She said yes (and the guy himself was at the party!). However, the "rejection" has not shaken me (again about being centered!). I’ve continued to talk and dance with her, but the expectations were very clear at that point and we just had fun hanging out. The me from a few years ago (and months, probably) would have circled around it, and started a long and dragged out process of maybe adding her on Facebook, chatting with her every once in a while, and so on, obviously going nowhere. Looking at a person in the eyes and telling them what you want is the only good way forward.

More or less the same has happened on Saturday at a bachata event, after the lessons a girl I was joking with has come to me asking for my number (love the straightforwardness!), and I’ve asked another one I've met outside for hers. Both conversations and their tone have been very clear from the start without being pushy or aggressive, and getting to know each other in the future is just the natural evolution of events. If it hadn't gone well, we'd both be free to pursue other stuff, knowing that all ambiguity had been cleared.

Being direct is also linked to having an abundance mindset. When you feel like you only have one chance because you found the one and then you're done for months or years, you are super scared of expressing yourself truthfully. I mean, who wouldn't? It's just so much pressure. But it could not be further from the truth, and realising that frees you from all the built up expectations you have for yourself, making it easier to be straight with the other person. And, ironically, not caring about an individual encounter, makes it way more likely that it will go well. You demonstrate that you are independent and confident, and there is very little that is as fascinating in a person as that.

--

I honestly think this "strategy" could very well be applied to socialising with friends, or to how to approach your job. It is very generic, but again, its main points of fixing yourself first, losing the scarcity mindset, and being direct are commandments that work well for a lot of areas.

I'm aware I've not posted lines, or tricks, like you could find on reddit or on forums. I mean sure, there are things that you can say that can move the conversation's tone from platonic to sexually charged, but I believe these things are discovered naturally with experience, and again, learning them as a checklist only leads to building up a fake persona. I have been there and it only sidetracked my growth as a person. You should be the best version of yourself, not parroting someone else.

[diegopetrucci]

What I’ve neglected, lost, and done wrong

I lied. The previous one was not the last update. I’ve realized that I’ve only written the things that I have done well in the past few months, but not the mistakes that I’ve made. I’m not quite sure whether or not this big list will be helpful because at the end of the day making mistakes is part of the process, and it’s as necessary as getting it right. Moreover, it’s not very effective to tell someone “don’t do x or y, you’re going to regret it” — no one ever listens to old people, or to parents, and all of this stuff is basically what they keep telling us over and over. We only learn from our own experience, we need to bang our heads against something to have it settle in. But still: while this might not help to avoid a mistake, I see it as pattern recognition. Maybe reading it will help somone recognize an issue before it becomes problematic.

So, what I’ve done wrong, analyzed:

1: I’ve lost the ability to spend time by myself.

As I’ve forced myself to go out more, and spending time surrounded by people, I’ve gone to the other extreme and I’ve kind of lost the ability to be surrounded by just myself. I’m not reading enough, I’m not watching any more shows, I’m not cooking, I’ve basically stopped doing things on my own, chilling by myself.

On one side, I think this is because I fear that somehow I’ll go back to my old habits and become a shut-in again. On the other, I think I’m just scared; spending time alone, for me, means being forced to have deep thoughts about who I am and what I want — which I don’t think I really know.

Going out almost every day has definitely helped me, but now I need time to figure stuff out. For example, I started partner-dancing to take my mind off my breakup, and I’ve not stopped since. I am pretty sure I still love it, but I owe it to myself to take some time off of it to think hard about it. Having a positive routine is a great thing, but it should be re evaluated every now and then — doing something just because it’s the thing you do is not healthy. It should be a conscious choice.

I think I will spend a few nights a week learning how to cook, meditating, and writing a bit more. These are all things I used to love that I rejected when I began the “conversion” to become more outgoing. It was fine then, I needed to distance myself as much as possible from my past habits, but now I’m comfortable in my own skin, I don’t fear those ghosts anymore.

2: I’ve focused too much on self-growth

All that I’ve achieved this year is because I’ve put immense pressure on myself. My iPhone is full of notes filled with objectives, diaries, goals, and so on. And even though I think that’s fine, I’ve become so focused on becoming better and better and better that I’ve had real issues of being able to accept myself as I currently am.

