Iuliana Cosmina

I wanted to write something for a while, but stuff kept getting in the way. Since the last time I wrote something here’s what I did. I went to Fosdem, I started working on my new book,  registered to a hardcore fitness program called Limitless and got sick. And that’s about it. Let me tell you about each of these.

Fosdem was as boring as it was last year. Thank god for the waffles, the beer and the stickers, because presentations were not that catchy. OReilly’s was there selling books at really small prices. I don’t think I’m going next year. Fosdem presentations might be interesting for a high-school or university student, but for a software architect with more than 10 years of experience and technical author, not so much. I actually told my co-workers that most probably Fosdem won’t be interesting until I will hold a presentation there. ;)

The new book, I might have mentioned that, is Spring Pro, the 5th edition. I am modifying the sources wrapping them up together into a multi-module Gradle project. I will try to add code samples with everything new introduced in Spring 5 and I hope to send the manuscript on the 31st of August. I don’t know what else can I say. I have already submitted the first three chapters, so I think the book will happen.

The fitness program, well that was a long time coming. I do not have a weight problem, I have an agility and resistance problem. So I don’t think it would be that bad to lose some weight and get fit. I’m in the second month of Limitless and I love it. It gets me so tired that I just take a shower and go directly to sleep in the training days. And I learned to eat more and healthier.

When I left for Fosdem I felt a little uneasy, but I could not quite pinpoint the cause. The first night in Bruxelles made it obvious though. I had a few periods of fever over the night and I woke up with a head-ache. I decided to try to suck it up and fix it when I will get home. So I made the effort and almost succeed. Almost, because when coming back, I did not feel comfortable driving from Cluj to Sibiu. Anyway, I got back home, and although I felt a little light-headed, I thought it will pass. Then my throat started hurting, and it kept on for three days. And when I put my head on the pillow, the cough started. I tried anything for that, but still manage to only sleep 2-3 hours per night. I got pills, I worked from home and on Saturday morning after a few sauna sessions, I was standing next to my car, looking at the sun and smelling the spring air. The sun was shining, the spring was coming and I could breathe easily. On Sunday I woke up with difficulty to breathe. It felt like there was something pressing my chest. And it was not the cat at this point. Went to the doctor, got antibiotics. Three fucking weeks of antibiotics! At the end of the first week I felt way better. And then my throat started hurting again. And I had a runny nose, because why not? So yeah, apparently it is possible when you are full of antibiotics for a cold, to just catch a different cold virus. Every time I get a cold, I keep thinking, how the hell are we supposed to heal HIV and cancer, when we cannot design a vaccine to cure the cold viruses? And the irony in all this? I am so paranoid about getting a cold that I’m usually very careful: I take vitamins, I eat healthy and I get out of the house dressed according to the season. I am the last person you would expect to catch a cold. But here I am, I’ve been cold since the 3rd of February and it is not over yet.

I am now writing from Frankfurt. I am here for an important meeting and I have an uneasy feeling. I had it all week. No idea why. I hope nothing will go wrong.

Stay safe, stay happy!

What person came into your mind when you read that title?

For me it is simple, the best person in my life is me. Call me selfish, but nobody else came into my mind. And thinking about past me, I think my situation is better now.

I grew up in a defective family, raised by cold and uncommunicative parents. So in adulthood I always tried to win somebody’s love and appreciation, and I always seemed to choose persons that were not interested in giving those to me. The more they rejected and treated me badly, the more I tried to change that. My psychologist said that there are two reasons why I did it: because the rejection was familiar or because I am trying to reconstruct my family life’s story and give it a different ending. I can tell you for sure that I do not like being rejected, and if I am being rejected I react by turning cold and shutting those persons out of my life, sometimes quite unexpectedly and brutally. So, obviously I’m the second type of damaged, the one that tries and tries and tries for a different ending. Or I used to be, because now that I know what kind of damaged type I am, I can compensate.

I used to have low self esteem, well I still do have it sometimes, but at least now it is not a constant thing. Having low self esteem unfortunately leads to looking for external sources of validation. People with low self esteem look for strength, motivation, happiness and identity in others. They find a person and set on its shoulders the responsibility of becoming the planet that they gravitate around. Psychologists call these persons co-dependents. The person they gravitate around is called an enabler.  I think in the past I have had co-dependent tendencies. But in my case they always clashed with my survivor’s nature. That is why, when given the proper condition to finally to take over, my survivor’s instinct took over and became the funding of the present me.

In this world there are truly remarkable people, some of them have already died, some of them are currently alive and not many know about them and some are always waiting to be born. If you are lucky enough to meet one of these people you should look up to them as a role-model, you should learn from them, you should admire them, but never make them the center of your existence. Take what is great about them and try to mimic it within your own personality, but be careful not to get attached to them as a person. Because a great mind, holds within it just as much craziness and sometimes the person as a full might not be at all pleasant or good natured. Just like anything else in this world, humans are not fully good, nor fully bad, they are a mix. That is why, the best person in your life should be you, because that is the only one that you can shape and control to quite a high degree.

Our mind can never be shared. You can share your thoughts, but never be sure you interpret them correctly yourself. The hideous truth is that we are born and we die alone, that is why even if you have friends and lovers, the best person in your life should be you. You should trust, love and respect yourself, because you can never rely on others to do that for you. You do not have to do it all the time, you are allowed timeouts of low self esteem and crying for no reason, but never allow others to treat you worse than you treat yourself. Never rely on anyone else to make you happy or feel complete. Because all people have faults and they will probably make mistakes. And never dedicate all your efforts to “fix” or make somebody else happy. Because another hideous truth is nobody owes you anything and you do not owe anybody else anything either. I’m not saying you should be selfish, but you should make sure not to forget about self preservation. We are all  doing our best here to have a life well lived at the end of our days.

Sometimes it will hurt, sometimes you will be so happy you will think you do not deserve it. This is life, move on, get over it. Just keep living.

Stay safe, stay happy!