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About my experience with the Sabantuy celebration, I can't say anything special or something interesting. It was just a sunny and warm day, which I hadn't noticed in the last few days. However, today's weather provided a good opportunity to celebrate this traditional holiday in comfortable conditions. So many people gathered outdoors, enjoying the festive atmosphere with traditional and modern music and games. For me, it was a chance to spend some time outside and enjoy the warm weather.
The whole day I spent at my relatives' home and did nothing special. I just talked with them about random topics and joked with my cousins, nephews, and sisters for no particular reason. But it was much more fun to spend my time there than stay at home behind a laptop. Of course, it wasn't a spontaneous visit; I had been invited a few days earlier to celebrate our national holiday, "Sabantuy."
Usually, Tatars celebrate it after successfully finishing the sowing season. In recent years, it has taken place during the first week of June, and during the celebration, everyone can either participate in or watch interesting contests for both kids and adults. Also, the main competition is Tatar-style wrestling, "Köräş," which continues throughout the event.
During my bike ride, when I reached the suspended bridge and crossed it, I noticed a small sign with a restriction notice. The sign informed me that it was a private area and that walking or riding there was restricted. Luckily, the route itself wasn't blocked by any obstacles, so I continued my ride. But next time, I need to avoid this route and be much more respectful toward the owner of the field. After all, nobody wants some stranger passing through their property with a bike or, even worse, a motorcycle. So it's understandable, and I don't have any questions about that area. I also believe the restriction is reasonable, even though it creates some inconvenience.
Today my morning was great. I woke up at 7 AM even though I went to bed closer to 1 AM. By the time I actually fell asleep, it was around 1:30, maybe even a little later. So I'd say I got about 5 hours of sleep and still woke up on time without any worries. In my opinion, all of this was related to my work. On those days when I tried going to bed early, it didn't really help me wake up feeling cheerful. As for waking up on time, I won't even comment on that.
Now I am officially unemployed, but that doesn't mean I'll be spending my time free; I still have freelance projects. However, this day was quite calm. I spent the whole day at home, busy with my daily routine. Naturally, it felt unusual. I didn't need to join our morning meeting, check work chats, or fill in my work hours in a special Excel spreadsheet, which I had been doing every day for years. I also don't need to worry about work-related stress and other issues connected to my previous job anymore. Still, in the next few days, I need to collect some letters from the post office, sign them, and send them back. That should be my last task related to this work.
Everything happened in the morning. When I finished my morning routine, I noticed a message from Google Calendar. It said that I had a new meeting at 9 AM. It was really strange because I never had meetings that early during all my years at work. So I decided to check the participants to understand what was going on and why they had scheduled it so early.
But I already had some doubts that it could be a meeting about firing me, and honestly, it didn't surprise me. On the contrary, I was ready for it and had realized a few months ago that this situation was possible. Honestly, it wasn't painful for me. I accepted the news calmly and said goodbye to my colleagues on a good note.
When I started riding my bike closer to the meadow, I noticed something strange across the trail. It wasn't easy to understand what it was or recognize it at first. Initially, I thought it was just a cat because it was lying on the ground surrounded by grass and trying to hide from me. But when I rode closer, I realized it was a rabbit trying to escape from me. Fortunately, this time it took small pauses and looked around from time to time. During those moments, I had an opportunity to take a photo, even though it was still a bit far away.
Yesterday's optimization of my blog performance bothered me until this morning. So I tried to give myself another chance to fix it. But it wasn't successful again; I couldn't get any good experience from my try. Maybe it was a bit worse because I broke my blog, and as a result some sections didn't work at all. Of course I spent so much time to fix it because I couldn't leave it without my attention. After all these manipulations, I finally calm down, and I don't want to try it again. Overall, I came to the conclusion that if it works, then let it work; don't try to fix it if you don't want to make adventures on your head.
Today, I spent the whole day trying to optimize my blog speed and improve its performance. But it wasn't a good idea to spend so much time on it because I didn't get enough good results in return. I was also forced to roll back some of my fixes related to photos. I figured it out a bit late and didn't notice that the modern image format WebP had changed my photo colors and made them look dimmer. That wasn't acceptable at all, so the better decision was simply to restore all the photos from the backup I had created before I started manipulating them. Naturally, nobody would notice the difference unless they compared them to the originals. But for me, it mattered much more to keep the photos as close to the original versions as possible.
Last month, I actively started reading the first Harry Potter book, “Philosopher’s Stone.” Every day during lunch, and sometimes at night, I read one chapter. Now I can say that I’ve basically finished it — I only have the last two chapters left. So I hope to finish this part tomorrow and begin the second one, “Chamber of Secrets.” Naturally, this book wasn’t very big, only 332 pages and 17 chapters, and I spent about twenty days reading it. Probably, I could’ve finished it a bit earlier if I hadn’t skipped some days. However, I still have some doubts about whether I can finish the remaining six books by the end of this year. Because those books are much bigger — for example, part 5, “Order of the Phoenix,” has around 800 pages, while the others are smaller, with about 400, 500, or 600 pages each.
Yesterday I had a busy and challenging day, so I was able to go to bed early at 11 PM after sharing my post. I don’t even remember how I fell asleep so fast when I dropped onto my bed. Unfortunately, it didn’t really help me wake up on time, because I was exhausted and hadn’t slept for more than 24 hours. Of course, it made me feel sleepy during the day, and everything seemed a little strange. So next time I need to be smarter and not skip sleep if I don’t want to feel the same way again. Overall, my oversleeping gave me a great opportunity to rest from yesterday’s worries and recover my energy.
In the early morning, at 2:30 AM, I went to the mosque across the quiet village streets with my relatives and neighbors. However, this visit to the mosque was quite different from my previous one from this post. Because this time, we didn’t walk randomly; instead, all the people from our street gathered at the very beginning of the village and walked together all the way to the mosque. But we didn’t just walk — from time to time, we randomly stopped for about 2–3 minutes and said “Takbir.” It continued for approximately fifteen minutes until we reached the mosque. When we arrived, other villagers from different streets were already waiting for us so everyone could say the final “Takbir” together before entering the mosque.