Now [en]

This page tells you what I’m up to now. An idea by David Sivers discovered through Patricia BT. Now is 15.09.2025.

I’m still living in Lausanne, in the same flat I moved into after my year in India, in 2000. I still have a coworking space two floors below, which has been picking up again since the beginning of the year.

I’m recovering from a bad ski accident mid-March which left me with post-concussion syndrome and unable to go back to work until now. I’ve turned a corner recently and am hoping to start getting back to work very soon. It has been a difficult six months, including a lot of “Big Life Questions” prompted both by the accident, learning to function in a limited state (at least temporarily), and the suicide of a good friend (my fourth funeral in less than two years).

My job is still organisational strategy for the SBB in the field of energy maintenance, near Bern, since autumn 2022. A significant part of my work is in German, which has been a challenge, and has led me to realise how much extra work I actually do to compensate my hearing loss and ADHD, and that my hearing in particular puts me at a big disadvantage to learn to function professionally in a foreign language. The accident has made clear that I need to think about how I use my cognitive ressources in the coming years, and that it might make sense to move to a position which is better aligned with my natural strengths. I’m super lucky and thankful to have a very supportive employer, both regarding dealing with the accident and where to take my career next.

Facebook suspended my account mid-August and that has accelerated my move back to the open web, both for myself and the diabetic cat community I’ve been running since 2018. I’ve been looking at Discourse and am blogging more. I’m also thinking through what the open web needs to be a viable alternative to Big Platform and blogging about it. My Facebook account was unsuspended but I plan on posting there less. Follow me on the socials: Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Instagram mainly. I’m trying to revive Tumblr and Flickr. I’m also on LinkedIn. I’m thinking a lot about how to preserve and backup my data in spaces that I control.

The diabetic cat community is doing well, but we are facing increasing grief with Facebook, removing live videos, marking posts as spam, not letting us mention members. We currently have about 7000 members, a team of 20 moderators, a huge amount of documentation (written and video), and a sister community of about 2500 veterinarians. See it either as my “hobby” or as my superhero job (“I work for the railway company during the day, and at night I save diabetic cats”). Focus now is getting started on moving it out of Facebook and onto Discourse. It’s going to be a big move, and I want to do it well.

I started singing in a choir again in 2020, which is something I’d really missed. I’ve been going to more live music shows this year, and intend to continue. I’m doing judo as regularly as I can, and after losing 10kg in 2022 (on purpose, with a nutritionist) I’ve been hiking much more, thought this summer has been “off” given the ski accident. Last summer, I did the Dales Way with a friend, that was great. I got on HRT a year ago and it has been a game-changer, particularly for joint pain and my overall physical performance (I feel 15 years younger at judo).

In 2021 I was diagnosed with ADHD and I’ve been on medication since then. It has changed my life, literally. The years pre-diagnosis were really difficult as I was struggling with life in general and had no idea why. I now find it much easier to do what I’ve decided to do, and have a new-found ability to make plans for my future.

I have two cats:

• Oscar: an old three-legged rescue with a bunch of health problems, but we get along well. He’s getting over pancreatitis (wasn’t sure he’d make it) but has lost a lot of muscle mass over the last year. I’m not sure how long he still has, but he’s not dead yet, specially when he has a chance to tell young Juju that he’s the King.
• Juju: officially Julius, a neighbourhood stray I decided to TNR back in February. I failed at the R part (the cat distribution system found me), and it turns out he is a real cuddle-bunny who reminds me of Quintus. He lives downstairs in the coworking space, and has free access to the outside through the cat-flap.

I’ve spent a lot of time this year playing with LLMs. I haven’t been excited by new tech as much since I discovered the social internet. I also took two weeks off work last autumn to do some deep flat-cleaning, tidying, sorting, shuffling furniture around, during which I discovered smart home stuff, which I’m now quite enthusiastic about. So I have cameras to keep an eye on the cats, lots of little lamps all over the place with central switches, coloured bulbs which nudge me to prepare food or go to bed, temperature sensors to help me manage the now-common summer heatwaves… I’m planning on automating more with movement detection and door opening sensors.

Previous Nows

I have an internal debate about this. I like keeping track of history. We’ll see.

03.11.2023

I’m still living in Lausanne, in the same flat I moved in after my year in India, in 2000. I still have a coworking space two floors below, though it’s quite empty since covid (plan: get it up and running again).

I work for the SBB in the field of energy maintenance, near Bern. It’s been a bit over a year, now. My role, in short, is some variety of internal business development: what changes (organisational or otherwise) do we need to make to our department so that we remain capable of providing the same quality of maintenance services in 5, 10, 15 years, given everything that is changing around us (in the field of maintenance, the industry, the company, the place of work in society, etc…) – a significant part of my work is in German.

I’ve been running a large volunteer support group for diabetic cats (well, their owners) since early 2018. About 5000 members, a team of 20 moderators, a huge amount of documentation (written and video), and a sister community of about 2000 veterinarians. See it either as my “hobby” or as my superhero job (“I work for the railway company during the day, and at night I save diabetic cats”).

I started singing in a choir again in 2020, which is something I’d really missed. I’m doing judo as regularly as I can, and after losing 10kg in 2022 (on purpose, with a nutritionist) I’ve been hiking much more, and picked up via ferrata this year. My plan next year is to buy the gear for it. I had a good ski season last winter and plan on doing the same this coming one. Haven’t gone sailing as much as I’d have liked.

In 2021 I was diagnosed with ADHD and I’ve been on medication since then. It has changed my life, literally. The years pre-diagnosis were really difficult as I was struggling with life in general and had no idea why. I now find it much easier to do what I’ve decided to do, and have a new-found ability to make plans for my future.

I have one cat, Oscar. He’s an old three-legged rescue with a bunch of health problems, but we get along well. Erica died in February this year, and Quintus in December 2020. I’m not planning on adopting another cat as long as Oscar is around.

I’ve made my way through pretty much all of Star Trek these last years. I’m not reading much (I tend to either watch series or read, I’ve discovered) but I’m still listening to lots of podcasts. I’m trying to write more and am doing quite a lot of photography.

I’m writing this from Nawalgarh in Rajasthan, my first trip to India since 2018.