jakebe | Recent Entries

I've been in a mild-to-moderate funk this week that I'm trying to climb out of. If I really sit still and listen to what my emotions are telling me, I think I'm really just tired of feeling opposed to everyone I meet in my daily life.

My mood at the job has tanked notably because it feels like no matter what I'm doing, it's not the best thing. Even worse, chances are you'll be interrupted well before you're able to make progress on it, or a simple task will be much harder than it should be because of technology. Most days it feels like I'm fighting for the time I need to do what's been asked of me, so any interruption or extra task is a distraction from the goal. When the phone rings, I'm not in the mindset of "How can I help this person?" My mind is "How can I end this interruption as quickly as possible?"

It's a terrible frame of reference to begin a conversation. If the person on the other end of the phone is nice and making small talk, they're wasting my precious time. If they go right into the issue but don't give me the precisely-right amount of information, they're ignorant and have no idea what they're talking about. Either way, I'm well and truly primed to view the caller as the enemy, an obstacle to overcome so I can do the work that actually matters.

So my demeanor has been short — not just with customers, but with the drivers I work with to serve them and the colleagues who do much of the admin work with me. It's…not great, and has definitely made our small office a less-joyous place to work. I hate that.

The fact of the job is that there will always be too much work to do, and part of being good at it is learning to prioritize which work needs to be done first. It also means being adaptable enough to switch contexts quickly from deep-work project to phone call to visitor to email to phone call then back to deep-work project with a minimum of buffer. It's definitely not my preferred working style, but right now it's the one that feels like works best.

A couple things have provided handholds for me to climb out of the hole with. Husboo is reading A Canticle for Leibowitz during our daily dinner prep and it's been a real joy to revisit the novel with his excellent voice translating the story for me. It reaffirms for me the things I liked about it the first time — the very idea of viewing the post-apocalypse through a religious filter, in a world where religion and science/progress have come around to being bedfellows at last. A few centuries removed from the Flame Deluge and subsequent Simplification, history takes on a Biblical recitation (Presidents become "princes"; scientists and engineers are cast as "magi") that tells the broad strokes but recontextualizes everything in a weird way. The ancient technology this monastic order studies and protects persists only through them, though the context that would give it meaning has been deliberately stripped away by sick and angry survivors through generations.

Life is slow enough that Brother Francis knows his work illuminating ancient manuscripts will never be done, but sees the work as so much bigger than him it doesn't bother him. Someone else will come along to fill his seat when he meets his judgement, influenced and encouraged by his work, until it's finished. There was this faith in this consistency of his order that warmed me and shifted my perspective just enough to see this world I'm in in a better light.

Then, there was this story from This American Life about how a small town in Utah managed to beat a measles outbreak ravaging communities like it across the country. A reporter interviewed officials of the school district there to see what they did right, and it turned out to be two things: getting the message right, and assigning it to the right deliverer. First, instead of giving parents the choice of having potentially sick kids in schools by saying "may", they used "shall" to close off the wiggle room. Second, they let the school nurses call the parents to explain the policy, since they were working with parents about their childrens' health already.

One of the nurses talked about how they would need to have conversations with parents that would…convince them to do something they were opposed to, not by getting into the politics of it but by centering the conversation on the child's health and the safety of the community. She said that even though this was a difficult conversation, she still needed to be trusted beyond that.

It's a small thing, but thinking of these touches not as individual events, but as stones that build a bridge toward a relationship or a wall that will forever separate us. Over time it feels like I get too focused on the wrong kind of productivity and the work that really matters — building trusting, smooth relationships — has suffered. The work will always be there, and there will always be others to take it up. What matters is how I serve the institution by being a good steward of the relationships I've inherited through it.

I'm not sure if this is going to be enough to get me out of the funk completely, but it makes me feel better striving towards that future than the one I had been building.

This has been a pretty hectic year.

At work, one person in our three-person team turned in their two weeks' notice; a day later, the second person filed for emergency medical leave. This meant that for a solid month, I was the only customer service representative at our company, doing the work of three people.

It was intense. Every day was a non-stop barrage of phone calls and a struggle to remember all the things I had to do: schedule dumpster exchanges, process service changes, send messages to other teams -- almost entirely administrative stuff. We didn't have time for data entry or any other aspect of the job. It was just answering phones and trying to keep my head above water.

If it sounds stressful, that's because it was. :D But I managed to make it through with my sanity mostly intact! I learned a lot through April -- that preparation and consistent best practices really do make a bad situation somewhat better, that I can handle a lot more than I thought I could, and that I really should be more forthcoming about the things I need to be the kind of person I want to be. I can actually trust my support network to have my back when I need it.

My colleague is back from medical leave, and we hired a new third for the department, so things are somewhat back to normal now. May was still quite busy because of training for the new coworker and the natural feast-or-famine cycle in waste management. Now that the weather is warm and the days are long, everyone wants to build something, tear down something else, and landscape the earth around it.

Outside of work I've joined a local gay softball team. That's eaten up a great deal of my free time, but it's been so rewarding. Learning how to do all the basic tasks in softball has been this unexpected pleasure of consistent rooting within my body, connecting movement and balance with will and accuracy. I've learned that my mobility is nowhere near where it should be, and neither is my cardio-vascular training -- but the best part is that I'm motivated to do something about it now!

I've made good progress over the several months we've been playing in the Spring Season, and I'm very grateful for all the teammates who've patiently guided me through the beginner's stage. I know I still have quite a ways to go before I'm even considered a solid player, and before I can go much further I *have* to get in better shape. Our team is currently 2nd in our division (out of 4), but this Thursday we're playing a double-header against the #1 team and I think that'll put us below .500 for the season. Not great, but we're in decent position for the playoffs on Saturday at least!

Right now, the biggest problem seems to be making the best use of time so I'm doing everything I want to do. I've been itching to write or do *something* creative for a solid month now, but I haven't figured out how to make sure it fits into my schedule consistently. And the nature of the work is such that there aren't that many stretches of time where I can sit down and think about something for long enough to get into the vibe of creation.

At home, there's always at least three or four things that need to be done but chances are I'm already so wiped from work I just want to sit in a dark room and decompress for a while. Even then, I can't actually do that because the evenings are so filled with stuff. Tonight I have a therapy session and then a D&D game. Batting practice Tuesday, a mercifully free night on Wednesday (that usually ends up getting spoken for by some plan or another), the double-header Thursday, another rest day on Friday (usually taken up by Magic: the Gathering games), and the playoffs on Saturday -- which could last all day if we're good.

Husboo has joined yet another softball league that plays on Sundays, but he's also recovering from a second muscle tear in his leg. Everyone's recommending that he take time off and actually rest, but he's so impatient to play it's hard to get him to actually stick to that plan. We'll see how things go on Thursday, but I have a feeling he won't actually make it to Sunday. Four games in two days -- even truncated, hour-long ones -- are a LOT to ask of any non-athlete.

After this week, there will be *some* free time to recuperate, so we'll see how I can get back into other hobbies then. It would be nice if I could switch tasks a little faster, but we'll see if I can develop that at all.

Yeen ended things with Husboo last night. I came home last night to Husboo making a martini while he gave me the news. It was...a sudden end to a relationship that hadn't quite been working for some time.

Husboo is heart-broken, of course, and I'm heart-broken for him. He's doing his best to manage his grief, but he poured his heart and soul into the relationship for over a year now. When you try so hard and your efforts are still rejected, it's impossible not to take that personally.

But it honestly had nothing to do with him. Yeen is...young and his heart is bigger than his brain in the sense that he commits to things with no real sense of the work involved in keeping that commitment. I don't think he understood what he was signing up for with a poly relationship -- much less one with someone as intense as Husboo tends to be. Once he realized this wasn't someone whose life he could dip into for two weekends a month and then leave alone, I think he couldn't find a way to balance everything without burning out.

I don't blame Yeen for this at all. He's young, and as a recovering over-committer myself I know how easy it can be to fall into this trap. The reality of your dreams is always so much messier and so much more work than you think it will be.

But this leaves Husboo wondering if he's unloveable, or will never be seen as someone special again, and...of course not. He's special to me, and I know he knows this too, but I think he misses the total immediacy of new love, the excitement and rush of endorphins. I, on the other hand, have never known the suffusive warmth of old love, being with someone day after day, building a life, a rut, habitual comfort with them. I feel so lucky to have someone to build that with, and I cherish him for it.

It's just easy to stay focused on all the ways in which we're not fulfilled that we don't give enough air to all the things that are getting us 80% of the way there, you know? I think the quest for fulfillment is good and natural, but we get locked into the mindset of finding the flaws in everything, tallying up all the ways we're unhappy like a to-do list that needs to be checked off. I know there's a middle path between contentment in stagnation and total restlessness forcing a death march to perfection, but staying on it does require a level of intentionality I haven't been putting in.

There are a few places in life where I need to step up. For now, it's important to me that he knows I love him. <3

Coming back to this after a long time away. I'm hoping I can find time to do this and slowly, steadily, get my head back in working order.

It hasn't been too bad, come to think of it. I'm working as a Customer Service Rep for a local waste-management company, coming up on 3 months of employment now. It's not a bad position -- it's easier than what I had been doing and I get paid more, so that's all gravy. I do have to commute to an office nearby, which isn't the worst thing either.