This is the thing that I’ve discovered: however fucked up you and your life might be, you’re still a person, and because of that you deserve to love yourself. Obviously that doesn’t mean you should never go out of your comfort zone, but the opposite is also counterproductive: progress and growth won’t necessarily fix your self-image problems. You, as a person, are fine as you are, and deserve to be loved (by other people and yourself). If you don’t realise that, no matter how much you’ll change and improve, you’re always going to feel like you’re not enough.

Finding the fine line between acceptance and eagerness to grow is tricky, but it needs to be done. Your mental health depends on it. The faster you’ll be able to accept your reality, the faster you’ll have the right tools to improve it and move on from it.

3: Cutting out toxic people

This one is hard. While trying to be social I’ve felt the need to be accepting of everyone that I’ve come across. A need to please and be friends with everybody. This can’t and shouldn’t be done.

I define toxic people as follows: people that instead of adding value to your life they remove it.

At the end of the day, your life is your responsibility. Not everything that happens might be your fault, but everything that happens to you, once it’s happened, it’s your responsibility to manage. You could be hit by a bus, or be dumped by your SO, or have someone in your life die, and while none of this might not be your fault, how you decide to handle the consequences is solely your responsibility.

The same applies to other people in your life. If they can’t handle what they’ve been thrown at, you can and should try to help them, but if they can’t snap out of it, at the end of the day, it is their problem, not yours. It’s harsh but true. Your life objective shouldn’t be to fix everybody.

A person that is removing value from your life, to me, can mean a bunch of different things. It could be a colleague that is always down and shuts down any attempt to positivity and growth. Or a friend that is not willing to step out of their comfort zone and makes planning going out on the weekends impossible. Or a girl that makes dating her difficult instead of an enjoyable discovery. Or a parent that doesn’t want to see you grow, wherever that growth might take you.

Toxic people are draining. They take energy out of your life, while only adding pain. And while I believe that pain is necessary, it should have a purpose: gym pain is useful, as is learning pain, and new experience pain — pain for the sake of it, however, it’s not, and should be avoided at all costs.

It is always painful to recognise that a person is a value-vampire, but it needs to be done, and you need to cut them off. You don’t necessarily need to completely isolate yourself from them, but you do need to find the right distance where their actions won’t affect you.

Distancing someone is always scary, like am I going to be able to find other people that suit me? But it shouldn’t, because by doing it you’re effectively improving your life, your mood, your health, and it will be easier for you to attract new people in your life.

4: Not setting standards for girls I date

This is linked to cutting off people that remove value from your life. I have done the big mistake of basically going out with every girl that 1) was attractive 2) was showing me signs of interest. This is not okay. I have taken great care to make my life full of enjoyment and growth, so if I let a girl in my life, she needs to be hitting a certain standard. A pretty face is not enough.

And by the way, this is not a brag. I believe everybody should have standards, it’s just that my requirements could be very different from someone else’s. You might need someone that has their shit together, or a fuck-buddy, or someone that is willing to take things seriously, or someone that makes everything else disappear when you’re spending time with them. We all seek different things. But again, we should set a standard, and ruthlessly cut out the people that don’t meet it.

It is again a matter of self-love: how are you supposed to make the world better if you can’t love yourself and the situation you’re in? And if your partner is making it hard to do it, they should go.

There’s plenty of people in the world, and there are probably a dozen or more SOs that would make your life better. It’s just a matter of being in the right state of mind to recognise and bring them in.

5: Getting validation from external factors

I shouldn’t have set goals. Become a mid-level iOS engineer by this year. Find a girl in that year. Have x social circles by the end of the summer. Goals, while quantifiable, are very easy to miss, and the pain is not only when you measure yourself against them, but when you realise you don’t have enough momentum to hit them (and then you get sad, and unmotivated). They’re a receipe for disaster.

There are so many times that I’ve found myself coming back from a night of social dancing with a sad frown because I did 5 dances instead of the 10 I told myself I’d do, or because one girl I liked stopped replying (when I had others going on), and so on.

