You don’t have to live where you were born. Find a place where you feel like it’s ok to be you and a group of people who like you and share your values.

Navigating my city’s public transport with a stroller also gave me new appreciation of how difficult it must be for people in a wheelchair. There are only a handful of step free stations in my city.

Food labs actually levelled up my cooking to the next level. So many great recipes and ideas. It was a very readable book too, I pretty much read it cover to cover. The best thing was buying a meat thermometer. Why did I cook for so long without it?

I’ll have to try your other recommendations now. :)

Good on your mother for persisting until she got to the bottom of the brownie mystery! It’s a bit of a pity the company tampered with such a successful recipe!

My brownie recipe is from a cookbook and I tried a lot of variations on it and then had to concede that the person who wrote the recipe got it just right. I make it with high quality chocolate and butter and then am very careful not to over bake it and they turn out deliciously decadent every time!

I recently discovered that you can cut moist brownies with a plastic knife and avoid them sticking and falling apart.

For those moments you just can't wait for them to cool, although, even cooled a good moist brownie tends to stick to the knife.

Your welcome.

> I tried a lot of variations on it and then had to concede that the person who wrote the recipe got it just right.

Part of this phenomena comes from 20th century cooking (especially for sweets): the ingredients are mass produced to high standards of consistency, and hence there may be one just right recipe (especially if you're backing in a climate controlled kitchen at sea level). Consider, instead, artisanal bread baking in 2018. Your flour comes from a food coop which used to get it stone ground by an Amish cooperative, but now switched suppliers to a local farmer -- and the recipe needs to change. Your sourdough starter turned acidic because you went away on vacation and it sat in the fridge -- change the recipe again! It's an unusually damp and chilly day, and the loaf is sitting out during its second rise -- you'll need to change the recipe!

Of course this is part of the thrill of this sort of baking -- that you have to understand the underlying processes, not just the well-made building blocks, to end up with good results. Sort of like switching from running OS X or Windows to, say, Linux from Scratch...

I suspect the butter is the result of two substitutions. This has happened to many recipes.

First, there was a money-saving switch from lard to commercial shortening or margarine. Either one was made of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

Second, due to trans fats or a desire to be less fake, that got switched to butter.

Lard makes wonderful brownies. Compared to butter, the taste comes out far cleaner. The purity of the chocolate really comes through.

Another fine option is coconut oil.

I have Fridays off to spend with my kids too. It's really nice. I've always found it quite difficult to switch off, but after three days with the kids I go back to work refreshed and with a fresh sense of perspective.

It's lovely to have extra time to spend with them while they are small. I always look forward to our Friday adventures. I appreciate the feeling of space it gives my week.

While I was on mat leave I started working on my little side project while they napped just to keep my skills fresh and to exercise the part of my brain. I've kept doing that and really enjoy having the time to inch my little website along. There's not a massive amount of time in my life that's not being a parent or at work, so it's been really nice to have something where I can call the shots and just do something for myself.

My boss was very accommodating when I wanted to switch to a four day week. We had another older guy in the team who was working half time and spending the other half spin charity work. There were also some other parents in the department who did non-standard hours. I don't know if it would have occurred to me if there weren't already other people doing it.

Success is fun and should be celebrated. It's definitely something that's nice to achieve from time to time.

What is problematic is when you look for something in success that success can't give you. If you don't like yourself, success won't make you like yourself. If you need more connection in your life, success won't necessarily give you that feeling of connection. If you're looking for proof that you have value, there is never enough success to prove it.

Success is great, but may lead you into doing things that are suboptimal for you, if you chase it. I think it's only really satisfying if you're chasing something more meaningful and then you are successful at that. The other advantage if you're doing something more meaningful, it's meaningful even if you're not successful.

I met many of my local friends in a cafe here. We all have small kids, which give you a very easy opportunity to talk to people you don't know and make it difficult to spend time with a phone or laptop.

After four years of living in our town with kids, I almost always bump into people I know when we are out and about. I've never been so connected to the local community where I live before and I really love it. :)

It's a little bit dated now, but the C2 wiki is a fun place to read about software development. There are quite a lot of patterns, anti-patterns, practices, rambling debates and just generally interesting ideas: http://wiki.c2.com/?DesignByCommittee

Absolutely love C2. Filled with funky little gems about finding meaning in life and work.

The group of people you're working with may not be as mutable as you think. I've been working in my programming language community in the city where I live for about ten years. There are people I have worked with before at pretty much all the really attractive places that do the language I have the most expertise with. Probably people who know people I've worked with at many of the others too.

The group seems pretty mutable be me.

Right now I work in Germany, writing in C++, the language I have greatest expertise in (except maybe C, where my epertise is all in hobby projects).

My professional goal is to work in Australia, preferably in any langauge other than C++.

I have an anecdote about my experience not working for a long period of time. Sounds like I'm in quite a different place in my life to you but I hope you don't mind me sharing and maybe there might be some part of it that is useful. :)

I just spent a year on maternity leave when my second child was born in May last year and headed back to the office in April this year. I'm a software developer for a medium sized team.

Adjusting to not being at work was quite difficult for about the first four months, particularly towards the end of the fourth month where the novelty had worn off but I hadn't really figured it out yet.

Because it was my second leave, I knew that to be content I would have to work through my feelings around my identity without work. It was both difficult and freeing to rediscover myself outside of the pressures of work. I personally felt a little bit afraid that there wouldn't be much left (kind of sad, I know), but I tried to just stay patient with my feelings. I feel like my identity now is more grounded. It was interesting that actually most of the things I value about myself didn't really change. One less thing to feel irrationally afraid of, I guess. :)

With a toddler and a baby at home, I didn't have trouble filling my days, but I thought a lot about how I could best enjoy the time. My goal was just to feel content, not necessarily happy or fulfilled.

The best thing was spending time with my local mum friends. The kids and I would meet up with our friends during the day at least three times a week. I think having a strong, available local network was really important for feeling connected and staying sane.

I joined a local charity for supporting families with babies and ran a group for parents with new babies. It was lovely doing something I felt very passionate about that made the world a tiny bit better. It was kind of nice to be able to use my organisational skills to get it all up and running. A slightly surprising (to me) result was it expanded my social network quite a lot.

I worked on a personal programming project. With all the other things going on, I really needed something just for myself and to work my brain in that way. I would really look forward to the middle of the day when both my kids were resting.

At around four months, we all fell into a fairly comfortable routine. Our days had a fairly standard rhythm and we had regular playdates and play groups to break up the week. The weeks actually started to pass quite quickly at that point.

I feel quite proud that I learnt to live at a slower pace. I miss being able to walk the buggy up to the park just because the day is sunny. It felt quite luxurious to be able to spend as long as I (or my kids) wanted on things, to choose what I was going to do with my day and to not be on a timetable.

I was kind of ready to come back to work after my time was up (small kids are physically and emotionally demanding!), but I was really glad to have the experience. I think in an ideal world, I'd have a career break every five years. It was such a wonderful way to unwind and get some perspective on things.

Err... but I'm a man. Although you'll find counter-examples, spending time with local mum friends won't do it as a man, I already can't count how many sexist jokes I get from girls every time I cook. Also, you describe a lifestyle where you don't have to bring money back home: No wonder you like it. Should I suppose you had a boyfriend working?

So, no, sorry, I can't make a baby and get 4 months of holidays, and my girlfriend is not going to pay for my lifestyle.

It's quite a mistake to show off to a man about things they can't have, especially things that are invoiced to men (such as the lady's free meal).