I hadn't realized how much I needed to be out and about with other people to feel LIKE a person. Of course I'd much rather be working from home and enjoying all of the free time that would give me -- but having to look at myself in a mirror every day, make sure I'm presentable to the world, prepping to leave my safe home for the wild world outside, re-learning how to interact with people on a daily basis...it's all stuff I really needed to be doing because otherwise I would be shrinking back into myself and totally fine doing so.

The commute isn't so bad, either. I work from 8 - 5 with an hour for lunch; I leave home around 7:20 AM and come back a little before 6 PM most days. It's a couple of hours "lost" to the commute, but it's also not really lost time. It took me a little while to remember that you can fill your commute with decent activities too, like listening to a podcast, audiobook, or calling up the people you haven't talked to on the phone in forever.

The job itself is...an adjustment. We split time evenly between actual customer service (mostly by phone with a little email) and operations stuff -- data entry, generating reports, refining processes. Honestly it's kind of perfect; the customer service skills are coming back online slowly but steadily, and I think my time as a QC analyst has sharpened my operations 'cadence' so that I can sharpen up a few things now that I know what I'm doing.

The commute means I see Husboo and Ratty a lot less, which is a bummer. It also means I have a lot less time for house upkeep, which sucks. Thankfully, Husboo has been picking up a lot of the slack and I'm really grateful to him for it.

Tonight, he'll be going on Date Night with the Yeen, leaving Ratty and I to our own devices. I definitely want to spend part of the evening just hanging with him -- we haven't been able to really connect in a couple of weeks, it feels like. But also, at some point, I'll need to sit down and bang out the plot for tomorrow's Unlicensed D&D game.

The game has been pretty decent overall since coming back in 2026. I've been happy with the sessions even if they haven't quite gone down the way I anticipated. I mean, isn't that the way it usually goes down?

Busy weekend with Husboo's baseball scrimmage, our softball clinic, and a trip to an Ethiopian restaurant on the books. It IS a good thing I'm getting paid tomorrow, but I'm also dedicated to spending as little as possible whenever I can help it. It's time to start building back my savings and paying down my debt.

Today was Husboo's 48th birthday! He spent the day playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and for lunch we ordered in from a local place called Pasta Mobsters. In the afternoon, we took a trip over to Illusive Comics so Ratty could buy a couple of gift cards and Husboo could look into getting an Unsanctioned box. Then, off to Buffalo Wild Wings for a chill birthday dinner before an evening showing of Predator: Badlands.

The movie was pretty good! I really love what they're doing with the Predator mythos these days; using the simple premise to tell unusual, engaging sci-fi thrillers. This one featured the Predator as the main character, and the story was almost a bildungsroman about the runt of a clan learning how to become the hunter he wanted to be. I guess it's just accepted that the Alien and Predator universes are the same now, and it allows the former franchise to share in the renaissance energy of the latter. Dek, the Yautja/Predator, takes along an android in a partnership of convenience when he crash-lands on the planet where he means to take an impossible trophy -- the unkillable Kalisk. They both learn how to work with the local ecology instead of against it, and that proves to be how they triumph in the end.

It makes me kind of excited to dig into the local flora of California and start planting (maybe) native herbs or fruiting plants next year. The backyard is going to need quite a bit of work if I'm going to make a go of it, and it'll take some doing to wrangle some order into the garden. I really should make a project plan and schedule if I'm serious about it.

Anywho, that was the birthday. We'll extend the celebration out for a few days so we could reserve a table at a local steakhouse on Friday. Saturday, we have a D&D game and then a holiday party at a new friend's place. It should be a fun time!

We're well and truly in the holidays now, I suppose. I spent over a week at Boss Dog's place, where I slept through a Roll Party, made a pie and several batches of cookies, celebrated Thanksgiving, did our customary Black Friday trip, and came home. This year was a little different because we were down two of our regulars and met a lot of new people, but it was a wonderful time even still. The new folks aren't *completely* new; we had seen them a few times this year and follow each other on social media, that kind of thing. This was the first time we got to actually hang with them, though, and there's always some anxiety wrapped around that. Boss Dog has a number of friends who are highly successful in the world, know how to do a lot of varied, complex things, and see the world a lot differently than I do. I always worry I come across as some brain-dead yokel in company like that, but...I don't need to.

Both Husboo and I dissolved many of the barriers we had erected between us and our community through the trip, and that was just awesome to see/experience. Over the last several years, I've felt myself crossing over into a different stage of life. Even though I still feel like some messed-up little kid, the fact is that I'm 45 years old, a whole grown-ass man. As I shake off the torpor of the last decade or so, I find myself more and more motivated to step into the demands of adulthood. I'm already paying car insurance and rent, that sort of thing -- but I also want to shift my mindset from 'trauma survivor' to 'authentic, loving person'. Not that they're mutually-exclusive, of course. But for me, fear and anxiety make me curl up and brace for pain. It's hard to be open and vulnerable when you're always cringing from anything that gets near you. And that's just...where I've been for a while.

But at the same time, there's no denying that the pain and fear I've held for so long has changed me. It's not something I can expunge, but it IS something I can incorporate in a healthy way. I don't want to shut down anymore, but at the same time I have to recognize the situations that frazzle me, you know? I don't want to make any of it anyone else's problem, but I also need to make space for it and be OK with asking others to make space for it, too. Not everyone will be able to do that, for various reasons, and for the most part I think I can be OK with that. I get that my journey is my own, and that it might not look like anyone else's.

The trip...brought those differences into relief for me in a way that allowed me to see things a bit clearly. The Black Friday trip was a lot more physical than previous ones, and that was mostly the influence of the new folks. I don't think the host minded at all, and...neither did most people, I think. It allowed me to observe how folks behaved sexually with each other without feeling like a giant creep about it, and I think I finally realized just how...little sexual experience I've had in general.

I've been all but celibate for the past...20 years now? after a string of traumatizing experiences in my 20s. I think that my natural predilection is for less sex, especially on Fluoxetine, though -- so maybe it's not the trauma after all. I could be quite happy not ever being sexually intimate with another person ever again. That doesn't mean I don't like cuddling though, and touching and being touched. That's *quite* nice.

And if I could be reasonably confident that fondling didn't *have* to lead to orgasm, I might even be comfortable with that too. I *am* curious, and I would like to explore -- but I want to go at my own pace and direct my own experience. And that's not an unreasonable expectation in one's sexual life.

Tomorrow, I'll continue updating my job tracker and (hopefully) certifying for unemployment these last two weeks. Then I'll focus on writing for the rest of the day.

I finished revising my resume yesterday and updated both my LinkedIn and Indeed profiles. I have to say I'm pleased with the updates, but I also recognize that this will likely be a perpetual work in progress until I get hired. What I'd like is to tweak my resume to specific positions in Obsidian and then convert them to PDFs -- but that would require some significant formatting. It would be a good project to learn Obsidian actually -- and it would be nice to keep my application materials in the same vault.

Right now, the Job Tracker is in Google Drive and my resumes are kinda scattered over a few different locations. I've been wanting to make Obsidian my digital "Bullet Journal" for a while now, and this would be a good way to increase the buy-in, so to speak. Moving my Job Tracker to Obsidian might be a little trickier, since I'm not sure it's well set-up for spreadsheets. It *would* be nice to have a spreadsheet alternative, come to think of it. With Microsoft moving Office to a subscription-only plan stuffed with AI, I've been trying to use those products as little as possible. Excel is the only app, I think, that doesn't really have a solid replacement.

I went on a bit of a job application spree yesterday, turning in...I've lost track of how many through Indeed and LinkedIn. Some of them feel like more serious opportunities than others, but we'll see how they turn up. Between inputting all the data I've generated yesterday and catching up on the rejections I've seen come through my inbox, I'll be a bit busy this week on the job-hunting front.

I'm finding that instead of trying to split my time amongst a few different priorities, it's nicer to devote significant chunks of time to a single task. Yesterday was basically all working on the resume, the profiles, and job applications -- with a bit of video gaming in between -- and it was the most effortlessly productive I've felt in a long time. Thinking about devoting today to Project Hobbit also feels right; I could watch a few things while doing laundry, put some time in with the vacuum upstairs and on the landing, finally clean up Biscuit's area in the closet, and maybe even give our master bathroom a decent scrub and mop. This evening there would be clean, folded clothes, a much cleaner carpet, a less-chaotic closet, and a cleaner shower and bathroom to end the day in.

Moving forward, I'd like to see if I could chop my day up into four sections: job hunting, self-investment/freelancing, housework, reading. That would give me a decent two hours for each pod, or, if I'm doing the Pomodoro Technique, 3 Pomodoros.

So: that means I'd have 15 Pomodoros each week for job hunting, side-hustle, a household project, and reading. That feels like more than enough time to make significant progress on a measurable goal each week. For example, if I know I can write about 1,500 words in a 3-pomodoro pod, it feels reasonable to estimate a consistent output of 5,000 publishable words per week, right? That's a 2,500-word serialized episode for the Patreon and maybe something for a portfolio, a LinkedIn post, anything. All that's missing is the intention.

So I'll try a short flight of this starting...today, why not. Start with job-hunting (to get my Job Tracker up to date, update my Monster profile perhaps, and see what I can do to get more organized in Obsidian), break for lunch, then cleaning for the 2nd pod, reading for the 3rd pod. Tomorrow, job-hunting and side-hustle in the morning, hobbiting and reading (or writing) in the afternoon.

It feels like a solid schedule, but we'll see how it survives in practice.