Instead, what I’ve found useful, is setting up processes. Processes still retain some of the characteristics of goals, as you can look back and see if you’ve improved, but are more forgiving — they let you have bad days, or even weeks. Sometimes life gets in the way and it temporarily derails your plans, and that’s okay. In one of Bojack’s episodes, Bojack is resting breathless on the side of the road after a run. Another runner, a monkey, notices his pain, stops by, and says “It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day, that’s the hard part. But it does get easier”. I don’t think one good night makes up for ten average ones. If you show up every day you slowly build up what you need to improve on, and the bar consistently gets higher.

This is very much linked to being able to forgive myself. Not every day I’ll be in the best state of mind or physical ability. But that’s okay. If I’m able to move on from disappointing days it means that I can look forward the future ones to improve even more.

6: Build a support network ASAP

The day of the breakup I realized I not only lost my lover, but my best friend too. Staying together for nine years means the other person has a mini-you in their head that is a very good approximation of the real you, making it easier for them to support you. When we broke up we made ourselves a promise to keep being friends, but that’s, IMO, a bad idea. I needed time to grieve and to process the loss. So I stopped communicating with her for many months. When I felt ready we started talking again, and I was lucky that she was still available to entertain a friendship with me. But the months in between have sucked hard. I lost her, my other best friend was in Italy, and so were my parents. I had no one to look in their face and tell them how my world was falling apart.

I got very lucky to find some other people that I’ve become very close to, but I’ve should have pushed more and way, way sooner. Friendships are tricky because you don’t really notice their importance in good times, but if you don’t really have any close people next to you in the hard times, well, your life is going to be miserable. As I’m sure most of this “advice” will sound, this is basic knowledge for many people, but I don’t think there is a limit to how much you can give to others during the good times. Time for others is always well spent, and will pay you back when in need (assuming you're choosing the people in your life wisely). It’s also very easy to kind of treat some relationships as a given, but they need to be nurtured constantly (and actually meaning it). It might sound a tad self-centered, but you need to give to others because one day they will need to give to you. And oh boy that day is coming. Better be prepared.

7: Not being authentic sooner

I’ve touched this topic briefly here and there, but I think it’s worth repeating.

For a long time, years probably, I’ve felt the need to be accepted by everybody. To do that, I’ve tried not to say anything polarizing or to express myself honestly. The result has been me being very… well, boring and insipid to other people. Not really what I had hoped to be.

When I’ve started being more honest, and above all when I’ve stopped putting up a filter, I’ve seen people getting closer to me way faster than ever. My fear of hurting or disagreeing with anyone was making me avoid any conflict, or saying what I really thought, and the irony is that people trust you more when you’re open to them (even if they don’t fuck with you in some regard). If a person is able to get to know you, even if they don’t like x or y of you, they still will like you. I have so many friends that I don’t agree with on some topics, even political or “serious” ones, and yet I still love them to death. People are not defined by one thing, they are three dimensional, and it’s okay if they’re different from you. But the moment you decide to filter out your thoughts you become one dimensional, and no one in their right mind is going to want to learn more about you.

I’ve had people I’ve known for years telling me that they didn’t really know me — they didn’t know what I liked, or my interests, or my political stance. When I was leaving to come to London, I heard that coming from someone that had known me for almost ten years and it hurt like nothing else before. I realized I had given up a life of authenticity for the pyrrhic objective of being accepted by everyone. I had effectively hid myself for years.

These days I really don’t care anymore. I am 100% honest to anyone, be it work or friends or girls, and I’m doing fine. I’m able to filter out people very fast, and I’m confident that those who are around me truly like me and embrace me for what I am. And the funny thing, by stopping giving a shit about rejection, you actually experience it less. In some ways this mentality gives you abundance of opportunities, and friends, and that has a positive feedback loop back to your mentality, making you care even less.

—

At this point I think I’ve eviscerated everything I went through. Maybe I’ll write a couple of things here and there, but I think that’s it.

It’s a good time to stop. In ten days I’ll be back in Italy for a while and I’ll be able to face my ghosts there. The final battle. I need to get away from all the stuff that’s going well here to see if I can handle the pressure of being in a place that brings up too many painful memories. I think I can do it. :)

Oh, and one more thing: thanks for all the support in the last post. It’s really nice to see that people care, and it’s been fantastic having people tell me privately how something I wrote reasonated with them. There’s still a lot of stigma around talking about this kind of personal stuff, but it needs to change, as we need to recognise that the fights we’re fighting are something we all go through in a similar way, and there’s a lot of people that we can lean on.

