Today I was asked to "rewrite" a story for our kid. It was a combined effort with a friend when they were in school. They only wrote a few sentences and called it a day. Sigh. So based on that, I wrote them another based on theirs. I first wrote it out on my computer and when I was happy, wrote it on a piece of paper for her — my hand hurts from that exercise (which is a sign I should write more long form using my hand). My wife prefers pen and paper 100% of the time. My kid goes to a mostly English speaking school here in Poland so it was great to come up with a story for her. Even if it's basic.

Ultimately she didn't use the story except one sentence here and there after it became clear she wanted to keep the original text without too much change. Sigh. I helped with some grammar on others that she kept, so the sentences flowed a little more and got rid of some obvious small mistakes. She did actually already make it look nice with pictures of the tree and rainbows.

Later she came to me and told me she really liked the story I wrote and that she will put it in a little book to read again on days. I told her that maybe she can take a paragraph from the story and write more about it, make a little book. She had a fantastic smile on her face. Her mind in overdrive. Made my day.

They named the story "The Fantasy Tree" and this is what I wrote (and yes, I had to include some specific details like horses, names, locations and what-not 😅):

— — —

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Robin who lived in a magical land with his dad. One day his dad said “There is a myth of a magical tree, The Fantasy Tree. Bring it to me.”

Robin, without much thought, wanting to prove to his dad how much he’d grown said “ok” and gathered his things for the journey ahead.

It took many moons, following old trails and signs, with no clear path. On the way, Robin encountered a giant blue dragon that lay destruction across its path. With all his might he fought it but he was too weak and scared, so Robin ran away.

Robin was in dismay and fell asleep with his back to a tree.

The next morning he awoke, the sun in his eyes, a nice breeze. A flower fell onto his lap that seemed magical. Glowing, vibrant in colour, and full of life. He knew he found the Fantasy Tree.

The tree felt alive, swaying and humming in the wind. Robin could not bring himself to chop down the tree. It felt wrong. He carefully picked some flowers, and took them back to his dad, looking after them as best he could.

His dad was so happy to see Robin and hearing his story. His dad was a scientist and decided to make a potion from the flowers that he brought back. “Go and spray the potion into the air” he said. So Robin did.

The sky turned colourful, vibrant and brilliant. Bridges of rainbows lay across the land. Many beautiful horses and other animals as far and wide as the eye could see came flocking in. It was a pure magical sight to see.

Robin had all the powers of the world now, bringing joy and light everywhere he went.

The end.

During December we always put up the Christmas tree. The space around us feels smaller, more intimate. The holidays are close as we cuddle in closer during the cold and dark days.

But holidays come and go and eventually we forget about plugging in the lights, just small annoyances now that the tree is in the way, or getting dusty. Trying to go around it to open the window or close the curtains. Simple things.

Feelings of cozy, no more. A space slowly shrinking. Suffocating.

We’re low on energy after the holidays, the kiddo sure kept us busy — getting close to the teenage years, so it’s... difficult. School starts again after nearly 3 weeks off. It’s busy. The tree still there, looking drab and sad. It’s plastic so it doesn’t shed. Just taking light away from the biggest window.

At home we feel blocked in, and going out to the world feels so crowded. It wasn’t like this just a week ago. Maybe it was just the last and everything felt it was closing in, suffocating your ability to think. Everyone stumbling over each other without much thought or care. It was snowing and then just wet and miserable. A reminder that winter is still here. Everywhere felt busy and bustling. Perhaps the Christmas and New Years calm now no more.

We took the Christmas tree down on Friday night. We left the decoration on the dining table. It was late.

The morning came and we tidied up after. A shift in space. We cleaned the decorations and tree. Put them away for another year.

The days are longer now, the sun shining into the biggest window, blue skies, opening up the space we live in. Inviting us. Welcoming us.

A new day has arrived.

Not what you want to read, I know. A lot of things have transpired over the last 24 hours. I get it.

I do not have the strength to post a lengthier article on what has happened, however I see that I somehow must. I am beat. No recovery.

I stayed quiet last year not because I don’t support the community of my fellow earthbound humans with different beliefs and identities (those that identify as LGBTQ+), no, I stayed quiet because I know what has been said was wrong and I didn’t want it to happen again — so I hid away, culled my site of anything personal. Build back up confidence after clearly being wrong after being made aware of the fact. Know that I support you no matter how you identify — it has never ever crossed my mind to treat people differently because of who they are. Never.