Husboo is having a mood crash this week. From my perspective, it looks like dissatisfaction in a number of areas has overwhelmed his ability to cope with them. Who could blame him? It's very hard to look at the state of the world and feel like there's much you can do to improve your lot. Some days it feels like all we can do is stall the sinking as much as we can.

I think I'm getting by through focusing on the people in the boat with me. I know they have my back, and I'm eternally grateful for that -- and I want to have their back in the ways they need in return. I'm trying to sit back and observe instead of rushing in with the thing that dislodges *my* discomfort with their troubles. When I identify a way I can make life easier for them, I try to take it with as little fuss as possible. I mean, that's the dream. There's still a LOT of sitting with discomfort and fighting with impulse I have to do. But I'm hoping that just...being open and accepting is some calming influence, even though I'm fighting through my own battles.

There've been a few curveballs I'll need to roll with. Instead of a lump-sum payment for my severance, it looks like I'll be getting biweekly checks until Dec 24, as if I've been working 80 hours until then. I really thought I had read my severance agreement more closely.

It's not the worst thing, to be honest -- I'm sure I'll pay less in taxes that way and it gives me some amount of stability until the end of the year. By then, unemployment will have kicked in and I should be in somewhat decent shape after that for another month or two if I really need to stretch it that far.

I'm hoping it won't come to that, obviously. It's taking a bit longer to figure out my own swing, but that's OK. I've got the time. I'd really like to have *some* side hustle up and running before the end of the month, though -- preferably two. I think I can manage the Jackalope Serial Company, but I'll need to start networking with the Furry Writers' Guild and building an online presence for anything else. It would be a nice excuse to build dedicated reading into my day.

I've finished the first draft of my resume and already gotten valuable feedback from a friend in HR. I thought I did a pretty good job making my recent job experiences more attractive, but I'll have to go through and tweak it a bit more to be immediately punchy. The big issue there is I'm just not sure how to translate my effectiveness into raw numbers. You'd think after all this time having that lesson drilled into me I'd have a lot more practice with that, but here we are.

I'll take another pass at it once I've gotten the game to a "good enough" state and see what I can do. Once I've edited it, I'll send it to four or five more people to see what they think, then go through all of my job-search sites to update things. At least on LinkedIn, I'd really like to cultivate some kind of presence there -- maybe a more-cultivated feed to shape the spaces I'm engaging with and be a bit more active with the networking aspect.

So much of this is relationship-building, finding the people you vibe with, encouraging what they want to do, and helping out where you can. Then, the more people think of you as helpful and competent, the more they'll think of you for opportunities. It sounds fairly transactional when you put it that way, but it doesn't have to be if you come to it with the right attitude.

At this stage in my life, I really want to invest in people who share a vision for how we all get along moving forward. I want to be in people's corner, show up when it really matters, and have those people show up for me. I'm tired of throwing my energy into relationships that are only as ephemeral as my job, you know?

It might be a bit naive to think LinkedIn can be a place where I can cultivate genuine professional relationships, but that's what I'm going for.

In general, it feels like the Internet has become this mechanism for thoughtless and endless consumption. Everything has been reduced down to content laser-targeted to grab our attention, stoke our emotions, and induct ourselves into the evangelical wing for whoever gave us such nummy brainrot. More and more it feels like nothing's designed to give us time to sit with things, and that's a bummer. I want more of my Internet experience to be a thoughtful, amiable vibe. Not hurried conversations on our way to the next topic-of-the-day.

That's why I keep coming back to Dreamwidth, even if I can never build a consistent habit. It's the internet I want to inhabit.

Another day, another somewhat baffled accounting of where the time went and what I did with it. I suppose I shouldn't be too upset that the days feel short and confusing. With the ending of DST, my sense of time is bound to be a little shaky for a while.

I got a late start in the morning, admittedly. Worked on updating my resume most of the day, which was a gratifying exercise. I wanted to be more clear and concise summarizing the job duties, while also expanding on my job transitions at two companies. I tried to look up other job openings with the same titles to tease the language closer to what I'm seeing out there, and organizing information in a way that makes it easier for scrapers to pick up and parse. It's still not done -- right now, everything is still in Obsidian -- but the "experience" portion is finished and now I'm onto shaping my Skills section.

With Skills, I think I want a collection of about 12 areas that I can swap out at any time to fit the needs of the specific job. On the resume, I'll have the most relevant three areas along with examples that most closely match what I see on the job description. Hopefully, that buys me a little bit more pull with the ATS and increases my chances of getting an interview.

I'm also thinking about refreshing my profiles on LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, and other places. I'm hoping the more intentional, targeted language will help the algorithm find closer matches for me -- or at least stop sending me the same low-tier crap openings I've been getting.

Then again, maybe that's all they're being paid to show.

We switched meal services from Blue Apron to Marleyspoon (from Martha Stewart!), and the cooking style is so different I'm still adapting to it. Right now I have to admit I'm not being very efficient. Yesterday's chicken saltimbocca took 90 minutes(!!) to complete and the results were...only OK. It's a heavy meal that uses a lot of butter, but I would have liked more flavor in the roasted potatoes and broccolini. The saltimbocca itself was fun to make, and I now know how to toast pine nuts and fry sage leaves! But if I had to do it over again, I think I'd let the ingredients rest away from the drained fat instead of in it. You could really taste the butter on everything, and it left you with a greasy feeling.

So far Marleyspoon has been hit or miss. Blue Apron definitely wins out on spices and flavoring; with most Marleyspoon recipes, the results tend to be rather bland. However, the ingredients are a LOT better (if smaller) and it's been nice learning a different style. Where Blue Apron typically provided more of the base ingredients like butter, flour, or vinegar, Marleyspoon expects you to have that kind of thing on-hand -- so it's been neat training on how to keep a better-stocked pantry.

And when the recipes hit, they really hit. I went with this service because it had the most "exotic" options on the menu, including a lot of West African-inspired dishes I hadn't seen anywhere else. And man...the jollof rice I made the other day was a true highlight.

Marleyspoon also has a much better "random add-ons" menu, so there's that. When I get my diet in better shape, I could see myself picking up a "meal shortcut kit" or two as a quick-and-easy lunch option sometime.

Husboo and I watched Death Note as we ate our lunch. I think we slipped into Season 2 somehow without knowing it; Netflix has grouped it into one long series of 38 episodes, and we're...approaching episode 20 by now. We did note how the "status quo" shifted quite a bit in a couple of episodes; locations were changed, alliances shifted, and the whole investigation pivoted to chase different suspects. Now it feels like the show is still settling into its "new normal", though it also kinda prides itself on not "having" a normal setting because both Ryu and Light are treating the investigation like a true chess match. As pieces are removed from the board and gambits are played and predicted, the game state is consistently evolving.

I like the rather unsentimental way it goes through its plot. You get just enough time with a situation to get a sense for the tableau before something comes along to shift it, add to it, or drastically rearrange it. And once that happens, the show you liked is forever gone but you have a new show now that's interesting, intriguing, and just as ephemeral as its previous incarnation.

It's the kind of thing that happened with LOST and The Leftovers every season, and rare shows like The Good Place every few episodes. I like that the show...has so many elements colliding with one another, you never know what the catalyst will be for the next evolution. It could come from Light or Ryu activating the next stage of their plan -- or someone else in their orbit throwing a wild card into the mix.

It's...a show of its time, so it can be kinda cheesy in certain ways. But that only adds to its charm. It's an engaging cat-and-mouse game, almost like an extended Sherlock Holmes vs. Moriarty mystery with supernatural elements thrown in for good measure. I'm not sure if or how it will stick the landing, but for now it's a good time!

After lunch, more resume work and then into therapy. We talked about my starting the Grief Recovery Handbook and my initial thoughts on it, and that spun off into a wider-ranging conversation about all the complicated feelings I have about my mom and sister. On one hand, my mom is this terrible person who abused me for most of my childhood, disowned me when I came out to her after saying things that have fucked me up to this day, and ultimately cost me like....$10,000 over five years with her nursing home and funeral expenses. All without leaving me as a beneficiary on the life insurance she *also* had me paying for, for years.

But on the other hand, she made so many sacrifices for me and my sister; would go out of her way to help the people she cared about; and cooked like no one else. When I went back to Baltimore for the funeral and got to see what she meant to the extended family, I had this chance to see this whole other side of her. No one would claim she was easy to get along with, but everyone had a story about this extraordinary act of kindness or generosity she extended when they really needed it.

If I had gotten to know that woman, I think we would have gotten along. And talking through it, I realized that's a big part of the grief for me -- that any potential I had for a good relationship with my Mom is gone forever, and all I have are these terrible, traumatic memories.

And it's not just that one thing. It's also reckoning with being adopted, and knowing my adopted mom was mentally ill, and accepting that illness has seeped into every corner of our family tree. It's the alcoholism of my adopted dad, and his disappearance, and my mental issues making it impossible for me to connect with other people in certain ways. It's being Black in this goddamned country and internalizing all the racism until the only way you can see yourself is as a lesser being. It's...living with people who have the expectation of support and comfort, who don't automatically think every setback is the end of the world. It feels like I've reached a point where new trauma echoes old trauma -- and I'm in a community of people who can't relate to that at all.

I wish I weren't so much to wrangle, all the time. And I wish I didn't have these distorted thoughts rolling through my head on the regular. But here we are, in therapy. Talking about them helps, of course. But some days, I wish I could just put all this shit down already.

