Hurry Up and Wait

Posted on January 18, 2024 by Ian
A green iguana asleep on a colorful towel.

Lizards are much more chill about these things.

I’m currently engaged in everyone’s favorite game, “hurry up and wait.”

I’m supposed to hear back about a job interview this week, to determine whether I’m going to progress in the selection process or wash out. It’s for a good job where the pay might be a little tight, but workable, that would help me advance my career. Y’know, ideal stuff. The sort of ideal that means I haven’t wanted to risk getting too far with any other potential job.

It’s put me in a bit of a bind. I’ve luckily been able to talk to a couple recruiting/temp agencies in the meantime and not get far enough to worry about making a choice, and I’ve been very clear with them I can’t accept anything until I hear back about this job. Still, I haven’t been able to look for work that might help me pay the bills at the end of the month, something that could start right away and get a pay period in before the rent’s due. Think construction labor or certain service industry gigs. Where the interview and onboarding process are fast and you get started right away. Not that I’d be guaranteed to get that sort of job so quickly. Far from it. Things are tight out there right now for a lot of people, and there’s a lot of competition. But I haven’t felt able to try.

I was talking to my psychiatrist last week, and she’s the one who used “hurry up and wait” when I described how I was needing to wait two weeks from the interview to hear back. I hadn’t thought of it that way before that point, because I very much understand that interview processes take time and I knew I was one of the earliest interviews based on the possible time slots I was offered. At this point it’s feeling more and more true, though, as the days tick down towards the end of the month and I feel like I can’t make any big moves. Not that I’m sure what move to make.

It made me think about patience. As a kid, my mom would tell me I had a tendency to be impatient. I’m not sure I 100% agree with that assessment, but I digress. As an adult, I’ve been told I have bottomless patience. It’s a double-edged sword. I’m good at being on hold. I’m good at working my way through bureaucracies and complicated procedures. I know in many cases everyone is doing their best, but people make mistakes or need breaks or I don’t know the whole truth behind how everything works, so it might take longer than I think it will and I stay patient. I do my best to be understanding and kind, to hear people out and understand, and to keep in mind that not everyone thinks or behaves like I do, and I should be patient and accepting of them as they are.

This leads to the other edge of the sword. (insert a joke about the tip here.) This patience can make me a doormat. I’ll give people more grace than I should, waiting too long before I push back to properly set boundaries. I can give the impression I don’t have needs, or that my needs don’t matter because clearly it’s not bad enough for me to say something so it’s fine, right?

It’s caused friction in my life (I guess I’m a doormat with grip strips). I once was at a party and was ready to head home for the night, and told the person I was driving home as much. Half an hour later (what felt like the longest half hour of my life due to exhaustion), it seemed like they hadn’t been saying their goodbyes and they ended up in my area of the party again. Leaving was brought up again, and I was told that I “should have been more forceful” when expressing my desire to leave the first time if I wanted to actually get going. I thought (and still think) that’s pretty bullshit, but I doubled-down on being patient and tried to take it as a lesson for communicating with this person in the future, doing my best to smother my irritation and anger in the process.[1]

Not my best moment.

Again, the patience has had a lot of benefits, too. It’s not all doormat incidents. The thing is, when you’re the person who supposedly has infinite patience, it becomes incredibly hard for people to tell when you’re running out of it. It becomes hard to be the one to tell other people you’ve run out of it. In my case, you try to find reserves far longer than is healthy. You run out of mana and cast from hit points, so to speak.

I wonder at which point my patience hurts more than it helps. At this rate, it feels like I’m never going to swing back towards having less patience enough to ever find the answer.

I did notice one person I’m impatient with constantly, though: myself. There’s so much I want to do and achieve, and I get angry at myself for not having gotten any closer already. The worst part is, there’s no upside. Some people are able to use that impatience to drive themselves hard and improve quickly. In my case it’s more like shifting to too high a gear while traveling uphill in an attempt to go faster. Instead of ascending, you just stall out.

I’m feeling stalled out right now, both externally (job hunt) and internally (oh god so many things). Patience and impatience, coming together like matter and antimatter to blow up in my face and leave a void of nothingness behind.

Hurrying up and waiting.

~ * ~ * ~

[1] This ended up being an example of a larger negative pattern with how I communicated with this person, which I think is the core of what eventually caused that relationship to fall apart. Good times.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Hurry Up and Wait

Week Wrap-up: The Wrappening

Posted on January 14, 2024 by Ian
A pencil sketch of a mouse in a mostly-realistic style.

To my former drawing teacher: I tried to push the values! I only had a #2 pencil to work with. D:

Not going to do a full-on accountability check-in this week, just a general review of the week. I figure I’ll do the nuts-and-bolts accountability thing once a month, which strikes me as a good pace while still allowing me to write about other things.

I thought I’d talk about what I was playing, reading, and otherwise doing this week.

Playing

I’ve been getting close to finishing Horizon: Zero Dawn, so of course I got distracted and went off to play Bioshock 2 after reading enough TV Tropes about the series to want to play it. It’s been sucking up way too much of my time, but thankfully for its eating of my hours I believe the game is rather short. I’m about 10 or so hours into it and I think I’ve passed the halfway point of the single-player. I plan on playing the Minerva’s Den DLC, too, as I apparently bought it at some point. I think that’s only supposed to be 6 hours long, something like that.

I’d like to try a full review of it once I’m done, but so far Bioshock 2 is…fine. I’m enjoying myself well enough, and I do like Rapture as a setting. However this game isn’t as impressive as the first one, and doesn’t immerse me as well in the world. Many spaces feel more cramped than the original Bioshock, and Rapture loses its feeling of grandiosity as a result. The characters also aren’t quite as compelling. There’s been a few times where I can tell I’m supposed to feel betrayed, angry, etc. by a given character, but because it’s all based on backstory I only half-know about from the in-game sources, there’s not enough context there for the emotion to spark. The difficulty is also out of whack for me. I think I’m getting better, but TV Tropes is like “it’s a breeze” and that has…not been the case for me. It doesn’t help that stealth doesn’t work well as a playstyle, which makes sense given I’m playing a Big Daddy stomping around in an enormous diving suit but deprives me of the sorts of tactics I tend to be the best at.

