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jakebeFinal Fantasy XIV was offline for maintenance yesterday, so none of us could feed our addiction. Instead it was a quiet evening watching R. play Star Trek: Resurgence, a game I only heard of when he told me he had downloaded it. It's honestly great; a true homage to 90s-era Trek that pulls elements from TOS, TNG, and DS9.
You play two characters: Cmdr. Jara Rydek and Ensign Carter Diaz, both stationed aboard the USS Resolute. Rydek is the new XO after a freak accident killed the former first officer and a number of crew, so she's walking into a potentially-charged situation. Diaz is one of the lower decks jockeys who do all the grunt work needed to keep the ship in operation, navigating complicated personal politics while also, you know, trying not to die.
In addition to managing your relationships with your crewmembers, you also get to scan things with your tricorder, use data to solve "scientific" puzzles, and even get into a phaser fight or two. It comes across as a really good episode of a show that never was, or maybe a novel that is maybe canon, maybe not.
There are a lot of quick-time events that can be kind of punishing, especially if you're under time pressure. Depending on your tolerance of that, I would definitely recommend it for any Star Trek fan out there. It's an action game for the folks who identify most with Rutherford from LDS.
Other than that, I made tamarind-honey chicken from Blue Apron and did a little bit of budgeting. Now that I'm settling in to my regular paycheck I really am going to have to keep a tighter grip on the pursestrings; even cutting as much as I have I'm still dipping into my savings to keep things even month after month. It hasn't helped that there's been a steady parade of expenses since the beginning of the year, but the truth is I just haven't been as careful as I should be and have fallen into bad habits.
Next week, I'll set the goal of spending no money at least three days a week AND squaring my budget every day. I haven't used Rocket Money nearly as much as I should have by now, so it would be nice to set aside some time to dive into it. I'm not sure how helpful it will be with saving money, but it couldn't hurt to view the finances from a different perspective.
Honestly, if I can find a way to live comfortably on the pay I have it wouldn't be the worst thing. Now that I have some idea what I'm doing and I've gotten to know some of my coworkers, this isn't a bad little job. There IS plenty of room for growth as long as I cultivate genuine relationships, and there are a lot of interesting parts to this little company. I could see myself stepping into management here, or possibly moving into a Technical Writing role. For now, though, just learning how to pull my weight as quickly as possible is the order of the day. Maybe by this time next year I'll have a better sense of my options.
Still, it would be a very good idea to keep my resume current and put together applications elsewhere, just to keep myself in fighting shape. At my current pay-rate I'm making just $47K/year, which is a pretty big shock to the wallet when I had been making easily twice that. While I can see myself possibly making a career here, the fact remains that almost any other job I could here would offer more pay, better benefits, and would likely be more closely aligned with my skills.
I'm in a good position to look carefully for a position I really want, and put together a strong application for it. If I'm serious about becoming a professional community manager then I should be boning up on the latest knowledge there, especially if I can use it to build a community around something I sincerely believe in. Even if I don't end up with one of those positions it would be nice to use what I've learned building my OWN community.
Agh, but I'm getting ahead of myself still. I didn't read OR write anything yesterday, and there's a lot of work to do at the day job. Work first, then reading, writing, cleaning. Simple goals today; it's time to mind the foundation of a decent life.
You play two characters: Cmdr. Jara Rydek and Ensign Carter Diaz, both stationed aboard the USS Resolute. Rydek is the new XO after a freak accident killed the former first officer and a number of crew, so she's walking into a potentially-charged situation. Diaz is one of the lower decks jockeys who do all the grunt work needed to keep the ship in operation, navigating complicated personal politics while also, you know, trying not to die.
In addition to managing your relationships with your crewmembers, you also get to scan things with your tricorder, use data to solve "scientific" puzzles, and even get into a phaser fight or two. It comes across as a really good episode of a show that never was, or maybe a novel that is maybe canon, maybe not.
There are a lot of quick-time events that can be kind of punishing, especially if you're under time pressure. Depending on your tolerance of that, I would definitely recommend it for any Star Trek fan out there. It's an action game for the folks who identify most with Rutherford from LDS.
Other than that, I made tamarind-honey chicken from Blue Apron and did a little bit of budgeting. Now that I'm settling in to my regular paycheck I really am going to have to keep a tighter grip on the pursestrings; even cutting as much as I have I'm still dipping into my savings to keep things even month after month. It hasn't helped that there's been a steady parade of expenses since the beginning of the year, but the truth is I just haven't been as careful as I should be and have fallen into bad habits.
Next week, I'll set the goal of spending no money at least three days a week AND squaring my budget every day. I haven't used Rocket Money nearly as much as I should have by now, so it would be nice to set aside some time to dive into it. I'm not sure how helpful it will be with saving money, but it couldn't hurt to view the finances from a different perspective.
Honestly, if I can find a way to live comfortably on the pay I have it wouldn't be the worst thing. Now that I have some idea what I'm doing and I've gotten to know some of my coworkers, this isn't a bad little job. There IS plenty of room for growth as long as I cultivate genuine relationships, and there are a lot of interesting parts to this little company. I could see myself stepping into management here, or possibly moving into a Technical Writing role. For now, though, just learning how to pull my weight as quickly as possible is the order of the day. Maybe by this time next year I'll have a better sense of my options.
Still, it would be a very good idea to keep my resume current and put together applications elsewhere, just to keep myself in fighting shape. At my current pay-rate I'm making just $47K/year, which is a pretty big shock to the wallet when I had been making easily twice that. While I can see myself possibly making a career here, the fact remains that almost any other job I could here would offer more pay, better benefits, and would likely be more closely aligned with my skills.
I'm in a good position to look carefully for a position I really want, and put together a strong application for it. If I'm serious about becoming a professional community manager then I should be boning up on the latest knowledge there, especially if I can use it to build a community around something I sincerely believe in. Even if I don't end up with one of those positions it would be nice to use what I've learned building my OWN community.
Agh, but I'm getting ahead of myself still. I didn't read OR write anything yesterday, and there's a lot of work to do at the day job. Work first, then reading, writing, cleaning. Simple goals today; it's time to mind the foundation of a decent life.