Still, we just go through this one bite at a time I suppose. So first, gainful employment and self-rediscovery. Then, profit.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Yesterday I realized the most recent version of my resume -- the one that had incorporated the most feedback from friends and colleagues -- had apparently been left on my work laptop (or OneDrive), so that complicated the application process for more than a few places. By the time I had given up trying to find a copy somewhere in my social media files, it was a bit too late to commit to the arduous process of applying to a couple places.

So today I'm planning to completely rework my resume. I'll copy the "latest" version I have in an Obsidian file, see if I can tweak the bullet points so they hit action keywords the ATS is looking for, and include "optional" information (like reference contacts) that I can easily pull up if I need to. It's a little embarrassing that I hadn't done this before, but I suppose that's why I'm spending the time this week to look at that kind of thing.

I haven't gotten a LOT of movement on my recent applications beside the usual auto-rejection. Once I have my resume in better shape, I'll take another pass at my preferred educational institutions, check for any local government jobs, and maybe even peek at Kaiser Permanente to see if there are any openings there. Most of these positions will require an end to remote work, but with luck I might be able to find a hybrid position or two.

I'm not sure where the day went yesterday, overall. I did apply to one position, cleaned out my email inbox, and started journaling again. I read the Grief Recovery Workbook and sat with the introduction to that. Husboo and I went out to the local park for some toss practice, and I filled in my local ballot and dropped it off at the local post office. But for the most part my productivity was a little piecemeal and unfocused. When that happens, it's hard to feel like I've made much progress on any one thing.

It might be a better idea to batch projects into distinct blocks of time. I'm picking up the Pomodoro Technique to make sure I'm devoting proper time to the things I'd like to do, so the next step would be scheduling my projects so there's a bit more organization to it. My ADHD makes it hard for me to gauge how long things take, and the Pomodoro Technique is actually a pretty good solution for that. Because of that, I now know a typical blog post can take 2-3 Pomodoros, and that a 2,000-word piece of fiction is typically written in 5. Thinking of my time in terms of Pomodoros encourages me to think of it as the finite resource it is, and helps me begin to understand how much work I can reasonably fit into a day or week.

I'm taking the time to try and "unify" my project management style so that it works across multiple trackers. My Bullet Journal is a great resource for reviewing trends, habits, and keeping track of the most granular goals for any project. But I need something for a higher-level view, where I can look at each project as a whole -- then see how my various projects relate to each other. Er, if that makes sense.

Basically, if I'm reading a book I can set up a tracker in my Bullet Journal for it, add it to my weekly project list, make a little to-do bullet for it day after day. But it can be a little challenging to gauge, say, how long it takes me to read a certain book, when I read it, what I took from it, and how I can practice what I've taken from it in my daily life. And if I have an annual goal to read 50 books, it can be a little hard to set up and track that in my BuJo.

This all needs some kind of digital component, and there are a number of solutions out there for that -- but they're all ad-infested or force you into a subscription to use their "proprietary" system. Todoist is neat and all, but at this point I'd much rather just build these systems myself. That way I can tweak as needed, abandon whenever I want, or deconstruct things to build a new system entirely. Much more malleable, that.

So now I'm organizing my Obsidian vault for that purpose. I'm starting out using the PARA Method (Projects, Area, Resources, Archive) to organize things. Projects are basically anything with a SMART goal; if I'm looking to get a specific thing done in a certain amount of time, it's a project. Areas are more generalized interests and hobbies, like baking, D&D, writing, or calligraphy. Resources are a repository for anything that I want to keep and review later -- sort of like a personalized Pocket or Feedly. And the Archive is where completed projects or deprecated areas go, so I can look up anything I'm not actively using later.

That's the dream, anyway. I'm beginning to see that a lot of my anxiety comes from trying to juggle way too many projects without a clear sense of where my time is going. Since I'm spreading myself way too thin, I'm making painfully slow progress on everything and pretty consistently dropping the ball. It's time to focus up, tighten up, and retrain myself to give my whole attention to one thing at a time.

Easier said than done, right? But this is the era of deliberate practice. Now that I have the time to really work on this, what else would I use it for?

The clock has finally run out. After 50 applications, two interview rounds, and two final-round rejections, I'm officially unemployed.

The first near-miss was for the internal position at my former company. I would have learned to be a Metrology Technician, making sure the instruments we use for measurements in the field were operating accurately. It sounded like a fun job, even though it would have meant driving to a remote business park five days a week.

This latest near-miss was a customer service position for a waste recycling company. It was, alas, another in-office job in an out-of-the-way business park, but the commute would have been a lot shorter. I would have had to deal with a few unhappy customers, but otherwise it sounded like a pretty comfortable position in a small, tight-knit industry. *Perfect* for someone in the middle of their career, looking for a place to invest in until retirement. I would have really liked that foot in the door.

Alas, it was not to be. I had the phone screen on Oct. 21, the Tuesday of my last week. We scheduled the in-person interview for my last day at the old job, Fri Oct. 24. The next Monday (Oct. 27), they asked for and called my professional references. It happened so fast, and I allowed myself to actually dream of how I'd have to reshape my routine to accommodate the commute -- and what I would do with my severance pay instead of banking it to live for the next few months.

But then, no word from the hiring manager all that week. I broke first and asked when we could talk about next steps; she responded that she had made the difficult decision to go with someone else on Halloween.

So that's that. The dream of a "week's vacation" unemployment gone in a snap. It hurt, but I'm also encouraged that my belief in myself feels justified. If you get me in front of people, and I could really see myself being fulfilled in a position, I can be pretty persuasive. I know I can land a position -- it's just a matter of getting in touch with a real person.

I think this means going the extra mile to reach out to any "real" person I can when I submit my application. If I can follow up with a LinkedIn message or email to the hiring manager, it feels worth it to take that step. It feels like the difference-maker in this round of searching really will be the connections I'm able to make through the search. Maybe one of the "active practice" aspects to take on for a while is networking -- keeping in touch with folks and their projects, being a cheerleader in people's lives, and doing small things to assist and connect people. Even if it doesn't really translate to immediate employment, it's the kind of skill I've always wanted to develop -- the kind of person I've always wanted to be.

This week I'm just trying to get a better sense of how to set my priorities, how long it actually takes to achieve the things on my to-do list, and how to establish the most efficient workflow for those various priorities. I've finally refilled my Adderall prescription and taken my (now-annual?) 'are you on drugs' urine test, so I think I'm in a good position to really knuckle down for the next two months.

I'd like to start with the basics: regular meditation, reviving my reading and writing habit, becoming more mindful about what I take in, what occupies my thoughts. I'm not entirely sure where it happened, but my sense of fascination with people has practically died and the...emotional fulfillment I get with connection is so much harder to come by. But then, I'm not sure I really get much emotional fulfillment out of anything any more. That sounds so much worse than I mean it to be.

It's more...the tender, open, beating heart that forms a genuine connection with say, strangers, is so buried under protective instincts and scar tissue it's hard to access it. So much of my energy goes to protecting myself from crippling pain that it's hard to think about reaching the pain in other people. I don't want to feel that. I'm too busy blocking my own in order to survive.

And the result has made me stranded in isolation, at a real loss to find my way back. It feels like I've spent ten years cutting out so many of the ties I've built when they turned out to be rotten or false. I put my faith in the wrong people so many times, it feels especially dangerous to trust others with any tender part of me. So maybe I have this unconscious assumption that "being alone is better than having to carve out a part of yourself to let go of someone who's gotten their hooks into you". There's not much of me left, and I feel too hollow to give any more of myself to anyone else.

But holy Frith, that's not the kind of person I want to be. D:

I've cracked open The Complex Grief Handbook (thanks, BB) this morning after thinking about that ended friendship in the last post and how much the...lack of empathy for our shared pain over the loss of our mothers created this rift that grew until it severed our relationship. But then, the thread that pulled out of that was about all the loss I've endured.

My parents' divorce when I was 9. My sister running away without a word one day and disappearing for 3 months when I was 14. My dad walking out into a blizzard and disappearing forever when I was 16. Losing my faith when I was 17. Being disowned by my mom when I was 19. The disastrous end of my relationship with a fascist loudmouth when I was 22. Leaving the support network I had built to move to CA when I was 26. My sister dying of a fentanyl overdose when I was 35. Trump at 36. COVID at 40. Mom's death at 42. My first layoff at 43. Trump II at 44. And now, my second layoff at 45.

Hit after hit after hit. I'm not sure how much I'm over any of it, especially since so much of my recent loss has reawakened these survival mechanisms I used back during my earliest days. It feels like every time I think I've processed something, some other disorienting event knocks me right back into some previous trauma behavior. I don't want to be trapped in a forever-cycle of regression whenever something bad happens. Because, between you and me, if you look around you a lot of bad things will keep happening. We're setting ourselves up to lose a lot. And if I want to be here for people, I'm going to have to learn better how to manage loss.

14 days to go.

The morning at work was relatively quiet; I'm not sure if people had taken all the tickets by the time I got in, or if there just weren't any tickets to process. Later in the afternoon, though, my Lead asked for my help on a doozy of a project. Basically, converting particle counts for ten orders (think 100 conversions per order -- or 1,000 conversions total) because of a technician mistake. Two of my Mexico colleagues were already mired in the project, and she was hoping I'd be able to help out.