Watching

I’ve gotten sucked into the X-Files, of all things. It’s a bit of a problem because I’ll keep watching when I should be doing other things. The writing seems to take a dive whenever psychic powers come up, but overall it’s solid and very enjoyable to watch. I can see why everyone was so hung up on the Scully/Mulder chemistry, because daaaaamn.

The guest stars are a treat, too. From a baby Seth Green to Don S. Davis to Bradley Whitford, it’s something of a constant “hey, it’s that guy!” for people I’ve seen in other 90s-00s shows.

I find the now-dated technology very charming. Tape-based answering machines, people not having cell phones, faxes, old MS-DOS (or Win 3.1) computers, all that good stuff. Makes me nostalgic for a world before constant emails, internet access, and always having a phone in your pocket. Especially because I never had the potential downside of being eaten by a mutant because I didn’t have my phone to call for help.

Reading

I finished The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss this week. Well, except for the author’s note. I’ll try to get through that tonight.

It’s very charming. I love Bast as a character in the other Kingkiller Chronicles books and getting some more insight into his day-to-day and the town as a whole made the world feel more real. Getting more details about what a creature such as him gets up to in a small town gave him depth, and Rothfuss being able to make real dramatic stakes that tap into Bast’s abilities while keeping the scope so limited was impressive.

I’m almost positive I read the original story, The Lightning Tree, a zillion years ago, but reading this I clearly didn’t remember any of the details so the overarching plot was novel and fresh. So that was nice, after reading the apologetic foreword where Rothfuss explains that it’s “just’ a rewrite of that short story and not something new.

The art by Nate Taylor is gorgeous, too. Great pen work.

Other

Other stuff! Let’s see here.

New habits/resolutions didn’t go well this week. My cough has stuck around, though it finally seems to be improving. I did test it and it isn’t covid, so that’s good. I also think I exacerbated it by going on a walk on a cold night to get my steps in, though. Oops. I’m ready for it to be over. It messed up my ability to work out, though I got a few in. It also made me rest overmuch, I think. Too much of an excuse to not do things I probably should have done anyway (albeit going slower to account for the cough).

Mental health wasn’t in a great spot, either, and I ended up feeling very directionless. I definitely wasted some days and many many hours on distractions. I need to figure out how to self-structure better. It’s been a struggle all throughout my unemployed time and it seems to be getting worse, which is incredibly frustrating.

I did talk to a few recruiters this last week, and I hear back from an interview in the next few days, so fingers crossed.

I managed some decent-ish art, too, as you can see above. I’m really much much better working from reference, my other sketch pages are embarrassingly bad. I can’t seem to make the jump yet to drawing what’s in my head. I know it’s a skill I need to build, but it’s frustrating all the same.

~ * ~ * ~

That’s it for this week. I’m hoping the upcoming week will be better. Maybe I’ll even get the blog post in before Sunday! An enby can dream.

Posted in Accountability, Art, Books, Hey Ian Watcha Into, Video Games | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Week Wrap-up: The Wrappening

2024 Accountability Check-Ins: Week 1

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Ian
A green iguana perched on top of a small humidifier.

Here, have a picture of Jabberwocky getting up to MISCHIEF a few weeks ago. (She really shouldn’t climb on that…)

I know, you were all sitting on the edge of your seat, wondering if I’d manage to post for the first week of the year after saying “hey I want to post once a week this year.” Well, fear not, here I am!

I was thinking of doing a full on accountability breakdown of my first week, but it’s also late, I have a few more things to do tonight, and I am trying to get my sleep schedule back to a more normal place. So here’s the summary:

  • New habits going well, but not perfect. Missed some days.
  • Blew doing WTBBL work this week, hope to do better next week
  • Exercise derailed/changed by picking up a cough on Tuesday, I think from the cold air irritating my throat on my run. Still have said cough, but have managed to do at least a little something exercise-wise most days.
  • Also applied for 5 jobs and had a job interview, which aren’t tracked habits but seem like a good thing to note
  • I wrote 6k of pre-writing/outline for the novel I’m working on and regularly working on that felt amazing

And that’s it for now! Keeping it short, for once. 🙂

P.S. Will definitely do a more detailed accountability post at some point, either for weekly posts in the future or maybe once a month so it doesn’t overwhelm other content here.

Posted in Accountability, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on 2024 Accountability Check-Ins: Week 1

Reflections and Resolutions

Posted on December 31, 2023 by Ian
An image of the Seattle skyline in late evening. The space needle stands tall among lit buildings around it.

This photo’s from a week ago, so apologies if they did something bonkers to the space needle tonight and I didn’t include it.

It’s the last day of the year. Last few hours, actually. I wanted to do quick look back at the last year and then outline some of what I’m thinking about for next year.

When I mentioned I was thinking about how to do this post, @randomgeek@hackers.town on Mastodon sent me a link to Techdirt, sharing how they liked how TechDirt always made an effort to take an optimistic tack with their year-turn posts. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure I’ll totally manage it. I’ll give it a shot for the part of this where I look forward to next year. Seems like that’d be healthy.

Year In Review

This last year was a very volatile mix of good and bad. Many good moments, sure, but the bad stuff that happened was all pretty big. Plus there’s that whole “we mostly remember the negative stuff” bias thing. Shrug.gif. Bad news first, as they say.

The Bad

In bullet points, because I ramble on too long in straight prose.