I’m telling you here, now, that I am close to just packing it in — never to be seen again. I felt shame that I offended someone so profoundly, and it never crossed my mind that a seemingly off the cuff stupid rant would cause this — I should have known better. It hit a deep nerve.

I also didn’t post anything because of how it all played out, especially around timelines, communications and just confusion when it came to light. I am not here to throw anyone under the bus. It’s not me. It’s not who I am. So I won’t.

Now there is a skewed view of who I am. Whatever you might think, I respect this and there will never be anything I can do to correct that. So be it. This is the problem about staying silent. For me I realised too late that silence is golden. I took that view after the events of last year. I posted a lot of negativity across many unrelated issues and seeing this has taught me to never do it again. Sometimes I still fail at that but I try and self correct. Social is full of negativity and this was the inflection point for me.

I have privately apologised multiple times and I’d like to say that this is what I think was best. Not to save face, but because something private is more personal to me than a public blog post. It was between her and me.

I regret my past actions deeply. It was stupid and insensitive.

I deeply respect anyone that called me out, and I also deeply respect communities that are trying to help and provide a safe haven. We live in strange times and I hope we can just get along no matter how rough the waters that we cannot personally control. Everyone is trying to do their best, and people make mistakes all the time, it makes us human.

You may label me how you want. Know that I will never label you.

God bless.

[Update] I wrote a further post to go into more detail, perhaps this gives a little bit of context. Optional reading and not forced if you don't want to.

Last summer I did something strange, I opened up YouTube and searched for Mixed Martial Arts. Something I never took any interest in (and still don’t?) — lo and behold I was faced with many choices one of which was the “Top Knockouts” from the UFC, which then went further and further. I won’t link to any MMA videos in this post and you may look yourself of course.

I kinda knew what that sport was. Heck, when I was still employed the employer sponsored a fight and we had a table — our first ever taste of that. Yet I had no clue and was cheering for the wrong person and felt like an idiot all these years later (15 years ago now?) — damn my friend who told me the guy’s name was Nigel.

I don’t like fighting. I’m not great with blood. But I was fucking mesmerised! What the actual fuck?

I was in absolute shock seeing so much beating up and blood all over the place. Cuts that are inflicted by sharp elbows (who knew?). How much blood just drips and how easy your face just swells and opens up. How slippy blood is whilst the other person is trying to grab them.

Here are some professionals beating themselves up, knocking each other out, for the name of sport. Basically taking the human body to the limit, whilst following strict rules and good sportsmanship (you’d hope).

Did it awake some primal being inside of me? No. I’m not this kind of person at all and I have no idea what became of me whilst I was basically squinting at the screen and actually feeling a little sick at watching that at first.

Some of the fighters were totally violent of course and really high on something deep down in their psyche (borderline cringe watching them win a match and screaming and jumping — I guess that’s also adrenaline fuelled), which I would have expected, however some were totally cool — just normal people without all the showboating — calm. What? The? Heck? It was those people that kept me watching.

What followed was a few fights here and there, maybe for 2 or 3 random nights deep into the morning and then I just left it for a few months.

I talked to my wife for years that I wanted to look at some sort of fighting. In fact she’s been begging me for even more years to do exactly that. She said it would suit me. But MMA isn’t something I want to do, even though they have weekly classes where my daughter goes for acrobatics.

I don’t have the hand, leg and movement coordination needed for this outside of flying an aircraft (or helicopter)... so I look like a stiff washboard (thanks to sitting at my desk like an idiot).

I certainly don’t feel like getting beat up, or my nose to be broken, or have swollen ears.

So I took some short lived Wing Chun classes, because I loved the Ip Man movies. It was great just getting some of the basics and working on adding power (whilst totally relaxing) — I stopped short when I got ready to buy a sandbag to hit.

During the Christmas holidays I took another turn and came across a chap named Devon Larratt and saw a very short clip of him show boating and loved him straight away because he was pretty funny. He’s one of the top arm wrestlers in the world and is absolutely huge.

I thought it was fun to watch that little clip of him so I took another look and found some of his best moments on YouTube here.

Love the power these people have and to be able to hold for so long is just amazing. What I like about Devon is the way he totally just looks super cool without showing that much stress, whilst enjoying his sport to the absolute max. That short clip above, love how he’s placing his arm onto the table.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be watching any arm wrestling any time soon. Devon was the icing on the cake and just loved his energy.

My first interest in arm wrestling actually comes from the movie Over The Top with Stallone. Great movie! But beyond that, nothing that actually excites me to watch.

