Another half a year gone

A bit more than half a year, I suppose. It's been hard, but... good?

I last wrote that I thought I had PCOS. I was incorrect. This year after nearly three years of constant bowel and stomach problems which my primary care doctor blamed on, essentially, my fatness, I went to see a GI doctor. After a round of antibiotics for SIBO did nothing (well, it did make me less flatulent, but yeah that wasn't the biggest problem), we decided to do some exploratory work. On June 5th I had a routine exploratory endoscopy and colonoscopy, which turned into the removal of a 22mm tubulovillous adenoma from my lower bowel. That's about the size of a quarter, for folks imagining this from home. Imagine that interrupting the flow of things. If it had been a few millimeters larger, it would've been considered cancerous. 

June 29th was my last day at "work" - and we had one last round of ramen and that was the end of that. What a time to be facing health insurance stability questions, hey? They were kind enough to leave us on the books until July 2nd, so we got an extra month, so in the end I only needed one month of COBRA coverage before the new job's insurance kicked in.

(On December 5th I had a followup colonoscopy. They cut out a few straggling bits of leftover adenoma, but the fact there were more means I have to go back in another six months, which I do not relish at all. The prep for the procedure is horrible and the recovery period from sedation makes me feel like an impossible invalid.)

So... the new job started right before Burning Man. I literally had two weeks on, then two weeks out in the desert, then came back and threw myself back into startup land. And honestly, I'd missed it - the feeling that at this size of company you can really DO things and make change happen. My new team isn't an engineering one, and that's been really hard for me to adjust to - but at the same time they have the social skills that I'll need to keep climbing the ladder.

I should mention that I seem to have skipped "senior writer" titles entirely and gone on to something slightly above that? There was a pay bump that matched that title bump, and after a very spare few weeks commuting I found myself staying up in the City more and more, despite... Well, let's say there were some big changes in the life of one I hold dear, twenty days after my last post, and we've been helping each other through everything since.

The housing search that'd stalled out so fruitlessly kicked back into gear, and the end result was a terrifying move, and I now live in the Central Sunset, in San Francisco. 

I have so many thoughts about the weirdness of finding myself here, after all those years protesting that I never would come here because I was from the suburbs for crying out loud and we don't do cities.  What changed?  I did. London changed me. I still own a car, but right now it's a luxury I wish I could do without. (The City is weirdly bifurcated between places of dense urban layout with transit and shops... and suburban deserts, still densely populated but poorly served by transit and things like grocery stores and pharmacies. I'm on the inner edge of one of those latter spots.)

Menlo Park, it turns out, is stupidly expensive. And my now-ex-landlord decided to make my leave taking as hard as possible - even after all the move was done, I had three days of hard graft cleaning and emptying and cleaning some more. (All unnecessary by law, as I found out - and then she tore out the entire bathroom after making me clean it. ) I hope she reaps the bitter fruit of the exploitative prices they've charged.

It's been a long day and it's nearly one in the morning so I should sleep. But I live in a 1945 duplex and have a surprisingly well furnished place. I just need to figure out better storage options and empty out some more boxes!

Half a year

It's been nearly half a year since my last post, since I'd resolved to look for a new job. I spent the first quarter year there looking and interviewing while also trying to remain loyal to the team and do the work asked of me. In early March, after working myself actually into illness, and failing a writing sample for a prospective job because I just couldn't give enough time to it, I returned to work and was told that my project was being reorged away from (heavily implied: costly) San Francisco.

The deliverables I'd sacrificed my health and a prospective future to were no longer due.

It figures. It was on-brand, really. The queen of lost causes, going down with the ship. (Oh yes, and today is one year and one day since Things Ended.)

At least this time I have some time. There's a little work to do to help the transition, and the company feels badly about this since everyone here was performing well. They're trying to place us internally, or letting us ride out to the transition date, so it's *like* having a part time job that retains my salary. Everyone else has started going to the gym; almost everyone else has a transfer offer in hand though, and none of them are quite living as close to the wire as I am.

I've been busting my ass interviewing. I realized at this point I'm a Senior Writer (tm) and it honestly started to freak me out. "Senior" means more expensive, it means you're the middle layer that gets cut when times are lean. And it wasn't until I was in an all-day intensive interview (the second in this six month period, and the first of... four upcoming) and I heard these inspiring leadership-type words falling out of my mouth that I realized... yeah, actually, I'm okay with that. I think I'm ready.

In the mean time, let me use the last two months of the relatively-good insurance wisely.

The sinus infections that I'd shaken for over a year came back in February. And then again in April. The crusty old curmudgeon of an ENT finally retired, so I'm finally getting an ENT to take a look. My right ear has been plugged and painful since late April so it's Time.

Also, I think I have PCOS. I'm not sure what causes it (apparently nobody is?) but so many of the random annoying shit stacks up into a pile of co-morbidities that are... pretty compelling. My appointment to get screened is in two weeks. I get to talk about the major indigestion, about the cramping and sharp pains always to the lower left and about every four weeks, about the floaters in my eyes, those couple of dark hairs that keep showing up on my chin, the sugar cravings, the weight gain around my middle (god, he'd be so smug to have dumped me "before she got fat again"), the scary liver panel that they pulled from my blood when I drove myself to Urgent Care the day before Christmas Eve.

Last night I gave a talk at Odd Salon and invited an Ohlone woman to give the Welcome to Country. I feel like it's the best thing I've done in awhile. Today I gave a *hard* presentation about myself and my work to a stony-faced interview panel, but it sounds like the reviews may all be okay anyway? On Friday I interview across the street from the place I worked... 12 years ago. My god, how time passes.

I still haven't sewn anything in ages. Costume pieces are piling up and I need to have another fabric sale. I'm holding my house hunt on pause until the job search resolves, and that too is an act of will.

In the end, I have to build my own home first. And there's an order of operations there; I can't do all the things at once. First job, then move, then build that home. (I'd also be pleasantly surprised if I could get the car insurance company of the guy who hit me to actually pay my medical bills, but this seems like one of those things that requires bulldog-like determination, rather than luck.)

Who knows what the future holds? I am reservedly optimistic.