  • Got laid off at my day job at the end of April. There was a lot of stress going on at that job, and most of the way things were run didn’t jive with me or my values. That said, I had an almost entirely excellent group of teammates to work with, which made up for quite a bit. I still miss working with them! I’m hoping if I end up in IT again I can poach one or two of them over. Anyway, this layoff absolutely wrecked my stability and mental health, both of which are still struggling today.
  • Major breakup in September. I’ve still got a constellation of feelings going on about it, but no matter what it belongs in the bad category, even if it ends up being best in the long run like I suspect it might. Losing contact with a partner and also by proxy losing a huge chunk of my social circle was rough. So it was a big hit to stability along several axes.
  • My car had its window broken (and some minor stuff stolen out of it) a month or so ago. Luckily, my insurance covered that repair. I also damaged the exhaust system (tailpipe caught on a really steep hill as I rolled back, long story), and fixing that along with other needed maintenance ended up costing me over $1k that I could ill afford. At least it runs better now, and I found a mechanic I like. That’s probably worth something.
  • Still struggling to find work. I have an interview this upcoming week, so fingers crossed there. I realize that the library field is competitive around here, and that there were a bunch of tech layoffs that have flooded the market for IT/tech work, but it’s hard not to feel totally unemployable at anything that actually uses my skillset(s) and pays decently.
  • All of this obviously kicked my mental health up and down the block and then down into the core of the earth for good measure. It’s hard for me to find hope, which means it’s harder to do things like job search, so I feel even more stuck, which means it all cycles and gets worse. I’m doing my best the claw my way out of it, and I got an additional diagnosis recently which might help explain some stuff. But yeah, turns out my chronic major depression didn’t magically go away at some point! Bummer. (*rimshot*)
  • Jabberwocky’s been sick-ish like half the year. She seems to be legit perking up, though, and it’s looking like more of a chronic but treatable issue. Still, a lot of stress and anxiety on top of everything else.
  • I’m starting the new year flat broke in a way that makes me very anxious. Boo.
  • Getting my medication was a real slog this year. Pharmacy closures and trying to manage transferring prescriptions, juggling getting controlled substances filled within the strict time frames, all that.

The Good

Hey, it’s the optimism section! I know, you’re all excited.

  • Had a lot of support from my friends this year, and tried to get better at asking for help. Might have even succeeded. But the event that sticks out is how I was able to call on two of my friends the day of the breakup and they came over and hung out with me and listened and generally took care of me, and how understanding and supportive a bunch of other friends were, too. Seriously, I teared up because of how kind people were. That’s pretty good.
  • I managed to keep a couple friends I knew through my ex, after the breakup. They’re read folks, and I’m glad to still have them in my life.
  • Went on a couple of very nice trips in the first half of the year, with my ex and her social group. I got to finally got to Leavenworth and tried out cross-country skiing on my own. It was fun and I only fell down like four times! Pretty good for going solo and self-teaching myself on youtube just before heading out. I also got to go to Walla Walla and was the DD for a bunch of winery visits. It’s very pretty out there, I got to try small sips of others’ wine and having the tasting experience without needing to pay a tasting fee, and I got to sit outside in pretty places and chat with people and truly have nothing to do besides relax, and that was amazing.
  • Primary Attribute keeps on trucking. We passed our two-year mark and released our third Halloween and solstice episodes. The group’s still going strong and I think we’re consistently improving and making better art, and that’s rad.
  • Kept writing, on and off. Not nearly as much as I’d like, and I struggle with consistency and keeping things challenging so I keep improving, but given how down I felt about my writing at several points this year I’m going to take my overall arc as a win.
  • Got my in-person weeknight writing group back together! Hell yeah!
  • Moved from an apartment in West Seattle that was going down the tubes to a nice apartment in Capitol Hill. The only issue is it’s exact location, but that’s due to the breakup and my proximity to my now-ex going from great and useful to awkward and sometimes anxiety-causing. That’s not the apartment’s fault, though, and overall the building’s been a good little place to live.
  • I’ve kept in touch with a couple of core coworkers from my old job, and it’s nice to keep the friendships going.
  • Learned some new stuff, played good games, read good books, watched good tv/movies, etc. I know, highly specific.
  • Built up/continued good exercise habit. It’s still not perfect, but it’s been consistent and any interruptions of a week or two have been just that, interruptions, rather than derailing the whole thing as would sometimes happen in the past.
  • I continue to be alive, and that’s something. Survival is an underrated achievement.

There was probably other stuff, but we’ve already broken 1k words so ONWARDS.

The Year to Come

So yeah, going into this upcoming year in rough shape, even accounting for the good stuff above. I suppose that means there’s nowhere to go but up? I’ve joked once or twice that it’s so nice playing in the muddy water at the rock bottom of the pit. Gallows humor, it’s good for what ails ya.

I’m hoping to get out of the gross pit water (ew) and climbing back up this upcoming year. So: optimism! Sure, why not!

I like to do resolutions but I also know that those can really backfire, so I’m going to outline both some more general aspirations and then go into resolutions.

