These past couple of months, up to a year have been mad. I've written about it before, and I'm not writing this now to get any kind of sympathy or anything. Not at all. I'm doing it all, because I feel I have to. But then when I take a step back I see that finding balance gets me further than just working away without taking a break every now and then. If you know what I mean...

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When?

The other day I thought to myself: 'When was the last time I had a day off?'
And I seriously couldn't remember!
Then I thought: 'Why did we move here again?'
Exactly, to work less, and have more time to do fun things.
How has that worked out for ya? Not exactly as planned.
But I'm not complaining. Everything I do has a purpose.
Now, with the work I'm doing at the moment, there are little to no breaks, because the situation I'm in, and the situation I'm working towards requires the work to be done.
At the moment, I am working 3 different jobs, and I'm also working on other things that might potentially become something, and I'm studying to hopefully do something else sooner rather than later. All of it requires time and attention, leaving little to no time for anything else.
And it doesn't end there. Nope. I'm still looking on several different platforms to see if I can find more work. LOL.

So the work...I still work for 2 different platforms training AI. I've been doing this since May last year and I'm actually really enjoying the job. I often laugh at how 'they' respond, and I laugh even more at some of the prompts I see passing by. Not all are colleagues but most of them are, and I often think: "Where the hell do they get these people?" There seems to be little awareness or fairness when it comes to this. I guess even in this line of work the Nigerian, Indian, and Russian scam bureaus have taken over, claiming to speak German or Dutch, while not even getting English right. I can usually spot them right away when they claim to be located in the US but throw out typical phrases ending with ma'am...or similar. But it's not the only thing (thankfully) that I like about the job. I like how it keeps me sharp and learning. Not one day is the same, and I see many different projects and subjects pass by, so it keeps me on my toes. I like the challenge.
The downside of the job is that it's just not a regular thing. So whenever there is work, I have to take it, because if I don't, it will go to any of the others that are eagerly waiting to do it instead of me. So I can have times when there's 12, 15 or more hours of work a day, and then days or weeks (and recently even months) when there's nothing. It sucks. I wish it could be my 40 hour a week job. Or maybe a little less...

I've always had the odd translation job here and there, but because the market is highly competitive, and the same scam bureaus from above have saturated the business by working with Deepl or Google translate, and for pennies on the dollar, most translation job offers I get, have sentences like: "We offer 1-2 cents per word..." And I am not taking those jobs. I could be an a-hole and lower myself into deepl and Google translate shenanigans as well, but I'm just not willing to go that low. I won't take the job. Period. Not because I think I'm too good, but because I don't want to be part of the problem. And it is a problem. Translation takes time, effort, and it's not something everyone can do. Everyone can literally translate some words into their language. But not everyone will do it right and adapt it to the locality of that language. If I see expressions translated literally, I know for sure that this translator is either not a trained translator, or they use the above translation tools...The tariffs a trained translator will charge (12, 13 or more cents per source word) are really not a lot, if you keep in mind that people have to pay taxes, buy laptops etc. And with every other kind of business it's 'You get what you pay for.'
Read some subtitles or listen to some of the dubbing that have been done and you'll see why.
I once watched the Japanese version of Spirited away, and in one of the very first scenes, I noticed that the subtitle didn't quite translate what the character in the movie said. If I can spot this with my 10 Japanese sentences, then a person who actually learned Japanese properly sure as hell will.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I heard about a woman who started a new company, and she needed translators for English to German. I applied, told her what I charge and was hired right away. Then she asked me if I also translate to Dutch, and was hired for that too. Now, it's not a lot of work for the moment, but it's something. And it's nice to be appreciated for the work I do, and get paid a normal tariff for it too.

The whole reason for taking on the extra work is so, at some stage, I can work less.
Right now, that's not happening. Instead, I work more. But eventually, that was the plan.

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What?

Then I'm (trying to) work on a few more things.
Some of those things are put on the backburner, but still very high on my list. Others are actively worked on right now, one way or the other.

One of those things is something is something I've been having in my mind since before we moved here. Street dogs. Before we moved here, I figured there would be a lot of them. And I wasn't wrong.
Now, some are better off than others. But others are doing worse than you could ever imagine.
I've seen my share of street dogs, in Asia and Europe, but here they seem to be hated more somehow.
Where we used to live before, the street dogs are the same every day. They all seem to have their 'spots' and they all tend to stick with those spots. Logically, it's the spots where the taco stalls and restaurants are. Those dogs are usually well taken care of, because people feed them scraps, and if that's not the case, they'll find whatever food is being thrown out in the trash.
But there are areas where these dogs aren't that lucky. Right after we moved here, about 2 weeks in, we brought one of those dogs home with us. All with the plan to rehome him. Well, he was so sick that it took much longer to get him back to how he was supposed to be. First I had him checked and neutered. The neutering was important since we already had a female who was not spayed. It was never an issue, because the other two dogs we had with her in Ireland were her neutered brother, and another female. She didn't stray, nor would any stray dog ever dare to come near her with her brother right behind her. But, of course, with Kobe it was different. But because he was sick, the healing didn't go as planned, and he needed more care than expected. And by the time he was well enough to be rehomed, we had gotten attached to him, so he stayed.
And look how well he turned out:

Meet Kobe. Or stinky as he's called too. Somehow he doesn't like baths...Go figure.