On Friday I signed up for a month of UFC Fight Pass. They had a live event I watched late into the morning at 4AM. It was a bit boring but enjoyed trying to figure out who could potentially win (it was mainly the cool people). Again, I don’t really know why I did that. It was on a whim.

I’m not really into watching sports so I don’t think I’ll continue beyond the month — I wanted to try something different heading into the year and make it more fitness orientated.

So back to the fight, I learned that the main fight is the last one! So that was 4AM bed time for me — thankful it was the weekend.

During the fight there was an ad about... power slapping. Slapping? Are you kidding me?

Nope. Super crazy and didn’t know it was a thing! So come some intermissions that night, of course I took a look through “the YouTube” and I totally went straight to the first result presented... which were the top knockouts.

I really don’t know it was a sport and it’s totally stupid. That’s one way to earn a living though haha.

Out of all though, I enjoyed arm wrestling the most — it feels super classic and just raw strength, technique and of course endurance (whilst not getting beat up).

Watching all these people, minus the slapping, just motivates you to go and get fit... and I think that’s why I’ve been pushing myself over the last few months also because I don’t feel I’ve been doing enough after watching these people.

So what’s the point of this post? Dunno, just random.

I’m aiming to gain 10kg this year — I loose it quickly too when I just take a few weeks off. Any motivation that tickles my fancy, like my above exploration, is good for my psyche. Just no slapping.

So, let’s go.

Before the holidays I had a few things swirl around in my head that were important for me going forwards. I like taking time to mull it over in my mind, in that background process, and see where I could improve. Whilst the dates of “getting started” moved a little I am happy that I can now see a way forward and keep pushing with my goal (last two weeks were a complete write-off).

Last year was good, with a few speed bumps, although a net positive in general when I look at how the year ended. It also brought perspective on resilience to changes outside of my ultimate control and also where I should be focusing next.

I did too many things even though I find it healthy to explore different ideas and projects. Ultimately I believe I dropped the ball on a few others like moving to “Updates only” on my blog here — keeping the personal out.

Anyway, now to focusing on what matters.

Tinylytics

Last Sunday Tinylytics hit a combined lifetime count of 10,000,000 hits across all sites. 10 million!

I’ve had so many great emails and mentions from a fair few folks using it and saying they are really happy with it — whilst keeping on top of change requests and bug reports.

Tinylytics is my most successful project to date and I’ve got to be honest, I feel that I let that slip a little over the past few months. Instead I decided to concentrate on other side quests even though the tea leaves were all in favour to keep going and make it better — keep things moving.

And that will be my focus for the coming year and hopefully beyond. I’ll be making it my full-time-when-not-freelancing project and concentrating on the list of items that I’d like to integrate and add.

First step I’d like to do is to actually rewrite the uptime monitoring and finally mark that as complete. It’s a little heavy and has been at the back of my mind.

Before the holidays I spent some time to work on improving the speed of calling up your stats and also try and tidy up the actual details page which had some success— I only need to expand on that now (yes, I actually wrote that stuff down). On top of that, as you’ve probably seen, I managed to fix a long standing timezone issue with stats just being wrong depending on the way you fell on the international date line.

In addition to that, another one of those neglected issues, was that email reports just went missing. Totally unprofessional and that didn’t sit right after it being an issue since the start. I’m happy those are now fixed. All it took was a good 30 minutes of quality code time and good music.

If you look at the the updates site you can probably guess at which time I thought to myself: “I need to concentrate on this more”.

Here is to the next 10 million!

Other stuff

I wanted to make this post mainly about Tinylytics, however you might be wondering what’s with the other projects now that I decided to make it full-time. They’re not going anywhere — they are still getting developed as normal. They work great so far and I’ve been keeping up with requests as and when they come in. That won’t change and each project will get the TLC when creativity strikes. Heck I have a list as long as my arm for new ideas — I just can’t escape it — just my ultimate priorities are shifting slightly.

I’d also like to revamp my own site and build my own CMS (I have some experience with that) that suits my very own needs. I’ve felt that I am writing at a lot of different places although this blog is where it all started — and I’d like to bring it back to here as the source of... me.

There is obviously room for writing change logs and update posts for each of my projects but I do like having an outlet of sneak peeks and some other takes on what I’m building without being too formal about it.

I guess perhaps that this is the year where I actually truly just build more for myself without trying to add a subscription to it.

Thanks for reading.

✌️❤️

— Vincent