[diegopetrucci]

What I’ve been doing in the past eight months to get out of the rut I was in

I’m going to write what I’ve done in the past eight months to get out of the rut I was in, what I’ve dealt with, and a few things I’ve come out with that hopefully are of some use to somebody. As usual this is very personal, maybe boring. Whatever. It is worth it to me, and frankly that’s all that matters.

But the main reason that I'm writing this is to make it clear that whatever the situation you might be in, if you put enough effort in it, I promise you, it will get better. Maybe not tomorrow, or in a month, but it will. You just need to work your ass for it. It worked for me, and I'm far from being special. Someone said that the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, but the second best time is now. It fits very well with my story and what I've written here.

As a recap: I spent nine years with an incredible person, basically growing up with her. But at a certain point the whole thing was not working anymore, so it was over. During these years, regrettably, I’ve started getting more and more introverted, and shyer. Not really going out much, losing touch with friends, and above all kind of losing the sense of wonder in my life. Mind you it was not because of her, all of it was self-inflicted (and some stuff was triggered by external events and some bullying). To make things worse, I’ve spent my first year in London basically waiting for her to join me here — effectively putting my life on hold, not making many friends, going out rarely, and so on.

So here I am at the beginning of the year: alone in a new city I haven’t really explored, with very few friends (if any) and social circles. And super shy. I’ve honestly thought of going back to Italy, where life was easier (in my mind) and I had a social support net.

I think sometimes it takes scraping the bottom of the barrel to really understand how bad things are, and you're left with a choice: either give up, maybe do drugs, maybe kill yourself; or to start again, knowing it will take time, but that with hard work things will be better. And boy they have. But it’s taken a lot of effort.

So yeah, this is what I’ve done to make things better. I’ve taken a very pragmatic approach to it, maybe because I was a very analytical person, or maybe because it’s easier to track progress this way. Anyway, here it is.

Step 1: go to a fucking therapist.

I believe this is what has kickstarted my changes. I was a very emotion-driven person, as in I used to get very dependent on them. I have written plenty about this, I won’t repeat it. It’s still up here on my Facebook so feel free to explore it. The TL;DR: is that going to a CBT therapist has taught me to control my emotions and not being managed by them. I’m still not perfect at it, but I’m a completely different person now. I can handle stuff, and when I feel like I can’t and that I’m being overwhelmed, I write a journal, or a post here, or wherever. It works and I recommend it to everyone, even people with decent mental health.

Step 2: stop being shy.

This was maybe the hardest thing I’ve done. I was shy, like can’t-even-look-at-people-in-the-eye shy. Frankly, at 26, this was unacceptable. So I’ve started by making a game out of it: be the last one to break eye contact with random passerbys in the street. Then with people at the office. Then when people are talking with me. Then while talking (still working on this), etc.

Something else that has helped me has been talking with everyone. And when I say everyone I mean everyone: I’ve literally gone on “missions” to go talk to five strangers at the grocery store, or at the office, and so on. My problem has always been not knowing what to say and this having a big filter on what constitutes a good conversation. Turns out small talk is just a mean to an end, and you can literally say anything and it will work out fine. Being very situational-aware is fundamental here, a lot of stuff is always going on in the environment around you and making a comment about it is a perfect ice breaker (“oh that car is nice but a bit douchey”, “man I need a coffee to be able to make this coffee”, etc).

I’ve also stopped wearing earphones 24/7, now I limit myself to just one ear when walking, and nothing while walking in the office or in other social environments. It's made me a bit more aware of stuff.

Step 3: getting better at conversations

I used to hate small-talk. I found it to be posturing and plain useless. Turns out that's not really true: small talk is a very convenient way to quickly judge a person's state of mind, and if they're willing to engage in deeper conversations. The formula is quite simple: start with the usual comments (weather, news, football, etc.) and if the person is smiling or in a good mood take your chance to dig deep. If they're not, just move on. No harm caused.

