Og Maciel's Blog

[image error] Photo by Tatiana Tochilova on Unsplash

If you’re new here, this is part of my ongoing experiment where I’m publishing raw, completely unedited chapters of a novel I’ve been writing (and rewriting��� deleting��� swearing at��� and rewriting again) for the past couple of years.

If you’d like to catch up first:

This week, I’m sharing Chapter 5. As always, your feedback keeps this little experiment alive���so if you’re still enjoying the story, please let me know.

Photo by Park Troopers on Unsplash

Google Calendar says I spend an average of 20 hours a week in meetings. Add to that the fact that I have to block my own lunch just to prevent people from scheduling over it, and suddenly 25 hours of a 40-hour week are already spoken for. Then there are the ad-hoc calls that pop up out of nowhere and don’t even show up on the calendar. So I’m pretty convinced I actually spend close to 30 hours a week on Zoom/Meet/Teams/whatever-video-conferencing-platform-is-ruining-my-neck-that-day.

Photo by Thalia Ruiz on Unsplash

This month of October has been��� a very busy one at work, and as a result, I didn’t spend nearly as much time reading as I usually do. Between all the additional stress and prep work required to handle some unexpected complications, I also managed to do a fair amount of writing, so something had to give.

When I wrapped up September, I said I wanted to read some scary books, maybe lean more into sci-fi and less into non-fiction, mostly because I felt like I needed a break from the real world. And if that was true in September, oh boy was it even more true in October.

Library in the morning hours

This morning I started work late because I had to run a couple of errands. First, I was supposed to pick up my dad and take him to the mechanic so he could get his car, but it turns out the place only opened later and I couldn’t wait for it. So it was on to the second task of the day: taking my 18-year-old daughter to her school for an in-person exam.

Yesterday was a day of quiet time and reflection for me���a forced slowdown after my body decided it had had enough of my constant multitasking and ignored warnings. This entire year has been a relentless stretch of challenges and tight deadlines. Every time someone said it would be impossible to complete a project by a certain date, my response was always the same: hold my beer. Yes, the chaos was self-inflicted. I own that. But what can I say���I have an almost reckless amount of belief in what can be achieved when a group of capable, autonomous engineers who trust each other come together around a shared purpose.

I know it may sound weird to start talking about Christmas when Halloween hasn’t even come up yet. But last night, while my oldest daughter was making dinner, she put on a Christmas station on Pandora���and just like that, I was transported straight into my first Christmas memory.

I must have been maybe five or six. And when I say I “remember” it, I’m not 100% sure if it’s a real memory or something I pieced together from old photos���but it feels real. Someone dressed as Santa Claus came to our house. To this day I don’t know if it was my dad, a friend of his, or someone my parents hired���but “Santa” showed up. And to my absolute shock, I got a G.I. Joe dressed in full camouflage, plus a yellow helicopter and a Jeep with some kind of weapon mounted in the back. This was the early 80s, so getting war-themed toys was totally normal. That’s the first Christmas I can truly recall.

Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

When I walked into Synaptic Pharmaceuticals for my first official software developer job interview, I had never written a line of professional code. I had no GitHub profile (it didn’t even exist yet), no computer science degree, and just a vague idea of what a design pattern was.

But I had something far more dangerous: momentum and an unlimited supply of hubris.

A few weeks earlier, I had built a working software system from scratch in a pharmaceutical lab despite having zero formal training. If I could do that, what couldn’t I do?

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Photo by Tatiana Tochilova on Unsplash

If you’re new here, this is part of my ongoing experiment where I’m publishing raw, completely unedited chapters of a novel I’ve been writing (and rewriting��� deleting��� swearing at��� and rewriting again) for the past couple of years.

If you’d like to catch up first:

This week, I’m sharing Chapter 4. As always, your feedback keeps this little experiment alive���so if you’re still enjoying the story (or even if you’re just here for the chaos), drop a comment. Should I keep going? Post more frequently? Stop immediately for the sake of literature as a whole? You tell me.

Photo by Growth + Co. on Unsplash

Another week in the books, and this one was a reminder that life is a balancing act between chaos and comfort���between AWS meltdowns and Japanese takeout, between one-on-one meetings and long overdue naps. Somehow I made it through with my sanity mostly intact, a few small wins along the way, and plenty of caffeine to prevent a total system crash. Here’s how the week unfolded, one day at a time.

Photo by Anna Samoylova on Unsplash

Reading has always been part of my family for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of my parents buying books from those traveling salespeople who used to go door to door selling encyclopedias���Brittanica, Barsa, Larousse, you name it. We always had a room dedicated to books, where we kept the dictionaries, classic literature, and those giant encyclopedia volumes that made you feel smarter just by being in the same room with them.