I'm not ashamed to say I didn't help out. I did take any new tickets that came in so the folks after me would have as clear a slate as possible, but I also don't relish the idea of spending one of my last days here doing basic work that you've hired someone else to do for cheaper. Let them do it, and let me run out the clock.

I did spend a long time on a transcription request (basically manually inputting data that failed to upload because our software solution is atrocious) and handled a lot of spot edits, so there's that.

Took a look at my expenditures over the past two months and, like I figured, did not like what I saw. Now that I've hit the two-week mark, I think it's well past time to completely halt extraneous spending for the rest of the year. Time to treat each dollar as a precious, non-renewable resource.

Went to the gym with Snepperboo over lunch yesterday, and it was a good workout! There's a difference between bodybuilding exercise and functional exercises, and I think I like the latter a bit more. We did Torso Rotation and Hip Abductors, which showed me exactly where I was tightest and least-flexible. I'm quite sore today, but I'm happy with the places where I am sore. I think I'll try to do more body-weight exercises that focuses on core and stability muscles.

We played the third session of Snepperboo's Isekai D&D campaign last night! People in 16th century small-town Bavaria discover a strange hole in the side of a mountain after several children are abducted by demonic creatures during an eclipse; going through takes you to another world and (for the PCs at least) turn you into a different fantastic creature.

I'm playing Henkel von Axem, an Ethiopian-German monk I've patterned to be a Thomas Merton type -- big into the mystic Christian experience, which puts him at odds with more traditional types. Ratty is playing a gender-fluid migrant whose people are often accused of witchcraft; the two others in our polycule, Yeen and Hare, play a noble's son and a baker, respectively. In the secondary world, I become an Aasimar Cleric; Ratty is a Tiefling Rogue; Yeen is another Tiefling -- this time, a Warlock; and Hare is a Halfling Artificer whose contraptions are all cooking-based.

It's been an interesting party so far. Yeen is the most inexperienced gamer at the table, and I think he's not quite sure what to expect from us. We're all a bunch of theatre kids, and he might be at tables that are a bit looser.

In session three, Henkel, Eike (the Rogue), and Klaus (the Warlock) travel back to the secondary world with Eike's partner, Otto (NPC). We catch up with Diel (the Artificer), who chose to remain behind and explore. It takes a bit, but we all meet up again and find a small outpost town that seems to have a big problem with Tieflings (who they call the Warspawn), but act with embarrassing deference to Aasimar (who they call Remnants).

Apparently, "angels" from another plane brought with them the capability to open doors to other realms. This ushered in a wild and exciting time of progress and growing diversity -- until they opened a door to the Abyss. The resulting invasion decimated most of the population, and to put a stop to it the "angels" disabled all portals, then retreated to a walled city no one has access to. 400 years have passed since then, and the PCs are the first folk in that time to pass through the "Cloud Gates".

It's quite possible we won't be able to get home again. The first time we did, it felt like a lucky fluke -- but also a one-time only pass back to the real world. Next time may be significantly trickier, and to follow our best lead we'll need to defeat a giant squid that's been taking down every ship trying to leave or arrive at the port. The island we're in has effectively been cut off from the rest of the world.

Next session, we'll get to know the folk of the town a little better and investigate a suspicious fisherman who suffered a shipwreck but came back...different. Klaus' patron marked him as a 'parasite' who should be killed immediately, and Henkel has caught him in a few lies through very good Insight checks. Our conversation didn't yield much, so now I think we'll need to follow him to see what kind of shenanigans he gets up to.

Today, Snepperboo's baseball coach cancelled his practice this evening -- so I'm not sure what we'll be doing. He'll want to practice *somehow*, but I'm not sure my legs are up for it. I had planned a run after work, but...we'll see.

It might be a good time to pivot to writing and studying. ;)

15 days to go.

Last week Ratty and Snepboo took a few days off for their mental health. I wholeheartedly supported this, though it did feel weird to be working while everyone else in the house was doing their own thing. I considered joining them while they were playing hooky, but I figure I'll be playing hooky enough at the end of this month and it might be nice to hold on to the money made from stashing my PTO days. Every little bit helps, doesn't it?

Got current on the job tracker to see that there are at least 12 applications still active and viable. Some of them are getting a little long without a response, though, so I'm thinking it might be a good idea to follow up if at all possible. I don't have a good feeling that I'll ping someone and they'll go "Oh you're right, here's your application at the top of the stack! Let's fit you right into interviews." But it would be nice to get *some* response from a company with an indication of where they're leaning.

So far I've gotten 8 form rejections without a second look and 7 "ghosts", where I've submitted an application, gotten no response, and circled back to the company site to see the position wasn't there any more. It's unclear if these are actually ghost jobs, or if they just don't respond to most of the applications they see. Either way, it's good to note which companies will not respond so I'm not wasting my time with them.

Right now, it feels like building a disciplined routine would be the thing that helps me most. Meditation, journaling, goal-setting, and review at the end of the day to get a firm grip on where I am, where I want to be, and how the progress from here to there feels. Watching Sneppers practice baseball has shown me how important it is to have solid goals; it can be hard to keep going day after day, especially when part of your brain is telling you that what you're doing is stupid and won't lead to anything. Learning to focus on the small things -- especially the hundreds of little decisions within my control -- feels like the best way to consistently push myself past that mental road-block.

There are 12 weeks left in the year, or just about three months. Where would I like to see myself three months from now?

First, I think I'd like to have a better handle on my actual monthly expenses so I know where I'm spending and I'm sure that I have the financial discipline to spend things properly. It would be nice to know exactly what recurring expenses I've got so I can cut down to only the things that are actually important. I'm positive I've been wasting money on subscriptions I don't use or need, so it would be nice to reign in my money so that every dollar comes in has a job AND I know what that job is.

Second, I would like to redirect my focus toward reading and writing again. I know the written word is pretty much a dying medium, but it's MY dying medium and I'd like to actually give it a professional go before I do. Immersing myself in writing isn't something I've had the stomach for in ages, and this upcoming period of unemployment is an excellent opportunity to fall in love with books and stories all over again.

Third, I'd like to have at least one certification or course completion certificate under my belt. There are a lot of digital classrooms that have laid fallow and it's time to revisit them, actually learn the lessons I should have learned a little while ago. Better late than never, of course, but still -- this is free learning I've left on the table, no more of that. I have an Introduction to Programming AND SQL Nanodegree program from Udacity to finish; Udemy courses on Excel, Python, and writing; a year's access to Masterclass and both writing AND cooking classes from really quality instructors there; access to CuriosityStream, Nebula, and a lot of Educational YouTube escape pods. Part of my disciplined routine will include a few hours of upskilling.

Fourth, while I understand that it will be...really hard to develop a steady, recurring income stream on my own, I would very much like to be able to make $500 on my own in December 2025. That can happen either through Patreon, or some kind of freelance work, or local sales and the like. But it's important to find ways to make money myself so even when I'm not technically employed I'm doing something I can point to as a way of supporting myself. It's important for me to make sure I'm not tying *everything* I make to one thing.

Finally, I would like to have my shit together about the holidays this year. I want to make sure Christmas cards go out on time, that I have presents (however small) for the people I appreciate, and I want to make sure I do a little something every day to express gratitude for my ties to the community.

So -- how do I make these SMART goals? Here's my first pass:

Have a "minimum required monthly income" based on current bills and expenses by October 24;
Develop a strategy to reach minimum income as a freelance/contract worker by December 1
Write 50,000 words of content intended to be published by December 31
Read at least 5 books (fiction, non-fiction, collected shorts) by December 31
Finish at least 3 online courses from Udemy, Udacity, and/or MasterClass by December 31
Make at least $500 from writing or services in December 2025
Give at least 12 presents and send at least 25 cards by December 25
Finish revision suggestions for Sofawolf Academy by October 15
Finish revision suggestions for Grave Affections by November 1

There will likely be at least one house-related goal to be added as time goes on, but I think that's a good set to begin with.

In my personal calendar, this is the first week of the Winter Season (tm). In my Bullet Journal I chop up the year into four 13-week sections and try to use these times as "sprints" to shift paradigms, begin/end big projects, take stock of what's working and what's not. Well, that's the idea anyway.

Nothing this year went the way I had been hoping to, but that doesn't say that nothing happened this year. There have been significant blows, both seen and surprise, that have really thrown me off my game. I made the decision to seek therapy earlier because the weight of everything had just been crushing me to the point I couldn't function as consistently as I wanted to -- and that turned out to be a good decision.

So, in that spirit, I want Winter 2025 to be a restorative one. There are a lot of things outside of my control that will make things harder, but I'm really hoping to sit with these difficulties and use them as opportunities to navigate difficult emotions. Fear and despair are the things I'm watching out for, but as I turn my attention toward my anger and start trying to work with it I anticipate there's going to be a lot of...choppy things to work through. I'm worried about that, because winters aren't easy for anyone and I really want to make them as cozy and comfortable for folks as possible.

The Big Project this Winter, of course, will be finding a job -- or booting up alternate revenue streams at the very least. Last time I was laid off, it took me a little over four months to find a job and even then it was only by the recommendation of a friend. This time, the economy is even worse and it looks like remote work has all but dried up. If I'm being completely honest, I don't like my chances of finding something quickly. It feels like the last hiring window of the year might be closing, and companies tend to button up quite a bit through the holidays so they can do more hiring possibly in January or February. It feels like if I don't find something that I can start by late-October, I'll have to settle in for a jobless season.