Deeper conversations are tricky because they require vulnerability, and that's why you only really feel safe to talk about the weirdest things with life-long friends, maybe at 3AM and a bit tipsy. But it doesn't have to be this way. I wouldn't recommend to go into details about your sexual fetishes in the office, but after small-talk steering the conversation towards emotions works very well. We are emotional creatures, and whatever we might do, we usually do it because of the feelings we get while doing it. Going out with friends, eating food, listening to music, playing a game. That's all stuff that evokes good emotions in us, and even if you don't quite appreciate the other person's specific thing, you can relate to how that makes them feel. I don't listen to heavy metal, for example, but I can relate to the feeling of shutting yourself off from the world with it after a long day at work, so I can talk about that to a metal-head. Or the satisfaction of finishing writing a book after months of work, or the struggle of running a 20k and being at peace with the world after it, or the pleasure of having your guests love your home-cooked meal. All stuff that I can't do but that I can definitely relate to.

And of course, as they are built on emotions, deeper conversations require vulnerability. The other day, for example, I asked a coworker (that I don't really know that well) what her plans were for the weekend. The usual small talk. She replied something along the lines of "I had so many plans for tonight, the gym and that, but I'm just exhausted and going home. Tomorrow though I have a house party". My reply? "Yeah, more or less the same for me". How fucking clueless was I to let go of so many conversation points? I could have related to the tiredness (which I was and that's why my convo sucked so hard), or I could have mentioned how cozy and fun I find house parties, or I could have been vulnerable and said that the day after I was going on a date. I missed every hook. Don't be like me.

Step 4: social circles

I set myself the objective to have at least one "invite" to a social gathering per week. This doesn't sound that impressive if you live in a small village where you have a very well-defined group of friends that you default to for going out, but it's very tricky in a big city environment like London, where you get very few chances to meet new people outside of work and those you meet are always busy (I literally had to schedule seeing a friend four weeks in advance, once. It is that bad).

To do that, at least at first, I've decided to build up as many social circles as possible. I could have gone with the easier route of getting super close and "pushing" things with my colleagues, but I've chosen to focus on variety. I don't know if that was the best choice, but it's the one that I've taken.

If you have decent social skills doing this is not really that hard, you just have to show up at events. I've gone to partner-dancing, yoga, improv-meetups, board-games playing sessions, and so on. The more you like something the more you tend to attend it, and you start to see regulars, and then you become friends with them.

If you're lucky you get to meet people that bring you in their groups, and if it happens for the love of all that's nice never, and I mean NEVER, say no when invited. Even if you're scared or you know just one person there. Someone took the chance with you, was vulnerable, and decided to invite you. You usually get one chance, maybe two if you're lucky, but if you keep saying no, they'll (rightfully) give up on you. You don't want to give off that vibe.

Also, inviting people to do stuff with you might sound awkward, like how the hell am I supposed to do it, but there's an easy trick for it. Let's say you're talking with a person, and you say I'm going to X this weekend, and they seem to like it. Ask them to come along! It doesn't sound weird at all, it's just natural. If they say no or that they're busy that's cool, if they say yes you just broke a new barrier. Again, the trick is doing stuff you enjoy, and when talking about it, inviting people to do it with you. It's a win-win situation.

Something else that I've done, and this one has been super hard for me, is actually hosting events. I've thrown a couple of barbecues this summer, and because I wanted to play it safe I've invited a few people from the office. Guess what? Everybody had a good time, and me being the host has opened many opportunities. When you invite someone to do something they then feel a connection to you, and are very open to inviting you back to whatever they might do. It takes a lot of courage to set something up, and the stress is hard to manage, but it's worth it in the end.

Step 5: getting in shape, dressing better, and having hobbies

Honestly this one should be grouped under the "fix your mental health FFS". Even though getting in shape and dressing better make you look nice, the most powerful effect is on your mind. I'm not going to list all the good things that come from exercise, that's well known already. But the positive side effects on your mental health are something that most people don't take into account. Going to the gym regularly, or running, or climbing, or whatever you like, it's all stuff that makes your mind work a bit better, and it calms it down. It gives you something to look forward to, even if everything else is falling apart.

