Got a new job after over 3 months of unemployment π
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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Hurray! Congrats!!! Unemployment is soul-crushing, i hope your new job is at least slightly less soul crushing!
Checked into a partial hospitalization program last week because my social anxiety and agoraphobia got too big to manage alone.
The past few days have been perhaps the first Iβve felt joy and love in their full forms πΈ
I'm so happy and so so proud for you RadioRat!!!! I know how difficult it is to take that first step, and I am so happy to read that you're feeling joy β€οΈ
that's HUGE news! Any particular highlights or self-discoveries that you're excited to share?
Itβs just good to know true joy and exist in my body more often. It was really heavy for so long. I made small talk at a lab appointment prior to and at a haircut following group today.
The hair stylist ended up being a specialist in sensory issues so it was very nice to have that kind of chill, mindful haircut. I nearly fell asleep!
Oh! And Iβm doing all this while dog tired from insomnia but Iβm in a pretty good mood and getting more sleep every night πΈ
That's amazing! Both of those can be so hard when small talk feels impossible. I have a more mild social anxiety, and sometimes I forget how much one stupid small talk convo can make me feel so happy and positive. Glad you're doing well β€οΈ
I've been in a lot of anxiety because of politics and what's going to happen and now after today I'm just scared. I guess I'll have to figure out how to live once this is over. Do I just hope to continue as before with things just being worse off or are things going to change a lot?
I've been just trying to rationalize that most of this is outside my control and have to accept the world for what it's becoming. I've already given up, I don't want dreams I just want peace.
Gonna vent some. Long week, it's not Friday yet, stupid coworkers, stupid customers, managers who don't care about standard operating procedure, ahhh.
A man was not meant to sit in front of a computer monitor for nine hours a day.
Update: thank goodness I have the ability to take a bath. I was whining earlier, but I am very privileged. This is my affirmation.
A few weeks ago I posted here that I was about to go to Open Sauce. I was too tired to give an update right when I got back, but I'm here now and boy, it was incredible. Best convention ever. There was a Smash Bros tournament right as you walked in the door. There was a tesla coil music setup with a Faraday cage that they picked audience members to get up and dance in. There was a booth selling 3D printed Spiderman style magnetic grappling hooks. There was a hexacopter with a 6-foot wingspan. There was a booth demonstrating a piece of open source software designed for flowgraph/node-based procedural generation of vector graphics and written in Rust, thus hitting every single one of my interests simultaneously. There were multiple people walking around in fursuits. There was a celebrity go-kart race where the audience got infrared laser-tag blasters which would make the cars slow down, which I promptly cloned using my Flipper Zero and proceeded to wreak havoc as best I could.
I do not think there was a single allistic person in that building. It was glorious.
I had the time of my life just letting my ADHD carry me from booth to booth of hobbyists showing off cool shit they had made and asking about this and that and how they put it together. It was WAY bigger than Open Sauce 2023 and easily 10 times cooler.
Anyway, I mention that because I met one of my favorite YouTube creators (Zack Freedman of Voidstar Lab) face to face while I was there and he gave me this 3D printed poker chip with his channel logo and a QR code that my phone refuses to scan but that I'm told goes to the Rickroll. He uploaded a video today explaining how he made them, pointing out several subtle design flaws that I never would've noticed but that are going to bug me forever now, and mentioned that in every single chip there was an NFC tag. I got the chip from its pride of place on my desk, held it to the back of my phone, and sure enough, was taken (via a Bitly link) to an unlisted video on the Voidstar Lab channel -- uploaded earlier that day! Open Sauce was weeks ago. Now I'm also bugged by not knowing what would've happened if I'd thought to put the tag in the same pocket as my phone while we were there.
If you meant what's been happening to me this week, well, not much to report. I'm still off school, had some fun going swimming, got a little self-conscious when I saw 8-year-olds with better upper body definition than me. Finally got back into gaming now that I can do that without feeling guilty about blowing off my homework. I've been playing this really great indie metroidvania called Ghost 1.0 which I could gush about for ages (great gameplay, great humor, really neat game mechanic where you can leave your body and possess enemies which they make fantastic use of in puzzles)... but I mostly just wanted to talk about Open Sauce and tag the people who asked me to report back: @rozwud@beehaw.org @megaman_EXE@beehaw.org
all in all things have been going pretty great!
