Hey there my Hive friends and followers!
It feels strange to write these lines as it has already been more than 5 months since my last post here on Hive and I don´t even know where and how to begin. Interesting how fast one can get out of what once used to be a daily routine. But today is my 7th Hive birthday and I never missed out on writing the “birthday post” in the past so I figured it could be an excuse to finally find some time for Hive and write something :)
Most of you probably know the reasons behind my absence here. The past year has probably been the most turbulent year of my life so far with so many changes and challenges to cope with and since I never was a multitasker by nature, I always have to let go of some things when I need to focus on something bigger and more important. Unfortunately, Hive was among the things that I had to sacrifice, even though not completely – you might have noticed that I still curate and comment here and there ;)
So yeah, this Hive birthday post is very different from all the previous ones that I wrote when I was still very active here but that´s life and who knows, maybe the next one will be written by @phortun the fulltime Hiver again :)
(I will link the previous posts here for future reference)
My 1st Hive birthday
My 2nd Hive birthday
My 3rd Hive birthday
My 4th Hive birthday
My 5th Hive birthday
My 6th Hive birthday
So what has happened in my life during those months of being silent here on Hive? Quite a lot actually. We have been settling down in our new home, I have been learning the ropes of my new job while trying to be a good parent and also trying to catch up with my family and friends, making up for all those years spent abroad. Also, in September, my hometown was hit by devastating floods so I helped my family and friends who had their homes flooded.
The new job has been really challenging. You know, when I messed up my “fulltime Hiver career” by being a horrible trader, I thought I would just return to the jobs that I did before Hive – mostly translating and copywriting – only to find out that this business has been greatly taken over by AI. Consequently, I had to venture into an industry that was totally new and unknown to me – the world of finance and insurance advisors. I don´t know how this business is perceived in your country but here in my homeland, this job used to have a pretty bad reputation as there used to be many “advisors” who had little to no moral standards and who were basically just rippig off people. That´s why I was very hesitant about the job offer at first but I decided to give it a shot to see if the business is still so “dirty” or if it has improved and to my pleasant surprise, I found out that the situation has improved greatly and that this job can be done honestly and with pro-customer attitude if you really want. That´s why I´m still there, trying to learn everything that I should know to be able to do this job properly and professionally. In the first months, as a part of the training, I even had to go to Prague a few times to attend some courses and tutorials organized by the company. It was all cool except the hotel where we were staying and that´s also where I will start the photo dump that comes with this post :)
This ugly communist monster is where all of us newbies were staying. It was just as ugly inside too so the only good thing about the hotel were the views :)
As I already mentioned, my free time has dwindled dramatically so during the past six months or so, I have only managed to go for a couple of little trips, mostly just around my hometown of Opava. But some of those places are still cool, let me show you a few random pictures…
The beginning of autumn was nice, sunny and warm here in my neck of the woods. Colorful leaves everywhere, we even got to do some mushroom hunting, which is something I really enjoy, you might remember it from my older posts ;)
Unfortunately, like I already mentioned, in mid September, a part of my country got destroyed by devastating floods, including my hometown. The place where we are staying was safe but some of my family and many friends were not so lucky and they had their apartments, houses, garages, basements, gardens etc. flooded :( My hometown has a population of almost 60,000 people out of which more than one third was literally under water. I didn´t take many photos during and after the floods, it was all just too heartbreaking. I will only show you 3 pictures – one taken when the river was already swelling (but still a few meters below the culmination point), one from my favorite park when it started to get flooded and then, just for the idea of the scale of the disaster, a random picture from a street where I helped my friends who got flooded. In fact, hundreds of streets in the city looked like that after the floods… In some houses, there were 2 meters of water. In other places, the raging river tore down the houses completely. My hometown has been celebrating 800th birthday this year and this is what we got as the gift :( But Opava people are strong and resilient, we will get over it.
Later on, in early November, the first frosts arrived, conjuring up some beautiful frosty art out there. And then, about a week ago, we got the first decent snow load of the year. I took a moment on my way to work to check out some natural places on the outskirts of the city and snap a few quick shots of the fresh snowy beauty :)
I saved the best for last of course :) Many of you have been asking about our daughter, the little princess Florecita. She has been absolutely amazing. On November 4, we celebrated her first birthday. It was also about that time when she took her very first steps :) She has been so much fun to be around! She keeps babbling, making funny noises and all kinds of crazy gestures, moves and antics all day long! Soon after her birthday, we also celebrated her name day - Flora has her name day on November 24 in most countries where this name exists so we just adopted it :) So yeah, she has been getting a lot of gifts and visits lately and she loves it! :) Let me show you a few pictures of our little angel. I will try to organize them chronologically starting from summer onwards.
So that´s it from me guys. I´m really glad I found some time to write this post, I have been missing the engagement with you. Whenever I find myself at some nice place, you know, somewhere in my beloved nature, I still have this little subconscious voice in my head telling me: “Wow, this would be great material for a Hive post”. I hope the day will come when I will be able to listen to that voice again hehe :) Until then, I need to make do with random sporadic updates like this one. I hope I will manage to write something new before my next Hive birthday though :D I will try.
Thank you guys for all the nice comments, questions and wishes that you have been leaving here for me, I really appreciate it and I try to answer everything, time permitting. I will also try to reply to all the comments that may (or may not :D) appear under this post, just please pardon me if it takes a bit longer than it usually did before.
Yours,
@phortun