Thankfully, my therapist helped me prepare for that by imagining a 'best-case scenario' for Thanksgiving if I didn't have a job. It forced me to put my focus back on the things I *could* control to make the best of a bad situation and through that I realized I have a couple of moves.

First, there's the Patreon. I know I've had significant trouble with writing consistently but...after a lot of work I think I'm ready to give it another go. The plan is to spend this month writing as much as I can to build a buffer, take the old Patreon out of mothballs with a few updates here and there, then really think about the payment tiers. I think $2 would get you non-fiction essays and life updated; $5 would get you at least one story bit a week. I'm hoping that the story bits will be no longer than 1500 - 2000 words, and each story would be anywhere from 4 - 7 bits. Ultimately, I'd publish a 6000-word short story each month and folks would think that'd be worth $5.

I know that there's a crackdown on adult fiction just about everywhere these days, so I'd have to keep an eye out for that. I don't know if there's a good alternative to Patreon right now beyond Subscribestar, but hopefully I won't have to think about that very much. >.> The plan is to start charging folks again in November once I've built up the buffer and spent a month giving folks the chance to change their pledges, drop out, or whatever they wanted to do.

There's also work to be done with Sofawolf Academy and FurPlanet. Sofawolf is pivoting from a publisher to a writer's community, and I could definitely help out with community management there. I don't think I'd get paid for it up front, but it *would* be good practice to develop my skills there and add a project or two to my portfolio if I end up looking for that kind of work sometime later. The Community Management space is...very squishy right now; even when companies were hiring, there was a worry that executives couldn't directly connect what we did to their bottom line. I'm not sure if that's gotten any better, but at least it's a marketable skillset.

In addition to the Patreon and the furry-publishing work, I'm also planning to spend as much time as possible upskilling. This keeps my learning muscles limber and makes sure I'm not spending my unemployment sinking deeper into depression.

I know that this season will be a significant challenge for me. It's really hard to keep the worst thoughts out of your head when you're looking for employment; I realize that it's honestly a employer's market right now and will be for the foreseeable future. It's going to be so hard finding a livable wage and a stable position.

So I'm just going to have to get creative about making ends meet. Snep and Ratty have my back while I'm unemployed, but I want to lean on them as little as possible until I can stand on my own two feet.

The watchword this season is "resilience". I'm going to do my best to bloom inwards, even if conditions aren't right for me to flower yet.

I heard late last week that I wasn't selected for the Metrology Tech position at my current company. That was my last best shot at remaining with them, so it looks like Oct 24 really will be my last day.

Of course I'm bummed about it. I think it's impossible to make it to the final interview round for a position and not be disappointed when it doesn't turn into an offer. You can't help but wonder what you did (or didn't do) that swayed the hiring team away from you. In this case, it's hard to say. I didn't have direct experience in calibrating sensitive equipment, but I thought my internal knowledge of the company would make a good balance for it. I was too disappointed to ask what I might be able to improve on with the next interview, but I did write thoughtful 'thank you' emails to the interviewers and recruiter that I think went down well.

So that puts me back at square one with the job search. Honestly, that's the worst part of this whole thing. Until I got invited to the online exams for Santa Clara government positions, I had heard nothing but form rejections from folks I had applied to. I'm getting a lot of pings from rather scammy companies that are looking for experienced workers to exploit through low pay and non-existent benefits. It's really awful to see so many 'contract' positions or skilled positions that have been whittled down to part-time work so companies don't have to pay anyone what they're worth.

Anyway, this is just what is. I do have a really awesome support network full of people who've offered me resume advice, their names for referrals, even positions they think I might be good for. I'm not alone in this, and it makes me feel really grateful (instead of depressed and scared) to have so many folks pulling for my success. It really does encourage me to keep trying and doing my best, just to not let any of them down.

So I think I need to break Job Search 2025 down into three buckets: applications, upskilling, and budgeting. Applications are all the things like writing/editing resume, keeping track of positions I've applied to, practicing for interviews, and all the skills dedicated to standing out with my cover letter and everything. Upskilling is for taking online classes and/or getting certifications that will make my resume a lot more attractive to prospective employers, especially for things that can work for a broad range of positions. There's a Udacity SQL Nanodegree program I could resume AND a free ND program I could take up besides; there are a lot of Udemy classes for SQL, Excel, and (I think?) JavaScript that I could dig into; and I have a MasterClass subscription I really should be getting more use out of. Budgeting is mostly for taking a long, hard look at the cash coming in and making sure I've cut down my expenditures to live within my means. If I end up sleeping on any one of these three prongs, it'll make Fall and Winter 2025 significantly trickier.

The weekend was fun, at least. After playing a rather tough round of Commander with a few friends last week, Husboo was bitten by the Magic bug. We bought him a Merfolk commander deck that works...really well. Once you get enough merfolk on the board and the Commander's out, you turn searching for cards in your library into an engine that beefs them up across the board. It doesn't take long before you have a whole battlefield of monster fishmen waiting to wreck your shit!

My humble Commander is Bello, Trash Bard Raccoon. He finds a lot of artifacts and imbues them with a soul so suddenly they're all 4/4 Elemental creatures with haste and indestructible on my turn. It's a lot of fun attacking with these animated statues and bits of magic that can't be removed when I'm not playing (since they're not creatures then). In theory, a solid idea, but I've had a lot of trouble getting it to work as efficiently as it needs to. I haven't won with it yet, but I'm waiting for that one game where everything kicks into gear and the plan seems undeniable.

It was really nice having folks over all weekend for Magic and such. Now, it's all about putting my head down, focusing inward to tend my own garden. It feels like I've been spending a lot of energy chasing after bad results. I need to sit down and think about where my attention is going, and whether or not there are better directions for it.

I listen to the "Hidden Brain" podcast, one of those NPR joints that talk about...well, how we think and the ways we can change it. The episode I'm listening to is all about the importance of examining the story you tell yourself, why it matters, and gives you some basic principles on how to change it.

This is pretty close to what I had been trying to do with the whole "two stories" thing where I write down the story about my past I had been holding onto -- then examining it with enough distance to consciously change it into something better. Picking a heavy topic to start out with might not have been the best idea; it's still such a huge, raw hurt that it's difficult to treat it with emotional distance. Still, it's a neat idea that maybe would work with something a bit less intense.

So I'm going to talk about a recent friendship ending because I'm having trouble letting go of it. Maybe examining the story and shifting the narrative where appropriate might bring some closure. We'll call him Ohio here.

Ohio and I go way back; he was one of my very first Internet friends back in the late 90s and early 00s. I think we fell in with each other after I was coming out my college breakdown as part of a small crew that felt like the "B Team" of the Giant's Club. I loved his warped sense of humor and sense of shameless, open perversity; I have a kinship with people who find ways to be comfortable with their inner gremlin, and he had that vibe. It was genuinely liberating to embrace mine with him.

Over the years, for various reasons, we drifted apart. Recently he had been going through a really hard time with depression and family issues, another thing I feel strong sympathy for. I tried to help him by being a sounding board, listening while he talked through some of his spirals. He had a difficult relationship with his brother that really broke him after the death of his mother. He went through cycles of severe depression and intense self-analysis coupled with anger and resentment at people he felt weren't giving him due attention. Sometimes I was able to guess who he was talking about, and sometimes I had no clue. But there was a pattern of ill will toward people who didn't give him what he needed. I was never quite sure what he expected from folks, but I tried to talk him around to interrogating his feelings about that. I wasn't very good at it.

Throughout that time, I was dealing with my own stuff. I still am, of course. My sister died of a drug overdose and my mother wouldn't let anyone help her even after she clearly couldn't live on her own, so a year-long phone-screaming match ended with her in a nursing home -- exactly where she didn't want to be at the end of her life. When she died, she left a house she reverse-mortgaged and severely befouled and...nothing else. I couldn't even collect her life insurance because she never made me a beneficiary -- even though I had been paying it in full for years.

When Ohio's mother died, he was left an inheritance and insurance. In his grief, he effectively quit his job and bought collectible vintage video games and thought about buying another condo or house. It was...hard for me to sit with him through this, I'll admit. I try not to compare my family to others, but...it was hard to hear how hard his life was when I had been fighting for a couple thousand dollars from my mom's life insurance only to reach a dead end. It wasn't Ohio's fault, but the difference was stark and just...compounded my grief about my mom and everything I never got to have because of who she was.

I tried to talk to Ohio about this, but his response was to create a separate Bluesky account where he could geek out about his purchases without me seeing. It wasn't the video games that was the issue; it was the fact that my mom had died and I only got saddled with more debt on the other side of it. Instead of having the space to grieve, I had to go through all the bureaucracy of death alone, unprepared, with no funds. Ohio had never asked me about my mom, never offed condolences, never offered sympathy.

Over time, talking with Ohio became harder and harder because the conversation would only happen on his terms. He would demand people not reach out to him anywhere because he wanted to be alone, then resent them for not talking to him. One time he had asked me what he could do to be a better friend, and I told him he could just...ask me what's going on with me, take an interest in my well-being. He said he was "embarrassed" that it had to be explained to him and agreed he would. But he never did.

About two months ago, he emerged from his most-recent hermitage to talk and we had a conversation that I thought went pretty well. Then I found out he had blocked me on Bluesky.