Aspirations

  • Employment – I’ll be doing my best either to find steady employment or duct tape together my skillsets enough to make enough money via freelancing or gig work. Either way, I’d like to be stable and rebuilding savings by the end of the year.
  • Relationships (both romantic and not) – It’d be nice to date someone again. Not a lot I can do to control this directly besides put myself out there and meet people. I’d also like to meet more friends and build more community generally, so getting myself out into the world and meeting more people would be a boon on several fronts. Plus I can probably go do fun stuff to meet people at. Like game nights or stealing police cars.
  • Clean and Happy-Making Living Space – My space is currently a mess, it is always a mess, and I don’t actually like that. I’d like to get my place cleaned up and keep it cleaned up this year. It’s good for my mental health, and good for me generally. Organized, too, if I can manage it. Maybe this can be the year I stop constantly losing my wallet.
  • Write More, Publish More – My writing’s felt stalled out and I got depressed about it this last year, but I think I can see what I need to do to level up. I also want to finish more things, which I’m spectacularly bad at. So I’d like to write more again, with an emphasis on working on projects that challenge me and keeping my average daily wordcount up. I’d also like to publish more stuff, even if it’s just here on the blog or on various other sites. I think it’d help me to finish stuff, either by wanting to post one story or by breaking up longer works and posting it chapter by chapter so it’s out in the world. In an ideal situation, by the end of this next year I’ll be sending a novel out to agents. I’ve been hacking away at one, and I’d like to buckle down and make serious progress.
  • Exercise – My exercise routine was pretty good this year, on average. I’d like it to be better. I’ll work on pushing myself harder to get the results I want. It’s hard to push through discomfort when you’re exercising solo, and that’s a skill I need to build if I’m going to seriously improve. (I did also join a group boxing class 1x/week lately that kicks my ass in the best possible way, so finding more group stuff to keep myself accountable and challenged isn’t out of the question.)
  • Focus, Productivity, and Intentionality – My productivity isn’t where I want it to be at. My focus isn’t in places I want it to be. I don’t need to be 100% productive all the time, I know that’s a recipe for burnout. But I often spend time in ways that don’t make me happy or satisfied, and I’d like to spend my time with more intention and make an effort to actively choose things that will make me happier in the long run, rather than getting distracted and wasting time. I also want my single-task speed and focus to be better. Too many things take me waaaaay to long just because I haven’t trained myself well to dial into things and move quickly. I figure between the intentionality and the focus, I’ll be able to be more productive on the things I care about and make more progress in my life, and that sounds good to me.
  • Learn More – I want to learn more skills and new things in general. At the moment I’m thinking getting back into Japanese, learning more Python, and learning/improving some form of artistic expression (e.g. learning an instrument or significantly improving my drawing skills).
  • Make Good Art – Just like it says. Writing, the podcast, game design…I want to make more art and show it to more people.
  • Tie Up Loose Ends – I have a billion projects in various states of completion, tasks and projects I owe people, and other loose ends that eat away at me and make me feel anxious/sad/guilty or just consume brain cycles. I’d like to get way more of those finished up and free up the brain space for other things, and I won’t complain about finally getting the fruits of those labors, too.
  • Be a Better Person – Easy to define and achieve, right? 😛

Resolutions and Concrete Goals

You’re almost to the end! Last section.

I have a tendency to bite off way more than I can chew when it comes to the sorts of habits I want to make, either in resolutions or even when writing out a habit tracker. So this will be a mix of both resolutions/habits and just concrete goals that I don’t necessarily need to build into a daily routine.

Oh, and I fully expect to not achieve any given habit or other recurring scheduled action every single time. I’ll just be aiming for consistency overall. It’s fine for me to miss a few days here and there on a daily habit, for example, as long as I get back on the horse as soon as I can.

Goals

  • Finish a novel-length story, take it through edits/rewrites, and be sending it out to agents at the end of the year.
  • Submit at least two short stories for publication.
  • For weightlifting: get my deadlift weight above my squat weight. I’d love to be able to deadlift twice my body weight by the end of the year and squat 1.5x my weight, but I don’t feel like I have enough knowledge to predict if that’s reasonably possible.
  • For running: Run a sub 8-minute mile. Ideally, run three in a row. I managed a 9’26” mile this last week, so I think the single-mile goal is definitely doable.
  • Flexibility: Touch my toes with my back straight (instead of slumping over). Be able to squat properly and sit in that position comfortably. Heels flat, balanced, butt almost to the ground. Y’know, that thing that like half the world does all the time and Americans are spectacularly bad at.
  • [Specific body goals not included but have been considered]
  • Be self-supporting monetarily again.
  • Finish the audio book text review I’ve owed WTBBL for like a year now. (I am so ashamed…)
  • Learn the basics of makeup.
  • Get my morning routine nailed down to the point I’m ready for “work” (whatever that means on a given day) by 9am. So up, fed, cleaned up, exercised (maybe, I’m still figuring out which of morning or afternoon/eve works better for me), dressed, and Jabberwocky fed and ready to go.
  • Record an audiobook.
  • Go hiking at least 6 times.
  • Go camping at least once.

Resolutions

  • Post an average of once a week or more to this blog.
  • For January: Walk 5k steps/day, as part of a group resolution I’m doing with some other folks on Mastodon.
  • Write 1k words a day, not including morning pages. (Morning pages are a helpful exercise but not nearly as much for me as back when I did 1k/day, turns out.)
  • Work out 4+ days a week. The ideal is 6, with 1 rest day.
  • Finally get the tattoo I’ve wanted forever. That was going to be this year but then the job loss happened and the piece I’m thinking of will probably cost a decent bit.
  • Clean my place up generally 20 min/day and be sure to catch up on dishes at least every other day.
  • Do supplemental stretches/exercises I have outlined for myself every day.
  • Journal once a week.
  • Sleep 7 hours/day. This one’s going to take some building up to, I’m not expecting to nail it down right away.
  • Develop an art skill for 15 minutes twice a week (e.g. drawing).
  • Do 1 hr/week of WTBBL work until the assignment I have is done.
  • Use my planner every day and have my week plan (which is a separate section in the planner) done by EOD Monday every week.

That all is probably way more than enough, and we’re past 2.6k words on this post at this point, so I’ll call it here.

I hope everyone had a good 2023, and let’s all push into 2024 together. We can make it a better year than the last one was. Or at least we can do our best to make it so!

Posted in Accountability, Art, Personal, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Christmas: An Event That Happened

Posted on December 25, 2023 by Ian

Homemade Christmas cookies in the shape of gingerbread men and dinosaurs on parchment paper on a cooling tray. The icing and sprinkles are a bit messy.

