---------------------------------------- Healing November 30, 2022 ---------------------------------------- Written on my laptop while sitting on the couch in my living room ---------------------------------------- For more than one month I have basically just written about PicoGopher, and that is ok. I have defined it my "comfort project" and that's exactly what it is: something that keeps my mind off bad thoughts and makes me feel like I am doing something useful. And at the moment it does not really matter whether it is more useful for me than for anyone else. At some point, though, I think we all need to face -as I used to say during our team meetings way back at the end of April- the Elonphant in the room. We were all shocked about the news then (no surprise that was the moment when I started spending more time discovering alternatives to the mainstream social networks), and we have all been shattered by all the things that happened during the last month. When I say "all" I mean everyone I know in the team. There is no former or current employee, no one that was made redundant first or chose "No" or "Yes" later, no junior or senior or acquired startup founder who is not wondering how the fuck things could escalate so quickly. How a company we aligned so much with could so dramatically change in the span of one week. This was heartbreaking, way more than losing our jobs. I say "we" but I also realise it is a small consolation to know this happened to others. And the more I think of it the more it is not even a consolation, because while it helped me come to terms with suddenly losing a job, I feel for all those who are in my same situation (or way worse: just think of those who were employed in the US with a visa). One way or another one month passed among friends, lawyers, recruiters, and people asking how the situation is, sorted in order of how much I felt the need for them, not of how much I saw them unfortunately. One month spent talking, flying, doing interviews, curing my kids from flu, getting the same virus, curing myself. Healing. Am I better now? A bit. Am I healed? Not yet. There's still quite a lot to process and this will require some time. I feel the need to write it here as I am getting restless and willing to turn the page and focus on something else, but I know I have to be more patient and give it the time it needs.