This just...triggered me. I feel like I've taken so much care with Ohio to validate his feelings, be a sympathetic ear for his struggle, try to gently correct him if I think his perspective's off. From my perspective, any mild criticism could send him into this self-flagellating spiral, so it was very hard to be open with him. I think he and I share a rejection-sensitive dysphoria, and while I try hard to manage it, it felt like he would look for any sign of ill-favor. So many conversations turned into constant reassurances, and I set aside my own hurt feelings many, many times to prop him up.

As far as I can tell, he thinks I'm some judgemental, blocked person unwilling to do the shadow work that he has so recently conquered. He wants people who are open and casually sexual, and people to take him as he is. It's infuriating to me that after all the effort I've put in to preserving this friendship, at emotional harm to myself, he would just...cut me out like that.

Every once in a while during my weaker moments I find myself trying to look at his Bluesky, which is not healthy I'll totally admit. I think it's a form of 'hate-watching', looking for tidbits that allow me to see him as the 'terrible friend' I believe him to be. But he, like my mom, is in a kind of hell of his own making. No matter what you do to preserve the peace, some folks will demand more and more. I had been thinking of Ohio as a 'psychic vampire' of sorts; I guess that description still feels apt, so why does it bother me so much that he no longer wants to feed off me?

I think it just goes back to the idea of...doing all this work that no one asks me to do and being resentful when it doesn't bear fruit or isn't recognized. It's frustrating to sink so much energy into someone who just never gave a shit about you -- especially when I have so little to spare, and there are so many people who DO care I should be pouring it into.

For now, I wish I could stop *giving* him energy he's not even using. It's clear he's not thinking about me, so...with time, and hopefully a few more lessons from the whole experience, I can let go of the relationship.

As busy as August was, it looks like September will be mostly quiet. Ratty is away doing his annual family reunion, so that puts a pause on most of the D&D games we're running. He'll be back later in the month, but then Antlerfox is going to Japan for a few weeks after that. There are a few online campaigns (and one local) we might be able to resume at that point, but chances are we won't be able to play anything until October for the most part.

Then, there are the holidays to think about. Husboo wants to go home to Arkansas this year and I'm definitely for it, but I'm really not sure if my finances will have recovered enough by that time. If they have, chances are pretty strong that I won't be able to get the time off -- having just settled in to my brand new job and everything. Even if I won't be able to make it to Arkansas with him for Christmas, chances are pretty good folks will be out and about through much of November and December.

My thoughts are increasingly turning toward the holidays. I think I say this every September, but I'd really like to make sure they don't sneak up on me this year. That means making Christmas lists now and budgeting for the presents I'd like to give everyone. Husboo probably won't want to think about things quite this early, but it wouldn't hurt to have a few suggestions ready to go when the time comes. If something actually looks good for multiple people, it might even be a good idea to buy ahead of time with the certainty it'll find a good home somewhere.

Mostly, I want to make sure I'm in a grateful mood through the holidays. There's so much going wrong right now, and chances are things will be notably worse by winter. I really want to put the work in to cultivate an attitude that looks *first* toward the community around me so I'm a bit more resilient against the despair that inevitably pops up from time to time. And I want to be better about expressing my gratitude for all the folks who see me, root for me, step up to help me when I need it.

So many folks have come out of the woodwork to help where they could, offering resume advice or tips on how to navigate this year's job search. People have floated me positions they think I'll be well-suited for, and while none of them have turned into an interview yet I'm still hopeful. If it weren't for the people around me pointing out the very real skills I could bring to a prospective employer, I'd still be mildly freaking out about my ability to get anything that wouldn't be horrifically exploitative. I feel I have a good handle on what I bring to the table, good insight into how I could make myself more "marketable", and a mostly solid idea of what I *want* out of my next job. I'd like to maintain this grounded optimism for as long as possible.

I've been applying to positions after hosting our Parisien friend in August and doubling back to the positions I applied to back in June and July. It's hard to know if I've been ghosted or not; positions are re-posted on job-hunting sites all the time, or taken down recently enough that it's hard to know if they've hired someone or just not you. Overall, I'm learning that it's not a good idea to apply directly from places like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, or LinkedIn. It's way better to go to the actual company site and apply there.

Still, I've only heard back from a few places. Most have been auto-rejections, but I did get invited to take a proctored online quiz for the Library Page position in Santa Clara. It was strange; I basically had to agree to have my webcam on at all times and record my screen through the entire ordeal. The questions were mostly about sorting and analyzing data, so it feels like they're filtering for detail-oriented folks who have...some way of keeping track of a long list of finicky activities. I think I did pretty well, but I don't think the government will move very quickly here. Chances are I'll be invited to the next round in a month or so.

In the meantime, I went to a final-round in-person interview for an internal position at my current company. I was legitimately surprised to find myself a lot more excited for the position once I got a good look at what I'd be doing. It's basically being a science geek and quartermaster of sorts, developing relationships with the field technicians and actually learning how their equipment works. I'll pick up some odd skills, like soldering or getting really good about air temperature, weight measurement and the like. And even though I'll lose out on a home office for now, I think I'm ready to get back out there into the office.

We'll see whether or not I get an offer this week. I'm really hoping for it, since it would put me in the best position possible to look for a more stable company with a better-paying position. :P

The first half of the month has been pleasantly busy. Our very good international friend has been visiting since the end of July, so we've been pretending to be good hosts. Honestly, it's been a great time. I got to bake a batch of key lime cookies, found a decent recipe for strawberry icebox pie, helped Good Dog with a coffee walnut cake and Three Cup Chicken, a Taiwanese dish that might be the best chicken thigh dish I've ever had.

We've also been making dinners for the household through Blue Apron, though our recent experience with those deliveries have convinced me to finally shop elsewhere for a meal-kit home. Two of the dishes came without the knick-knack bags, which contains most of the fiddly bits of the dish (and incidentally, most of the things that make them special -- like spice blends, specialty ingredients and the like), so we had to improvise. The pulled-pork enchiladas didn't need that many substitutions, but the chicken shwarma quesadillas couldn't be prepared as the recipe envisioned. Instead, I used a quick spice blend I found online for both the quesadilla filling (chicken and onions) and the roasted carrots that came with them. The quesadilla spice blend was a total hit, and I'll definitely have to keep that in my back pocket for later.

Honestly the best part of my time off last week was getting to spend so much time in the kitchen. With the Blue Apron substitutions and the non-Blue Apron dinners we made, I really got to learn about spices and step outside of my comfort zone with them. It makes me realize how important they are to the success of the dish -- especially getting them in the right proportions.

I experimented with baked salmon last night using a simple blend of lime juice, lime zest, honey, crushed red pepper, garlic powder, salt and pepper all mixed with olive oil. It came out more like a marinade than a glaze though, so I think I should have poured the concoction into a bag and left the salmon fillets in the fridge for a couple of hours. The flavor that came through was mostly red pepper and garlic, so I'm guessing that the lime juice and honey cooked off in the oven. Still, folks seemed to dig it quite a bit so no complaints there.

The more time I spend in the kitchen, the more time I *want* to spend there. I'd love to learn how to make simple things well (and quickly!), just to see if I can improve the quality of the household diet with fewer prepared foods and more whole, raw ingredients processed at home. >.>

I've been back at work since Tuesday and playing catch-up all this week. Our IT department decided to update our database software without telling anyone, so the technicians in the field ran into a hose of version-mismatch errors trying to upload their reports. When that happens, the QC department gets to transcribe these reports manually. Work's been swamped with these requests since my vacation last week and we're still trying to dig our way out.

At least this time, we have a way of determining the impact of this issue by pointing to the decision-maker who caused the kerfluffle to begin with. If all of the QCAs are following proper procedure, we should have...thousands of logged errors under the IT manager's name. It'll be interesting to see the data that comes out of it.

It's taken a couple of days to get back into the swing of things, but it's like falling off a bike, right? Two positions within the company opened up at last, so I've applied for both and gotten two interview requests! One is for a Metrology Technician job -- basically, I'd be calibrating, maintaining, and logging the instruments our field technicians use in their daily work and certifying client instruments that make their way to the lab. Since I'm dealing with real equipment, I'd have to go to the Sunnyvale office every day -- but the pay is a lot higher than I get now, so hopefully that would offset some of the wear and tear on the car.

The other position is for a Field Services Coordinator job, where I'd be managing the schedules of technicians and working with clients to schedule whatever work they need. "Schedulers", as we call them, would also be in charge of making sure client protocol is followed and any special instructions were given to the techs. It's a MUCH more social job than what I'm doing now, but it's also fully remote and a bit closer to what I'm doing now. Alas, the pay is lower than the Metrology job and, well, it's possible that the position could be eliminated and off-shored to Mexico -- which would leave me exactly where I am now.

Still, these are the first interviews I've gotten in this year's job search so I'd be a fool not to go for both of them. The Metrology Technician job would be a real stretch for me, but the things I'd learn there would definitely set me up for future success. The pay and potential career path are a lot higher, too, so I can't sniff at that. And if that falls through or they find a much more qualified candidate, I can fall back on the Scheduler position.