The :[ expression on the gingerbread person in the upper right matches my own mood more than I’d like to admit.

Hey friends! Warning in advance this one ended up being a bit ramble-y, even by my standards. 🙂

It’s Christmas! For another…hour-ish, Pacific time.Listen, I didn’t get around to blogging until late today. But now I’m here with hot chocolate with whiskey in it, ready to write a few words.

This Christmas has managed to average out to mediocre, which I’m taking as something of a win. Here’s a rundown of the actual events, such as they are:

Visited Davis

I headed back to Davis, CA, the world’s most scientifically-advanced cow town and also my hometown, to visit my mom for a few days. It turns out I still hate flying from an airports/logistics stress perspective, and I forgot to take Dramamine on my flight to California and kicked off being low-key nauseated for most of the time I was there.

Seeing my hometown was nice and I managed to pop into a few businesses I have fond memories of. Bizarro World, the comics/games shop, had a slimmer used RPG section than I’m used to them having, but there were still a few interesting games. Turns out there was an entire Starship Troopers RPG, including a bunch of splat books! I also headed to the thrift store (nothing too interesting, a copy of Pokemon Shield was available but I didn’t ask the price), and the Avid Reader, a very nice local bookstore. I didn’t pick anything up for myself because the monetary squeeze from unemployment is really starting to hit. My mother was very kind and bought me a signed copy of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Narrow Road Between Desires, which I’m looking forward to reading.

The main event as such while I was there was sorting through my Dad’s old clothes to see what I might like to keep and what we’re going to give away, and also going through a bunch of childhood stuff stored in the closet of my old bedroom. Neither was the most fun thing I’ve ever done, through the childhood stuff sorting was definitely the easier thing. It’s not nearly done, though, so I’ll need to go back and finish some other time. I didn’t end up bringing too much back in my luggage, but I hauled a number of newly-inherited clothing items that I hope will be in rotation soon.

I came back to Seattle on the 21st, greeted by an extra toasty apartment and an iguana who probably didn’t appreciate at all that I left the heat up for her while I was gone. It was wonderful to see her again, though. I missed my angry mini-dinosaur quite a bit even though I was only gone for a few days.

Christmas Eve

None of my friends ended up planning any sort of party, and last year I spent Christmas Eve (and morning) with my ex M’s local family members, so I couldn’t really do a repeat of last year. Which is a shame, because it was really really nice to get to do the whole cozy Christmas Eve thing (decorating a tree, etc.) with a family and feel warm and welcome and all that. Sigh.

What I did end up doing was making Christmas cookies for myself with limited success (see picture above). The base cookie was good but took way longer in the oven than the recipe said, but maybe I overbaked them. They didn’t end up all dry or anything, so I’m not sure. The icing wasn’t great, though. Good enough when on the cookie, but as a standalone it had kind of a…tang, I guess. The corn syrup used as part of it had vanilla in it, which I think might have thrown off the balance of the flavors towards a slight alcoholic/extract-y undertaste. Also it turns out I don’t actually own any Christmas-y cookie cutters besides the gingerbread men, so I ended up using the dinosaur ones I do own. They’re Christmas dinosaurs. Roll with it. >.>;;;

Besides that I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time, and loved it. A couple friends and I had a discord call in lieu of our usual RPG game because so many people had to tap out, where we talked about potential RPGs for a side podcast project. Perhaps not the ideal evening, but good all things considered. And certainly better than spending it totally isolated, which I worried would be what happened.

Christmas Day

Today! Fewer things happened today. I opened the presents my mom sent home with me and got a cute pair of (knee high, yay!) socks and Legends & Lattes, a sweet, lovely book by Travis Baldree. After eating breakfast and finishing the muppet movie (I’d started nodding off during the last half hour the night before), I spent a chunk of the day reading straight through L&L while sipping coffee and finishing more of the cookies.

Later on I had a call with my mom and sister over Zoom. Getting a chance to talk to my sister is always nice, as we don’t talk very often despite getting along well. Our lives are in very different places, based on a combination of a moderately large age gap (8 years) and our divergent circumstances. She’s been married for quite a while and has three kids. I’ve managed to somehow not find my marriageable person/people despite my best efforts for 15+ years and my angry teen-esque iguana is about as close as I’ll likely get to having kids. So yeah, different! Always good to catch up nonetheless.

I did manage to continue a couple of traditions today despite flying solo. I had Christmas Tacos, a tradition from my dad’s side of the family that came about from my grandmother being sick of all of the effort it took to make Christmas dinner and all of us going “y’know, we all like tacos and would be happy to just do that instead.” I also made myself a more traditional Christmas dinner (the tacos were lunch) with ham and cranberry sauce and roasted vegetables and potatoes, but that was for fun. And I engaged in the most important tradition of all, watching A Charlie Brown Christmas, something I started doing in 2020 as a way to make lockdown feel Christmas-y and have made a point of keeping up ever since.

~ * ~ * ~

That was a way longer recap than I intended, sorry y’all…

In the end, Christmas was rough emotionally this year in a lot of ways. It drove home a lot of the things I lost due to the breakup, from events/people I enjoyed to having someone special who could support me (and I support them) during the holiday stressors. I’m not fully over the breakup yet, but the last couple weeks re-opened that wound somewhat in a way I wasn’t expecting. I also ended up feeling more isolated than usual, due in art to not having much holiday stuff to get caught up in. I like being social, and I actually really like holidays, but it didn’t gel together this year. Next year I might need to be the change I want to see in the world, so to speak. Even though I personally find the idea of planning and running a Christmas party as a person who lives on their own to be very daunting.

Still, I survived and had some good moments mixed in. I’m not sure I’ll take that as a win, but I didn’t fully lose either, and that’s something.