Not long after we rescued Kobe, we spotted a big dog on the road, looking for scraps at a vegetable stall. He could barely stand on his legs, and he was shaking all over. My daughter told me we couldn't leave him, but I knew that this dog would cost us even more than Kobe to get healthy.
Shaking the way he did, I just knew something was seriously wrong with him. And his size didn't help. Plus, most landlords here don't really want dogs on their property, so we were lucky to be able to have those that we had already. I convinced my daughter and myself that it wasn't feasible, but I couldn't forget about him, and even now he still haunts my thoughts sometimes.
All I could hope for was that someone else had picked him up and nursed him back to health, if it was possible.

Anyway, my plan from the beginning was to do something for the stray dogs here.
I didn't know exactly what, but as time went on, thinking and just talking to others, I got some advice and ideas. A game. But what kind? And how? Well, let's say I'm still working on that, because either way, it needs money and a lot more people than little old me to put it all together.
But I'm not letting it go.
To be continued...

Then there is that thing we call Hive. Every week at least a few times, I tell myself I needs to write a post. And every time something comes up. I need to work on that. And then there's this: how it needs to spread to the right people. Why not Mexico? Everywhere I go, I tell people about Hive. Some sign up and some actually do really well here. However, a lot of the people who should be here, aren't. I mean, how much could some unknown artist's life change if they got more traction here on Hive? Or 'just' a family who doesn't have much more than a roof to live under? Wow, the possibilities are endless.
But there is one thing holding me back: I don't speak the language well enough...
I really need to work on that too...
Anyway, nearby, we have a Mayan village. These people completely depend on charity.
It's another long story I'll get into at some stage, but it is quite bad, and at the same time, it is what it is. These people have all sorts of things going against them.
So that's what I'd like to focus on. Because maybe the language barrier doesn't matter then, since I also don't speak Mayan, lol. Also to be continued.

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My Learning Curve

Through my jobs, I discovered that there is one kind of people that are highly revered, required and not many around. Well, it's the kind of thing that we all know here already, but hey, we can't all be on top of everything, right? I By the 'kind of people' I mean people who can write code.
AI needs lots of them, and there aren't many. Not enough. So I figured, I would finally set out to do what I've been wanting to do for years...I would learn...Hey, I knew some basics, but nothing that would get me, or anyone else for that matter, anywhere.
A good friend of mine (a developer) told me years ago to learn Python. I didn't know why, and I never asked. And then I started working with AI, and all of a sudden all I see is python. So a few months ago, I started quite simply with watching every YouTube video, and taking every free online course I could find. And low and behold: Recently the subject came up in one of my tasks, and I actually knew what they were talking about. I gave myself a huge and painful tap on the shoulder, and reminded myself that I still had a long way to go.
Couple of years, give or take.
But that's where I'm at.

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The Balance

With all of that going on. And yeah, also trying to get to Hivefest with 3 kids in tow, and NO savings whatsoever, you can understand that there is little to no time for anything else.
My teens aren't suffering so much because they are the biggest money pits of all of them, and they don't really want to spend time with me unless I spend that money...
But my youngest still really enjoys my company, and activities with him don't drain the bank most of the time. I can suggest the beach or pool and it will give me a happy face. It's easy.
So last week, I finished one job of a few hours, early in the morning, and told him we'd head to the beach. Just before we were supposed to leave, I received a message that more work was coming in...
For the first time in weeks I said 'F... it, we're going. The work can wait. And if not, well, it doesn't matter.' Well, we went, and the work partly waited, because I got about 75% of it done before they handed it to other. Win/Win.
The water was beautiful, clear, and no seaweed. None.

Two days later we decided to go again. So this was two beach trips in a week, more than usual. To be honest, I hadn't seen the beach in months, and we live a 20 minute walk from it. About time, don't you think? So as I was floating in that beautiful, clear water, I thought to myself:

"I'll have to do this more often." After all: It's one of the things we came here to do."

All images were done by Leonardo.ai, with a little help from yours truly. Except the one of our dog. That was all Kobe, and a little bit of me behind the camera.