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there's no dictionary in my head

2022-12-16

2 minute read

I had the interview yesterday, it went okay. I got some really good tips on how to appear better online for job applications, and how to put my best foot forward.

A lot of basic things, like surfacing how active I am in dev work, more github commits, more info on my website. Things I could have guessed, but it's funny how often all the good information is simple and obvious.

The structure of the interview was funny too, he mostly just asked if I had any questions and then let me ask away.

All in all it was great practice and has me feeling much more confident interviewing.

Bullet points for what I want to improve on:

Things to change

Job hunting is a skill in itself, I can feel myself getting better over time but I'm surprised how long it's taking. Add it to the list of things I thought would be quick and easy, an illustrious and sought after position next to pomodoro apps and comics about cowboys.

what else

I read some more Lorca poetry the other night. My spanish comprehension is at a funny place. There's myriad words I still don't know, and subject/object placement still mixes me up with some of the poems, while at the same time there's things I understand so deeply that I struggle to translate them. Like in english, there's no dictionary in my head that words point to for reference - they simply mean what they mean. But this is a trap too, even in english I find myself saying things with no meaning, or gesturing in the direction of meaning without knowing the specifics. That's part of why I started keeping this journal - as practice for articulating my thoughts and ideas clearly. I've had varying degrees of success.

Related: I read back over what I wrote about verbs the other day and was embarrassed by how incomprehensible it was. I managed to pen it a little more clearly to a friend, so here's the revision:

At first I thought: "a verb has forms, moods, tenses, and grammatical persons and numbers. These are chained together, and you drill down into them to finally get to conjugations, sitting like grapes at the end of a vine."

But this was awkward to work with, and felt like a lot of structure abstracting away the actual conjugations.

Then I thought "a verb is a collection of conjugations, and each conjugation has properties. Conjugations can be grouped and sorted by their properties." And this has been a far more fruitful concept.

been doing more cowboy comics

the horse in my mind rides on

listening to

Gnaw - Alex G, and old old bandcamp purchase

Questions