Merry Christmas! Here’s hoping yours went better than mine, and that we both have even better ones next year. <3

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Christmas: An Event That Happened

What I’m Currently Verbing

Posted on November 10, 2023 by Ian
A still from It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

Spoilers! Jesus…

This is all the stuff I’ve been experiencing lately on the media front! It was originally a section of Monday’s post, but it got so long it’s a standalone now. What an exciting time to be alive.

~ * ~ * ~

Reading

I finished The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson a bit back and found myself drawn to dive into the next book, which is unusual for me with epic fantasy. The audiobook format probably helps quite a bit. As such, I’ve started wading into the second book of the series, Words of Radiance, and after listening to the first handful of minutes and then putting it down for like two weeks I’m now properly chugging along. It’s nice reading them back to back, because everything’s fresh and I had the unique joy of going “hey, it’s that asshole!” about a minor character showing back up whose name I probably wouldn’t have remembered with more of a lag between readings.

I’m also very close to being done with The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. The only issue is that it makes me very sleepy much of the time when I’m reading it. Not a slag on the book, I’ve just been tired lately and unlike with audiobooks I can’t be doing other physical stuff while I read, so I’m more susceptible to fall towards slumber, especially given I often am reading this one in bed just before going to sleep.

Tools of the Titans by Tim Ferris has fallen by the wayside. There’s nothing wrong with it on its own, but there were a few too many interview subjects in a row making blanket absolutist proclamations about signs of health in the section I was reading and I got tired of it. I think I just hit a rough patch of the book, honestly. I’m not feeling up to absorbing more health stuff right now while staying on top of my properly-skeptical game, and the ebook format makes it hard for me to casually skip ahead to the not-health sections and come back to it later. I’ll likely get back into it at some point. Just generally burnt out right now and I don’t think that book would help.

Watching

I did watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for Halloween. I don’t have any brilliant observations on it, story-wise. I was struck by the animation, specifically the painted (I think?) backgrounds. They add texture to the animation while still integrating well with the crisply drawn characters and make the whole process feel like a labor of love and art. I also had that vibe from the Christmas special. On both they could have just been quick cash ins, but they feel like the creators really wanted to make something special and took it seriously, and that comes through in the work.

I’ve been watching Black Sails. Finished Season 1, a few episodes into Season 2. I like it! People actually mostly have understandable motivations for the terrible things they do to each other, and those terrible things take a clear toll on them emotionally, which is a lovely change from a lot of stories. I also was reading some bit about the series and they were like “hey it’s a prequel to Treasure Island” which immediately made me go “wait, what?” followed by “huh I guess I know who definitely survives now.” Which isn’t a bad thing at all, even if by then looking at the Treasure Island wikipedia page I learned before it was revealed on the show that a character I suspected hadn’t actually died did, in fact, survive.

I’m somewhat waiting for the show to fall flat on its face when it comes to characterization and plot between now and the end of the series, because almost no show makes it four seasons with tight writing, even if they’re short seasons. But hopefully they’ll keep it together. As is, it’s not a perfect show, but there’s no enormous missteps that make me want to stop watching, so good for ‘em.

It’s also gorgeous. The costumers, props folks, and set designers deserve many awards.

Outside of that it’s been mostly MissieMae’s Fallout: New Vegas Let’s Plays and Ghostwizards’s Phoenix Point Twitch streams. Sometimes you just need that good good parasocial time, especially when living alone and not having a job to go to/coworkers to talk with. It’s reminding me some of my experience with media consumption during the pandemic, which isn’t a great mindspace to brush up against, but so it goes.

Listening

Podcasts

I’ve been doing a re-listen of Failure to Adapt, a lovely podcast about adaptations from books to other mediums that’s fun and light with great chemistry between the hosts. I also caught up on The Film Reroll, and was very excited when I saw they did It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for Halloween. It was great! Everyone is good, and Andy Hoover is an eternal gem who I hope I get to work with someday.

Beyond that it’s the usual weekly suspects, e.g. Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. I’ve also been enjoying If Books Could Kill when new episodes drop, and have caught a few of the new episodes of You’re Wrong About, though I’m hopelessly behind on that one.

Music

I’m mostly being Basic and listening to a couple of cafe/smooth jazz/bossa nova/etc. live channels and Lofi Girl chillout. I should really listen to more music again instead of just constantly mainlining podcasts, but living alone and being unemployed having something more for my brain to latch onto than just music is usually a good thing.

Playing

Video Games

Baldur’s Gate 3 is dominating my video/computer game space. I’m about fifty five hours in now, stumbling along through Act 2. I’m annoyed I think I missed my romance chance with some characters, but I’m hoping if only from a game design perspective that I’ll get a second chance to initiate things. That said, I wish it was more clear how to just be friends with members of this pack of chaos dorks. The expression on Wyll’s face when I was like “I would like to not make out with you, kthnx” was heartbreaking and I’d rather have just had an option to, I dunno, have a nice tender moment of a more platonic variety to end the scene.

I would also settle for it being flagged if you could get with multiple characters without it being a problem.

Also one of the side characters in the camp will just fucking roast you for not hooking up with anyone by a certain point in the game, which is hilarious but also made me want to go “hey, fuck off.” Only a little. I had a more polite response in-game, though.

I think I still have the chance to get with Karlach, though. Fingers crossed. Holdin’ out for a hellion!

I’ve started clicking through some of the voice acting and just reading the text in conversations, which I feel bad about given the voice acting’s so good. There’s just a LOT of dialog and otherwise-voiced text in this game.

Tabletop

On the tabletop front I played Discworld: Ankh-Morpork with three friends recently. I’ve never played that game with four players, and it plays very differently with 4 instead of 3, in a good way! It’s harder for any one person to pull ahead, and it makes it hard to figure out which victory condition any given person is going for. It also gave me a chance to hang out with a friend I met through my ex for the first time since the breakup, and it was lovely to see him.

