Author: Leo Gopal

  • 4 Simple Tips to Better Communication for devs. (or how to avoid conflict, confusion, and talk to people).

    4 Simple Tips to Better Communication for devs. (or how to avoid conflict, confusion, and talk to people).

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    If I were to look back over my last decade in the tech world and pick one thing as my single best decision as a developer – I’d say choosing to study psychology rather than computer science. The most significant impact studying psychology had was on my communication skills, which, as a developer, put me…

  • On Kindness

    On Kindness

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    Contemplation of ‘Why?’ we learn, adhere to, and behave in certain ways has always intrigued me – one such question is: “Why do we find it necessary to be kind?” One of the many tediously bland, and reasonless, lessons we are taught by adults when we are kids is the importance of having manners, using…

  • In Praise of short-term love

    In Praise of short-term love

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    Nothing lasts forever, and never has forever had such a short life span as in love and relationships. It was probably the French-Swiss film director, Jean-Luc Godard, who said it best: “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”

  • In Praise of Melancholy

    In Praise of Melancholy

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    As a species and a society, we have grown to over romanticize and popularize happiness and have exiled all feelings of the contrary to the unpopular and unwanted crevices of human emotion. We strive only to increase those things that make us happy or that bring happiness to us, and at the slightest surfacing of…

  • Poem: Already gone.

    Poem: Already gone.

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    (This is a poem about the thoughts & feelings that so many suffer with daily.) “He fought so hard“, people would say. And he did, he did, until he didn’t. Gone, long before his heart stopped beating. In a moment living merely became the passing of time. He was defeated by the long hard struggle of…

  • My Talk on Mental Wellness at WordCamp Cape Town 2016

    My Talk on Mental Wellness at WordCamp Cape Town 2016

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    At WordCamp Cape Town this year, I gave talk on Mental Wellness, the WordPress Community, and You. An unusual talk for a tech conference, but one which needed to be spoken about – and I had no idea how it would go down. Watch on WordPress.tv https://twitter.com/maxbarners/status/774164897810657280 Summary: The main point of this talk was…

  • Dear Mothers

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    Dear Mothers, Please forgive us children who do not understand That You offer only a helping hand. A hand that has the strength to hold up the sky and we reject you and we make you cry… Please forgive us… I have seen the love of mothers, of all mothers with a love unmatched, unfathomable,…

  • On loving and being loved

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    We talk of love as if it were just one thing: in fact, it’s two very different moves, Loving and Being Loved. You start to grow up when you stop focusing on the latter and get involved with the former. Original: On loving and being loved

  • Surviving Suicide: Replying to my own suicide note.

    Surviving Suicide: Replying to my own suicide note.

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    A few years ago, I tried to kill myself (Don’t worry, that is far behind me now).

  • 2015 Year in Review

    2015 Year in Review

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    This has been quite the year: I moved cities, spoke at some major events, started out in a fairly new industry, survived, had many ‘firsts’ and successes, as well as a lot of failures too.