The same is true for hobbies. If you know that in your regular week you're going to the gym three times, and then you're dancing at nights (again, this applies to whatever you might prefer doing) you have a backup. You have something to fall back on. I've had weeks where work wasn't going great, but guess what? At nights I was in bliss because I was dancing. I got played hard by a girl once, made me feel real shitty, but two days after I went to a festival in Budapest, which made me forget her. The more stuff you have going on in your life that you can relay on, the less dependent you are on a specific thing, and if that thing goes wrong, yeah it suck, but oh well you have all the other stuff.

Step 6: dating

I've had a few very interesting experiences with this one.

I don't think I'm revealing anything new when I say that we need intimacy, be it sex, or cuddling, or a shoulder to cry on. Some things can be fixed by having good friends, but others can't. So here comes the need for sexual connection.

I've tried Tinder in the beginning, but most of the dates have been very meh. Boring maybe. It was definitely on me for not really knowing what I wanted (sex? a long term relationship?) and still, at the time, being totally clueless about emotional intelligence. At this point I'm more of the idea that Tinder is fine for one night stands and that it's very hard to make something more come out of it. Still possible, I've met a couple of nice girls with it, but not really ideal.

If you're looking for some deeper connection it's definitely easier to be more vulnerable in your day-to-day, again attend as many social activities as possible and have plenty of social circles, and wait to find someone you vibe with. The most serious thing I've had is with a girl that I've met because of my hobbies, we've felt a really deep connection from the beginning, and we've just rolled with it. Unfortunately it hasn't worked out for reasons outside of our control, let's call it that, but that's totally fine.

However, I think that "dating" requires something that not everyone has, and that I definitely did not have until very recently. As I've written in the past to have a good relationship you need to be able to have a satisfactory life, where you are ready to give value to the other person, with the same true for your partner. If this is missing you can still try, but from my experience it doesn't last long and people get hurt. I still believe you need to experience it to realise it, so be open, because there's only good lessons to be learnt. But honestly, if you're looking for a relationship just to fill a void, that's a very bad plan, and it's not going to work out well.

Overall, these days I'm doing well. I have a few very good friends I can relay on, I know tons of people from the office/hobbies/etc, I go out almost everyday to do stuff that I love, I get invited to many "events", I'm in good shape, I've started dressing nicer, I've been travelling quite a lot (for my standards), I'm doing a job that I really believe in with people I care bout, I've experienced nice things with girls.

Not everything is great yet (I still need to cut my hair! Eventually I'll do it, I promise), but I'm leaps and bounds better than I was at the beginning of the year. I hope this doesn't come off as bragging, but I think it doesn't, as I've shared plenty of very intimate details of my life — and how bad it was going — during these past months. I just want to tell everyone that if you are in a bad spot with your life, even though it might look like there's very little hope for you, that could not be further from the truth. Everything can be improved, and the very few things that can't you slowly learn to accept them as they are.

[diegopetrucci]

How to animate SnapKit constraint changes (with UIView.animate(withDuration:))

I might be dumb, but I had to look really hard to find any info on how to animate SnapKit constraints. The solution is pretty simple, and I suppose it also applies to AutoLayout stuff, but I’ve never used AutoLayout programmatically though, so I don’t really know. I’ve always used Auto Layout with storyboards and then, at some point, jumped to writing everything programmatically with SnapKit (and I love it).

Anyway, let’s suppose you have a childView of your viewController.view, like so:

You want to animate a constraint change of the childView. You do it the standard way:

This is what I tried, but it won’t work. You usually put the code that needs to change in your UIView.animate(withDuration:) method and it works fine, but it won’t with constraint changes.

What you need to actually do:

It looked counter-intuitive to me, but you need to first write your constraint changes and then animate the layoutIfNeeded() method. Also, be sure to call layoutIfNeeded() to the superview of the view where the changes happen, in my case viewController.view.

[diegopetrucci]

What are some things that make you really sad?

What are some things that make you really sad?

The billions of thoughts and memories and moments that perish with each human mind. Even a prolific writer could only record a small fraction of his or her thoughts. When we die, an ocean of thought in our mind goes with us.

I am now 22 years old, but I'm still not able to fully grasp the idea that every other person is just real as I am. It's an incredibly difficult thing to accept. Every person has needs, wants [is this even a word?], and plans; everyone is the star of his/her own reality. I'm as real as everyone else and I am a bit less real than someone else when that someone else is analyzing me.