~ * ~ * ~

And that’s it for now, folks! Next update is probably next week.

What have y’all been enjoying?

Posted in Books, Hey Ian Watcha Into, Video Games | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What I’m Currently Verbing

Bloggerel Doggerel

Posted on November 6, 2023 by Ian
An iguana in a bus tub full of water, taking a bath. She had one arm hooked over the side and is staring at the camera.

Jabberwocky would like everyone to know that baths are bad, actually. Even if I managed to catch her at a point she wasn’t harshly glaring.

(Despite the doggerel in the title, this post does not, in fact, have the form of comic verse. More’s the pity.)

Been a few weeks, so it’s update time again! Whee, updates.

~ * ~ * ~

Things have taken a turn for the rainy and cold in Seattle. It’s quite lovely in a lot of ways, though the reduced sunlight has my bird brain getting sleepy more easily than before. But having my apartment stay at a decent temperature with the windows closed is a nice change. Whenever it gets sunny around here, I have to crack a window or this place shoots up into the mid to high 70s. The double-edged sword of facing south.

Hopefully spooky season treated everyone well. A friend of mine had a spooky brunch, which was a nice time, though I felt a little awkward given how few people I knew there, and how well many of them knew each other. I’ve never been very good at joining in-person conversations already in progress, either, which didn’t help. I wish there was a social skills pack I could download into my brain, but in lieu of that I’ll just need to keep working on it. On Halloween proper I watched It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and ate probably-overpriced tiny candies. Turns out the only way I could get Reese’s Pumpkins was to buy a bag of fun-sized candy. Worth it. We also recorded a somewhat-heavy Primary Attribute episode earlier in the evening, so having some candy and a silly cartoon was a nice counterpoint.

Onto some more specific stuff:

Job Search

I’m still digging around for a job, like last time. I’ve given in and finally started applying to IT positions, as my unemployment runs out at roughly the end of this month, so I can’t just keep crossing my fingers on library positions. I’m extremely frustrated at the library job search going so poorly, especially given how many of the paraprofessional, not-Librarian jobs I applied to on top of the full librarianship gigs. I’m perfectly willing to do a non-librarian library job for a year or so to get more experience to be a more competitive applicant for the full-on librarian positions, but if even those aren’t getting to the interview stage I feel stuck on how I’m going to gain any of library experience they want at all. Right now, though, I’m shifting into aiming for just getting a decent-paying job so I can get some stability again. Make some money so I can support myself making art, and all that. I’ll try to keep looking for more library gigs in the future, though, and will keep applying even as I expand to IT jobs as well. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

Jabberwocky, The Dread Iguana

Turns out her blood test looked like she had a low-level infection, so she’s on a second course of antibiotics. Still getting baths every night, too. She hates ‘em still, along with hating getting an oral syringe of antibiotics in her mouth every other day. She seems to be holding up pretty well, though. Hopefully this second course of antibiotics will see her through. Both of us would love it if I stopped needing to medicate her like that.

Getting to see her get angry and frustrated at the evil bath every day is still funny, though. And kind of a nice bonding moment, in a weird way.

I’m also finalizing an enclosure upgrade to her humidity setup I’ve been working on for a long time. I think it’ll finally get done this week. One of those things that should have taken a weekend but instead has been worked on in drips and drabs for months and months. I’m not very good at this, sometimes. :\

Programming

I’ve been learning Python through the Python Crash Course book that No Starch Press put out a while ago. I’ve made it through the first seven chapters, just chipping away at about half an hour every day-ish. It’s more manageable that way. It’s interesting programming again. I’ve also become a terrible typist when it comes to programs, it seems, which is annoying. So many specific symbols being used so many odd places, I don’t have the flow like I do with just typing prose-like writing. That said, I do like exercising these parts of my brain again, and I’m looking forward to the projects that make up the second half of the book. I haven’t made any large/complex programs since college, and I think those skills are the ones I really need to rebuild if I want to use this programming as a real job skill beyond knocking out some simple scripts to help with minor things.

What I’m Reading/Watching/Listening/Playing

This section actually got so long I’m making it into a standalone post that’ll go up later this week! :O

~ * ~ * ~

And that’s some of the highlights of where my life is at right now! I’m hoping to put up another blog post later this week, beyond the media-focused one, but given my update schedule lately we’ll see how things go.

How have things been for you?

Posted in Accountability, Personal, Pets, Video Games | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bloggerel Doggerel

Life Keeps Being Itself

Posted on October 15, 2023 by Ian
A pictureo f the Seattle Skyline taken from Capitol Hill. The Space needle and downtown are visible in golden morning light.

I took this photo on my run this morning. It was a good time to catch the light.

I know I said in my last post I’d post later in the week. One week, six weeks, basically the same thing, right?

I used to do some good accountability on here, which I think I’ll start doing again. When I was flipping through old posts it was cool to see me checking in and my progress, and I’d like to have that record again. But for today it’s just going to be general updates, because it’s been so long.

Job Search
Still going! Going forever, going for life. I’m still applying to almost every library job I see (though I’m definitely missing a few). I’ve gotten basically zero interviews (except one with KCLS a few months ago), so I’m not sure how viable libraries are going to be for me in the short-term. I might, might break soon and start applying for IT/tech jobs again. Every time I look at doing IT Support Desk work again, though, it makes me sad. So I’m resisting.

I did take up doing some Python programming to build some skills in the interim. Plus if I could get into software development or infrastructure-related scripting that’d be neat. It’d be a good change and, frankly, probably pay better and be less stressful than support desk work. We’ll see how much I can pick up in the next few weeks, though.