Don't feel bad about your physique, children that play and stay active are freaking shredded!
That sounds absolutely awesome! I would love to go sometime in the future. It seems like one of the best conventions around right now. Thanks for sharing how it went!
So cool! Thanks so much for the write up!
Finishing up an Alaskan cruise. This is the complete opposite of how I usually travel and likely something I will never do again. That said, it has overall been an incredible time with some wonderful companions.
Tomorrow, we will pick up my friend's ashes at a post office in Anchorage, and the next day we will head to Kenai Fjords National Park. He made it to 49 states, so we're bringing him to the 50th.
How did it go? We did something like that with my grandmother's ashes. It was good in a bittersweet way. I hope it worked out well for you, too!
Hey, it went really well, thanks for asking. Found a nice spot a little off the trail to sit a bit and take our time with it. I feel like no one talks about how much ashes stick to things. I'm pretty sure I still have some bits of Corbin on my backpack, but I'm good with that. π
That is such an Alaskan setting with all that glacial till and silt clouding the waters grey and thick, and making rocky 'sandbars'. Beautiful and raw.
β€οΈ
Trying my best to find a new job asap so that I can actually take 1 or 2 weeks of summer vacation instead of just stressing over applications.
Also my cat is getting surgery today to have his upper front teeth removed because they were infecting (and already had been before). The vet said it's best to just remove them altogether because he won't really miss them anyway and can eat fine without. Worried about my little guy but I'm sure he'll be okay β€οΈ
he should be ok to be picked up in about 4 hours yay :)
Also, great opportunity to air out the apartment hehe
Edit:
Cat is okay yay! He's completely zonked out on painkillers lol
Glad your gato is doing well! Good luck on the job search!
Glad your cat is OK! Good on you for making sure he gets the care he needs.
Not great.
To be honest, I feel quite hopeless.
Just a lot of bullshit not in my control that's taking its toll.
I'm sorry to hear that! My job has made me feel like that lately so I can SORTA relate. Any particular details you want to rant about?
Thanks for the kind words!
Unfortunately, it's a little too complicated and I think I just need a break from most stuff, including the ranting, lol.
Thanks for asking, though. Really appreciate it.
I hope your circumstances improve.
Thanks very much, I appreciate that.
I hope the same thing but in the meantime, just gonna try to practice some mindfulness and let it flow.
Back to work. With the US holiday being essentially a 4day weekend, plus getting back into town from a weeklong biz trip the week prior, didn't do a whole lot of anything last week, other than sleeping and gaming and occasionally looking at email/Teams.. So it's a bit hard to get back into it.
I think I've settled on a new apartment in my soon-to-be new city. It's expensive. Parking alone is like $120/mo (street parking requires a city permit). But it is what it is. It has what I want, particularly being close to a subway stop. Maybe I pay out the nose for the first year, then once I have my bearings, learn the area, I can find something cheaper elsewhere.
Dealing with apartments is a pain in the ass. I live in an apartment now and have lived in a few different apartments for the last 9yrs. So it's not like I have no experience. But god, some of these places makes it very difficult to talk with a human. No, I don't want to chat or text or have a phone call with a chatbot or AI assistant. No I don't want to start the application process online before I get my questions answered. I just have a few questions; call me, please. Luckily someone -- a real someone -- finally called me today.
Also, what the fuck is an "administrative fee" at an apartment, and why is it so high? I get having an application fee of like $50. I get needing a deposit. But a $500 "administrative fee?" Have never come across that before. And this isn't the only place I'm looking at that has it. As always, just another way to wring money out of folks.
Hopefully I'll have this all settled within the next week or two.
Otherwise, back to FFXIV. Taking my time with the new Dawntrail expansion.
Parking alone is like $120/mo
any chance you can give up the car? $120/month is outrageous to me. if my city had better public transit (subways!!!), i'd be all over ditching my car.
Definitely outrageous. In my current city, I've only ever paid for parking access at one place. And it was only like $50/mo. Which I still fought! I think only in the final year did they actually start making me pay for it, but at a reduced rate, like $25/mo.
I've definitely been thinking about getting rid of my car. I did ask the leasing agent if monthly parking was annual commitment or not. And they said it's not. Or rather, it could be easily removed from the lease with no lease-change fee.
