---
title: 'Vibe Check #14'
date: 2023-07-19T18:33:50.024Z
slug: 2023-07-19-vibe-check-14
author: Thomas Wilson
tags: 
    - vibe-check

---
June 2023 was a pretty busy month.  The company I work for went through a second round of redundancies and the software team (the team I lead) ended up being quite badly affected, and many of my colleagues were made redundant.  I ended up doing a lot of mental and emotional labour going through that process with, and for, the people affected.  

It feels (and felt) indecent to turn any of that into public content.  To make a "five steps for helping your newly redundant colleagues" article.  Or to post cryptic "things are hard".  Or to post "things aren't hard".  Because things have been difficult for me and for people around me.  The toll has been apparent and invisible, and the priority has been my wellbeing and the wellbeing  of the people around me (inconsistently ordered).

That feeling stands above everything else from June 2023.  That's not to say, there weren't some good things:

- Taking a wonderful sun-doused cycle ride with a close friend through the Oxfordshire countryside 
- Taking many (online) French lessons to prepare for a holiday in July.  I enjoy learning languages (really I think I just enjoy talking)
- Leaning on my mentorship network to talk through the human and  logistical moving parts, and feeling very supported 
- Having friends (bridal party members) over for a lunch and board game afternoon
- Teaching another friend how to sew, from cutting to finishing (it's hard, we still haven't finished that tunic)

**Books I Read** 

- Atalanta, Jennifer Saint.  My love for the "feminists writing women from mythology as though they were characters" genre continues.  Saint wrote *Ariadne*, which is in my top-three of these kinds of books (strong recommend for *Ariadne*).  In comparison, *Atalanta* feels equally technically strong, turning her attention to the titular Atalanta, a mortal chosen to be a champion of Artemis, by the goddess of the hunt herself.  Atalanta finds herself the only female member of the argonauts.  Something in the narrative didn't quite hit me like *Ariadne*, but I suspect that's the effect of expectations.
- A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik.  When I was nineteen I read all three Hunger Games novels in a very short time period (for me at least) - and I wanted a book which scratched that same itch.  A story about magical students at a magical school but where the school is lousy with enchanted creatures that want to crush kids' bodies and suck out all the magical nutrition within them?  And there are no adult teachers, and also the school itself is an indifferent steampunk contraption?  Fuck yeah, dude.  This is exactly what I needed to get me through "life is hard" times.  