Relationship
So, uh, that ended in early September. Just a few days shy of the 2-year mark. I started the breakup, she finished it. That’s…perhaps confusing but honestly I don’t want to get into it in detail. Hopefully it’s evocative as-is. I think it’s probably for the best long-term. It’s been a month since it happened and I’ve done a lot of the processing, but still getting used to it. I’m also not used to breakups not ending in “we’re still friends!” and that’s quite the adjustment. Anyway.

flails in “should be eloquent about this but isn’t”

The Great and Terrible Iguana
Jabberwocky the iguana is currently on a round of antibiotics, but I”m not too worried. The only sign of infection was dehydration, and the vet said that Jabberwocky looked great when I brought her in. I think the dehydration was just from her humidifier regularly running out and me letting it run dry for too long between refills, so her humidity dropped quite a bit. I’m being better about that, and they’re having me give her daily baths.

She hates the baths. So much. It’s hilarious.

I think she’s doing okay, though. We’ll be doing a followup appointment this week to see how stuff is going, so I’ll know for sure soon.

What I’m Reading/Watching/Playing
I want to go into more depth about these in the future, but here’s the quick list:

Playing: Baldur’s Gate 3, mostly. Played the multiplayer for Battletech with a friend last week and it was a very interesting experience.

Reading: Just finished Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age by Mathew Klickstein and Against the Dying of the Light (a F04 fanfic) by EthanTheRenegade and swanofmischief. Currently reading Tools of the Titans by Tim Ferris, The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman, and the audiobook of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.

Watching: Star Trek Discovery Season 2 (done) and 3 (in-progress). MissieMae’s Fallout: New Vegas playthrough. Also just watched Event Horizon with my friend on Friday night.

And that’s it for now! Will try to return later this week (so sometime between 1 and 43 days, apparently) with more updates.

Posted in Books, Hey Ian Watcha Into, Learning, Personal, Pets, Video Games | Comments Off on Life Keeps Being Itself

Extremely Minor Old Post Update

Posted on August 30, 2023 by Ian

I happened to be trawling through my old posts and saw I’d made an archive PDF of an article wrong and never got around to fixing it. So I made a new one! If you were waiting on pins and needles for that PDF in this 2019 post to be updated, you’re in luck!

Essay Recommendation: How To Build A Fire

Also hello I am still alive and will do a bigger post this week.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Extremely Minor Old Post Update

And We’re Back

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Ian

I return!

I’ve tried to write this post at least twice now, over the past year-ish. So now I’m going to try and just write the short, FAQish and/or bullet points filled version of my comeback post.

Where did you go?

I mean, still Seattle. Moved out of the place I was in last time I posted, shared a building with good friends for a bit, and then moved to Capitol Hill to make it easier for my girlfriend and I to see each other.

Wait, girlfriend?

Yep. And we’re monogamous, so you all missed your chance. I know, you’re heartbroken.

So, like, what happened?

A bunch of people close to me died in quick succession at the start 2021. Okay, three, but that’s still a lot. Jabberwocky made a feint for being the 4th, but pulled through, thankfully. There was also a pandemic, you might have noticed, and that was Not Good for my mental health. Neither was that apartment. So I couldn’t bring myself to write much.

Oh no, Jabberwocky!

Odd for that to be the thing you pulled out of there, but okay. No you’re avoiding the bigger thing. At any rate, she’s still alive and well and has just fought off a long infection. As my friend puts it, she’ll probably never die just out of pure anger. I maintain she’ll bite, tail whip, and fight Death itself when it tries to come at her. She probably already has. So while she’s an old lady at this point, she’s doing pretty well.

What else happened while you were away?

Ah, finally, bullet points!

  • Transferred to an IT service desk job at the company I was working for. Got promoted after my first year. Did a pretty damn good job. Though I developed a skillset that gave me a lot of job security. Found out I was incorrect when 5 of the 8 members of the US team, including me, were laid off at the very start of May. It was, if I’m being totally honest, a pretty bad place to work by the end there, so probably for the best. Still, I like my teammates from there and am sad I won’t get to work with them anymore. Hell is best faced with a good team at your back, and it makes you closer and bond and shit.
  • Started dating a wonderful woman, been together for over a year, feels good. I promise this isn’t meant as a humblebrag, I Just want to give an important life event its due.
  • Got on much better brain meds that have seemingly kept working.
  • Got out of shape, back in, back out, back in. Something like that. Consistent working out is hard, though thankfully I’m currently on an upswing.
  • Managed to not get COVID, at least as far as I and a multitude of anxiety-induced tests can tell.
  • Also got vaccinated, boosted, etc. If you’re not vaccinated: what the hell, go do that. I’ll wait. Go!
  • Started a podcast! And it’s a good one! That’s still going! :O

Podcast?

Yeah! It’s a Castles & Crusades actual play podcast called Primary Attribute. You can check it out at https://www.primaryattribute.com . We’ve been at it a good long while now and have hit over 100 episodes. Castles & Crusades plays a lot like older editions of D&D, but we somehow turned it into something of a dating and civic maintenance simulator alongside the standard adventuring and occasional (*sniff* *single tear*) combat.

Also the audio for the first dozen-ish episodes sucks ass, so be warned. At least some remastering is in the works. I’ll post here when that’s done, if you want to hold out. Or try starting with Episode 83, “All Dream Copse are Bastards.” If you do that, let me know how jumping in there goes for you!

It’s available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and for direct RSS subscription or download from the site itself. If you have a favorite platform we’re not on, let me know and I’ll see if I can make it happen.

Did you break the podcast details out into their own section to escape the bullet points?

You can’t prove anything.

Hey, I thought you said this was going to be short!

Yeah, but my morning pages practice has a word count of 500 words and I wanted to hit that. And we did! Mission accomplished, everyone go home.

Wait, are you going to start posting again?

That’s the hope! There’s a lot of stuff I’ve wanted to write over the past couple years, but I felt like I needed to do this first. Does that make sense? No! But here we are.

And we’ll actually wrap here. See ya soon.

Posted in Administrivia, Personal, Pets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on And We’re Back