Empathy is not enough, a continuously running thought experiment is needed. I can't experience all the possible experiences in the world and yet I have to accept them and treat them as real — until then, I am not fully developed yet.

Sometimes I wonder if enlightenment is just that, the grasping of one's normal-ness. «All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain», my own too. I am a tear in the rain, just like everyone else.

[diegopetrucci]

«Normal people» and the iPad as a second-class citizen

> Don't buy the argument that the iPad is a consumption-only device. [A post I wrote](http://ilmacminimalista.com/blog/2013/11/normal-people-and-the-ipad-as-a-second-class-citizen) a few weeks ago.

[diegopetrucci]

The iPhone may not be the perfect mobile device (for many people)

Marco Arment in Smart Watches and Computers On Your Face:

Portability is critical to modern device usefulness, and there are only two classes that matter anymore: always with you, and not.1 Devices that are always with you must fit comfortably into pants pockets without looking stupid. If you’re exceeding the size of pockets or small handbags, you’ll need a bag of some sort, which means you can carry pretty much anything up to a full-featured modern laptop. (Ultralight laptops are extremely capable these days.)

Smartphones dominate always with you.

My guess is that Marco is wrong. While the iPhone is a fine mobile device, the idea of it being the perfect personal device is worth discussing about and perhaps criticizing.

A 12x6x0.8 cm brick of metal and glass is not exactly super-comfortable to use. We are now accostumed to having to deal with its flaws, but those are not non-existant. A few examples:

An iPhone can slip out of your hand and fall and end up costing 200€ to repair. It may not be a problem for Marco, or me, two people that treat their devices with extreme care, but it's a significant issue for my father when he's out of his office working in odd enviroments, for my mother when she uses her in the kitchen and has dirty and slippery hands most of the time when she's there, and so on. Many people use a cover, but a cover it's a hack, not a great solution.

An iPhone needs to be unlocked to being able to use it — while it's great for privacy concers and stuff, it adds a layer of accessibility. It sounds like a first world problem, but having to take your phone out of your pocket when you receive a notification is a pain in the ass (you can drop it, you can scratch it, it may be upside-down, etc.) and the notification may even not be worthwhile of your attention. An always-ready device is a device that is easier to use (i.e.: the Moto X and its Siri coprocessor). Even a not-always-ready-but-way-closer-to-your-hands-and-face-device like a watch is better than something in your pocket (or worse, in your bag — my girlfriend sometimes has to really look for her iPhone when it's in her bag).

An iPhone is not always with you — and you don't want it to be. Unless you have an arm-band you won't take your iPhone with you when exercising, or when walking / working in dangerous places, or maybe even in your house, fearing it may get wet or fall or whatever else.

A wearable, on the other hand, can't easily fall and break (you can scratch your watch, but letting it fall? Come on), it may have an always-on with low-battery requirements coprocessor for Siri-like needs, and it's safer than a watch in your not-so-safe pocket.

I'm sure there are other reasons I can't think of but people smarter than me may, who knows. The idea that the iPhone is the perfect mobile device is flawed though. It's the perfect mobile device we currently have, but something simpler (and with fewer but more focused features) could easily become more intimate and therefore useful (and «mobile»).

P.S.: while this blog has always been a sort of public diary of mine, I will use it as my main blog (written exclusively in english) from now on. Feel free to subscribe to its RSS feed then.

[diegopetrucci]

Non si può essere al 100% in tutto

Un po' scherzando un po' no, mi piace iniziare le cose che scrivo con una frase del tipo «in vecchiaia ho capito che…». Non sono vecchio, ho vent'anni, sono in quel periodo in cui mi accorgo di essere una persona parecchio più stabile dell'adolescente che ero qualche anno fa, ma non so ancora se crescerò mentalmente. Immagino di sì, ma non lo so.

Leggevo It's not Maria Kang's fault I'm fat dove si parla di fat-shaming e fitness. In pratica c'è questa mamma super-gnocca molto interessata al tenersi in forma che pubblica questa foto dove mostra tre figli e chiede «tu che scusa hai?».

