I have been occasionally reading an epub book on clojure on my phone.  I also have an app on my phone that is a tiny little clojure repl (it's so cute!!)

I have a lot to learn.

learning mockito, etc.

I am learning mockito.  I am also learning the subtleties of lots of unit testing that you can do in all levels of the SOA architecture...from the entity layer, to the business layer.

I am also learning how much the people I work with know about java and soa development.

Also I have been learning about how to relate entities using jpa.  I tried a many to many relationship, and it did not work for me.  I bet I made some critical error.

I also have been watching mean stack videos.

I was also trying to learn Romanian, but my Romanian friend is leaving the place where I work, so my reason for doing it has gone away pretty much.  Oh well.

veganism and memory/concentration problems??

Now there are no doubt lots of vegans that will beg to differ, but I have been abiding faithfully to a vegan diet during the week and then eating whatever I feel like (good or bad) during the weekend.  I have also been exercising a lot (like crazy).

A couple of weeks ago I was informed by the company I worked for that I was having all kinds of issues with working with others, getting things done quickly, generating new ideas, offering leadership and many other things.  My company put me on probation and pretty much threatened to fire me if I did not shape up.

I had a week off around then and that time and factoring in my own thoughts and listening to my manager, caused me to arrive at some possible suspects for my behavior:

1. I was being needlessly negative in general.
2. I could not generate a coherant and quick solution to problems.
3. I had a tendency to rub others the wrong way.
4. ...

Anyway all the things he accused me of seem to boil down to a couple things:  lack of enought energy and concentration to be the kind of employee that I had been when nutrition may not have been an issue.

I pretty much did not change much except eating more protein and changing to animal protein.  I understand that long term there may be some issues with eating animal protein, but I was having problems right THEN, ...not "in the long run."  

Essentially not being able to think and concentrate was causing me to be anxious and depressed and snappish with people and paranoid.  

So...

I started eating tuna and chicken with most meals...probably around 100 to 140g/day.  I exercise a lot so this is not excessive.  

The results?  I have been MUCH better at work in all respects:  more patient, more involved, more helpful to others, more able to concentrate and multi-process, able to work faster, finally getting some accolades!!

It is possible that it was just allowing myself to eat what I wanted and eating something new and interesting and taking restrictions off myself that caused this lift in behavior, but given the preceding improvements, plus the following improvements, pretty much outweighs all the skepticism I could have:  I now have less leg pain when I jog (I think my tissue is finally healing adequately in between jogs), my sex drive is better, I am moving faster in the morning, I am making better decisions, I am more focused and problem solving, I am better at lumosity, I am braver, etc.

Seems like I cannot afford to be vegan with my current situation!!  Not the results I thought I would get when I embarked on this vegan experiment 3 or 4 years ago.

I have been taking b12 in the amounts recommended, I have been eating about 130g of plant protein a day, ...but it seems it has not been cutting it when measured by my ability to compete and win against the people I work "with".  At my company we are constantly being rated and graded, and the bottom person is always being sought out and excised.  I do not like being that person.

The other things I changed, I should mention, is to eat dinner during the week.  Because I would let loose during the weekend, I would gain weight that I felt I needed to restrict myself to lose during the rest of the week.  Veganism and not eating dinner did this; I would watch my weight rise on the weekend and fall slowly during the week.

Another thing I was trying to do with not eating dinner was to give my pancreas and body systems an opportunity to regenerate.  It seems that during these periods your body is supposed to heal in ways that it cannot if you are going all the time.  I did sleep better at night with my former evening fast, but the rest of my life really sucked!  I am not kidding.

Anyway, maybe if I was going to do the vegan thing and all my exercise I should have been under the care of a specialized sports nutritionist...

...or...

...I could just eat the way I want and get over the problems I had with killing critters in order to feed my self.  

I choose the latter.  Maybe I will lose a few years...but I need my life back.  

I want to learn the mean stack.  I have been watching youtube videos on different aspects there of, and attending Denver JUG meetings where they talk about it.  I also want to learn more about Scala.  And Closure.  And Groovy on Grails.  And F#.

I am at a change in my career.  I am trying to figure out what to do next.