So maybe I stick with the car for the first 6mo to a year, learn how to get around, explore, see if I can go carless and fully rely on the public transit system (which I'd done before over in Chicago). I'd hate to get rid of the car ASAP and then realize that I do need it more than I thought.
Car is not even 4yrs old and it's held it's value remarkably well, according to KBB. So I'd potentially get like 95% (or more) of my money back if I did sell.
i mean, i think paying for parking should happen, especially in places with decent public transit, but wowee.
Oh for sure. Like in my current city (Kansas City), public transportation is so pathetic. A person has to have a car here. There's just no way to survive without one. And I live in the city, in the urban core.
While I fought paying even $50/mo for parking on apt property, I always thought it was funny when people complained about the price for parking garages/lots downtown. At one point not that long ago, it was like $2-5 on nights/weekends. There are barely any parking meters around. And, as far as I know, there's no parking permits required for street parking. And it's plentiful. But people still bitched and moaned about "not enough free parking." Because they didn't want to pay and/or have to walk more than a block from their car to their destination. Sheesh.
But in my soon-to-be new city, DC, it looks like someone could get away without having a car? I won't be living in DC proper, but pretty close. So I'll see.
I think if I had to pay the city to park on the streets, I'd strangely be more OK with that? But having to pay my landlord for parking privileges seems ridiculous because I'll already be paying them out the nose for rent and such.
Oh well, such is the price for owning a car.
D.C. Metro runs from about 5am-midnight on weekdays, but on weekends it doesn't start until 7. In the suburbs, you can drive to a commuter parking lot and leave your car for the workday. You are generally expected to drive your car home each night from there and they DO charge a pretty serious fee (especially given that you'd also be paying for the commute).
Metro offers premium, guaranteed parking at 35 rail stations for a monthly fee of either $45.00 or $65.00 (plus the regular daily parking rate, which varies by station).
Thanks for that! I'm definitely hoping to take the Metro in most of the time. The first time I drove in DC back in 2010, I vowed, "never again." I've driven in many cities, even in Puerto Rico once, but I thought DC was the worst.
Obviously moving there, there will be times I have to drive around, but to the extent I can avoid doing so, I will.
I've learnt how to launch 7 terminal simultaneously; feel like a total hacker out of a movie.
On a different note, I feel completely lonely. I haven't talked out loud with anyone for 4 days. Speech is exhausting.
Add to that, just had the opportunity to watch The Babadook and Hereditary back to back. It broke me in a beautiful way.
I havenβt talked out loud with anyone for 4 days
just had the opportunity to watch The Babadook and Hereditary back to back
this is a wild combination. like cola and mentos for your brain.
Thanks for your concern, and the funny imagery, it really made me reflect. I'm now on a better place mentally.
Last weekend was too busy, but in a fun way. I was announcing a roller derby tournament.
This weekend is super chill. I'm doing nothing, and it's everything I dreamed it could be.
Not bad.
I've reached the point where, as a contrarian, it's time for me to speak less about politics online, so I started adding in filters to my Mastodon feed, and I like that my feed is less doomscrolling now.
Last month my wife's employer went bankrupt and tomorrow my employer is holding a meeting about the financial situation and the consequences. Fun times.
If I may ask, how did it go? Hopefully better than expected for her?
She has two interviews set up, hopefully one will turn into a job. But yesterday I learnt my employer will reduce hours for most people to drastically reduce cost. I still hope I'm not affected, because the timing is so not great. I guess I'll have to look for a new job too.
Sorry to hear that =( At least she's got two interviews lined up quickly, and yeah, hopefully one of those will turn into something.
Best of luck to you both.
Thank you. She just called me because the first company just made her an offer already, with 33% more salary and 4 vacation days extra than her current job. Finally some good news! She'll still do the interview on Monday, but things are at last looking better.
My primary instance is experiencing a DDOS attack, so I am on my backup account for a while.
I'm wondering what that's like. Can you not even connect any more? How many connections are made per sec and can't you just ip block them temporarily?
I think for the moment the instance maintainer put it behind cloud flare but I'm not totally sure as at least when I tried to use it recently I got an error of some sort
The gastritis is..... bad. And I'm tired of working through the pain. But my friend made me dinner this evening which was amazing because I'm so tired of making food that's suitable for me to eat.
Never take ibuprofen on an empty stomach.
I'm sorry, that sounds miserable.