Maria King ha detto che la foto era una foto nata per motivare, non per offendere o farsi gioco delle altre persone meno in forma, ma tanti se la sono presa. Tanti ciccioni e persone sovrappeso hanno scritto cose brutte alla donna perché si sono sentiti chiamati in causa. Io non ci vedo niente di male nella loro reazione: in fondo tutti noi siamo in ogni momento in diversi stadi di accettazione della nostra condizione (in questo caso del nostro corpo) e c'è chi ne soffre di più.

(E sì, ho detto "ciccioni" perché i ciccioni sono ciccioni. Se qualcuno si offende mi dispiace, ma è così. Io, per dire, sono basso: se qualcuno mi chiama nano ha ragione. Mi ci incazzavo quando subconsciamente cercavo di negare la cosa, ora non più. Tyrion (che citazioni pop!) dice che dei difetti devi fartene un'armatura, perché tu magari te ne puoi dimenticare, ma il mondo non se ne dimenticherà mai. Così devi usarli a tuo vantaggio, non fare finta di niente.)

(Un giorno imparerò a non mettere mille parentesi e a non divagare troppo, però mi dispiacerà perché io quando faccio i discorsi a voce — e pure quando li penso — di parentesi ne apro millemila, mi pare di snaturare un po' il filo a forzare una struttura coerente e che fili. Poi che cazzo sono sul mio blog e faccio come mi pare.)

Insomma, dicevo: tante persone se la son presa. Immagino che quelle persone non abbiano tanto tempo per fare attività fisica, magari perché devono studiare o amare una persona magnifica o accudire un cane che ogni volta fa venir loro un sorrisone gigante quando tornano a casa e se lo ritrovano che scodinsola felicissimo perché stanno tornando (i cani sono belle persone, persone stupide, ma belle persone). A me, ad esempio, fa incazzare vedere persone brave che sanno fare app stratosferiche e piacevoli da usare. Mi fa incazzare anche vedere gente del mio paese che a suo tempo era più scarsa di me e che adesso gioca in squadre di calcio professionistiche rispettabili.

Se dovessi prendermela per ogni cosa che non faccio e che un altro fa bene sarei messo male. Quando ci penso su però poi mi passa, perché — ed ecco che sforno la banalità più banale — di tempo ce n'è poco e se vuoi fare qualcosa devi pur scegliere. Magari studi, ti piaccion le serie TV, e vai in palestra. O inventi la giornata di 48 ore (oggi son bravo con le frasi fatte) o non riesci a fare tutto.

Qualche tempo fa son andato dal meccanico ché avevo comprato uno di quegli stereo fighi con la presa AUX per attaccarci l'iPhone, ero lì mentre lo stava montando e per qualche motivo mi sono sentito in dovere di scusarmi della mia ignoranza con fili e prese e roba elettronica. Il tipo mi ha guardato, m'ha sorriso, e m'ha detto «tranquillo, non si può essere al 100% in tutto». Cristo santo banale quanto vuoi ma quanta saggezza.

Ho smesso di incazzarmi quando vedo altre persone fare bene cose che «prima o poi mi ci metto» ma poi non imparo mai. O meglio: a volte ci sto un po' male, ma cerco di non sfogarmi mai pubblicamente. Non si può essere al 100% in tutto, io faccio cose bene che altri non fanno, altri fanno cose bene che io non faccio (bastardi). È tutto lì.

Mi dispiace un po' perché (e rieccolo con le banalità) se anche gli altri capissero questa cosa staremmo tutti un po' meglio. Non voglio far la parte del saccente, chiariamoci, se lo sembro chiedo scusa. Io questa cosa l'ho capita soltanto adesso, a ventidue anni, ho vissuto un bel po' senza averlo realizzato — e l'ho capito soltanto perché ho avuto la fortuna di leggere testi particolari, incontrare persone interessanti, e così via. C'è poco di mio e tanto del mio ambiente.

Banale, banalissimo, ma magari incazzarsi per quello che altri riescono a fare non è utile a nessuno. Ognuno ha le proprie priorità, non ce ne sono di giuste o di sbagliate, in più tante non dipendono da noi perciò ci si può fare pochetto. Bla bla bla 100% in tutto.