At any rate, I'll definitely be looking elsewhere. It's...not a great idea to stop looking for opportunities after you've found the first one, right? :P

Last night I finally used the bath bomb Husboo gifted me as a birthday present three years ago. It was the first time we used the tub in the new place, and it struck me that it's in the *exact* place Cleveland's bathtub is in Family Guy. It might have been a high thought, but I couldn't shake the image of me falling out of the house going "No no no no nooooooo!" It still makes me chuckle. :)

Honestly? Wow. I felt so much more relaxed stepping out of the tub, my skin felt rejuvenated, and I'm two more episodes down in my Paradise re-watch. I have another bath bomb from the same gift set, and I'm really looking forward to using it. The iPad and the Wonderboom are a potent combo in the alcove that holds the faucet, and if I get one of those bath-tub trays I could easily see myself going for a soak at least twice a month.

I spoke with my manager yesterday and she made me feel a lot better about the situation. When it happened, I stepped back to look at my life and felt like such a loser. Here I am in my mid-40s with no solid career path to speak of, no savings, a job that barely pays the bills, with old ratty clothes and poor grooming habits. I don't have a degree and it really feels too late for me on that, so the best I can do is some kind of supplemental education that might help my network make a case for me somewhere. I'm always going to be making the lowest wages in the household; at worst, I'll be relying on the charity of my community. It wasn't a great feeling.

But she helped shift my perspective a bit. This wasn't an indictment of my work ethic or effectiveness, and the passion with which she jumped into helping me land somewhere else was grounding on its own. She heard about a position in the Sunnyvale office opening soon and encouraged me to speak to the hiring manager ASAP, so I did. They're looking for a Metrology Calibration Tech to work out of the lab there; it'd take me out of the house five days a week, but that's not the worst thing as long as the pay was good. I think I hit it off with him fairly well, and he liked that I have the mindset for the work being an internal applicant. There are knowledge gaps, of course, but my manager forwarded training materials that I can study ahead of applying and interviewing. She also gave me her personal email address so we can go over my resume and wants to set up a weekly meeting to track our progress. It's surprising to get this kind of help so quickly from someone who had to fire me, though I suppose I've had enough good managers at this point I really shouldn't be.

Someone in the fandom who knows me from my 2 Sense days popped up with a list of open positions at a waste management company; a colleague from Udacity forwarded me a job at an AI tech company; an old fandom friend forwarded me a position as a Library Page for Santa Clara, having remembered how much I loved them. I'm always surprised that there are so many people willing to rally around me in times of trouble, but again -- I've had so many good friends at this point I really shouldn't be.

I'm not out of the woods, but I feel like I've gotten my bearings at least. I would like the Calibration Tech position (as long as the pay is right), so I think I'll give that a good try. Ditto for the Library Page position. I think I'll pass on the AI tech company though, for multiple reasons.

Tonight I'll be putting together my 2025 Job Application Tracker tonight and working on the Unlicensed Adventures game. The gang is working their way through a "dungeon" of sorts full of mind flayers and for some reason they keep getting their asses kicked. >.> I'd like to offer a way for the group to get some much-needed story, but that's very tricky with this group. They have little tolerance for untrustworthy behavior, but I'd really like to see if they could make an alliance of convenience with a bad guy to stop something bad from happening. We'll see how it goes.

I got notice of being laid off last Thursday. The company is eliminating my position to create new ones that do the same work in Mexico for a fraction of the labor cost. My last day is October 24th, and if I'm still employed in good standing with the company by then I'm entitled to eight weeks' severance. Basically, I run out of money on Christmas Eve if I don't find another job.

It was a pretty big shock. I had been anticipating a smaller-than-desired pay raise based on what I had heard from a few friends (they had both received 1 - 1.5%), with a possible best-case-scenario that my pay was being raised to match what my colleagues were making. Instead, they cut five people from QA and QC after cutting six people or so earlier this year.

And they've made no secret of staffing the office in Mexico with reconfigured positions that do what we do, only with significantly lower labor. It's a really shitty way to lose a job; I can't fault the folks in Mexico for doing the same thing for lower costs, and I can't fault my managers who are only doing what they're told while being forced to absorb the immediate blowback. Still, it's radicalizing to know you could do your best work for less than you're worth and still be told you don't deserve the pay you get.

I went numb at the meeting where I was told, and cried a lot Thursday evening. I barely got anything done on Friday; just doing the work would set off a fresh wave of tears and I'd have to go somewhere else to collect myself all over again. I'm still emotionally fragile today, but I'm also in a headspace where the most important thing is to keep it moving. I have to absorb the blow and find another job somewhere, and being depressed isn't going to get that done. I guess being an adult is learning that the world doesn't stop when you feel like you can't go on and it's important to give the impression of being well-adjusted even when you're all but dead inside.

I'm trying to be more honest about my mental state here, but I also realize how important it is to manage my own emotional state. I...don't think I can fall apart the way I want to. There's no one to pick up the slack.

Falling apart doesn't really make the situation better, either. I'm just tired of having to eat shit and smile about it. Especially since everything happening this year feels like it's geared toward push people like me out of society completely. I don't have many credentials or certifications or degrees, but I'm pretty good lubricant for any team I find myself in. There are all these ways that I work to make things run more smoothly and that's hard to quantify on paper. Now that local tech companies are abandoning any pretense of DEI and also purging workers like crazy, any possible safe haven is flushed with better-qualified, younger candidates with fewer personal boundaries around work-life balance. It's going to be really, really hard finding something that pays enough for me to feel OK about working there.

Other friends I've known a long time, slightly older than I am, have been out of work for months without finding something. There are so many open positions for garbage pay that senior-level workers are applying for just because the market's that brutal. And when you add the impossibility of beating AI screeners so your resume can be seen by a human being, it...feels like I might never find work again.

But what else can I do but try? What else can I do but pretend things will be OK and I'll land on my feet somehow? If I give in to the sense of doom in my heart, I might as well disappear entirely. I can't do that, so trying it is.

Still, it would be nice if it felt like society wasn't forcing me to circle the drain so billionaires could make impossible amounts of money even more easily.

I think it's safe to say I'm in a depression. :) Just thinking of my mental state that way shifts me over into a different mindset that's...gentler, I guess. Less nest of angry bees and more blind mole snuffling around in an unfamiliar forest.

I meditated for the second day in a row and already it's pushing me into better choices. Instead of losing time playing video games or listening to YouTube, I cleaned the kitchen. It was in a bit of a state, with corn cobs, arugula, tomato jam, and bacon grease all left out overnight. D: I saw a couple cat hairs on the tomato jam, so I know Goldie was keenly interested and likely couldn't help herself to have a taste.

That makes me feel guilty, of course. I really don't want to be the cause of a bad turn for her, and the more chances she has to go off-diet the more likely that will be. I'll have to take extra care with the kitchen for a week or two; at the very least, I want to make sure she doesn't have access to any tasty food scraps that might be bad for her.

Husboo was not happy about the dishes early in the morning, which...eh. I'm in this mood where if something has to be done, I'd really rather not procrastinate about it if I can do something about it. I have no idea what my energy is going to be like later today, so if I have the juice to clean now I'd much rather use it then and there.

Discovered an ant trail in the master closet where Biscuit lives, which set me off on a cleaning jag. There are some small gaps in the baseboard where they must be getting in, and though I could trace the trail from the back corner all the way to the closeable gate we have keeping Biscuit in, I couldn't figure out where their ultimate destination could be. The master bathroom is the closest water source, so maybe there?

Anyway, Husboo asked why it set off this urge to clean and I had to stop to think about it. I guess for me, it's a sign that a place is unclean -- the places I grew up in had permanent roach colonies, and we were hit with a pretty bad flea infestation that really scarred me in high school. The thought of insects crawling around in high-pile carpet, mostly invisible, just makes my skin crawl.

But ants are relatively harmless insects and can even keep out more harmful pests by taking care of the grubs. There's a part of me that would like to figure out how to encourage the colony to look elsewhere for food and water, but who knows how well that would work? Ratty recommended a liquid trap that combines sugar water and borax, which attracts ants, kills them dead, and actually spreads through the colony. If I set them in the master closet, I'd have to be ready with the vacuum every day to get the fallen soldiers. I...don't want to eradicate an ant colony just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so I'll have to sit with my feelings on that and just keep watch. If it ends up causing issues for Biscuit or getting worse, I'll use them.

Got word from my coworker-friend that the annual raise was...exceptionally small (1.4%) so that's about what I can expect. It's not enough to lift my regular "salary" (I'm paid by the hour) up to $50K, so that pretty much forces my hand. In the short-term, I'll see if I can get the Patreon up and running again for some extra cash. But what I really need to do is get my resume in order so I can start putting in applications. I don't want to leave where I am, even with their dog-shit health insurance, but I'm tired of not being able to buy stuff I need because monthly bills take everything and then some. If I can't make a living wage here, I *have* to find some place that offers one.

The rough part about that is it will likely mean going back to the office at least two days a week. Beyond the normal hesitance to be in public spaces, I don't mind that so much -- but it might make car-sharing a bit more complicated. It'd honestly be worth it if I could make $75K again, though.

For now I'm just trying to simplify life again, focus on the next best thing. It made me feel better to clean things than "rest" with video games, so maybe doing other stuff I should have been doing all along will help just the same.

Tonight, we're going to watch the new "Superman" movie. I'm fully expecting it to make me cry, which would be the first Superman movie to ever do that. But from what I'm hearing, this version is Kindness & Empathy Man, and I'm so starved for characters pushing that it might overload my little brain

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jakebe

Boomer Express

September 2026

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The Writing Desk of Jakebe Rabbit

A collection of words and fluff

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2026/09/03 - Enemies to Colleagues

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Lover 48

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