My boss ordered me to schedule time off, and to put a walk outside during daylight hours on my calendar. It's been working; I've gotten out, and though focus is still like trying to contain and recollect a bucket of bouncy balls, my mood has softened a little and I *feel* better generally.
I've been walking from my apartment at 20th and Judah down to Sunset and back each day. If I have time, I'm sometimes going to Andytown, the last coffee shop open around here, for a slice of something like normality. They're a few blocks from the ocean. Tomorrow I think I'm going to go all the way down to the beach, find a sand dune to sit on, and just not be here for a bit.
While I walk, I listen to music. Not because I want to, but because it makes the brain weasels shut up for a bit. I realized, and this is perhaps a sign of something neurodivergent about me, that for the most part I've lived my life in silence since May of 2017. It's honestly not great for me. Most people turn on music or the radio or something, but I realized I don't feel the need to do that because there is always a snippet of something or other running on an endless loop in my head. I'm not sure what exactly changed. The breakup was traumatic, but... was it so bad as to permanently alter my brainmeats? Maybe? Or is this one more thing that points again to "perhaps you should get assessed for ADHD, you nutty hyperfocuser, you."
While I walk, while the brainweasels are drowned out by pop songs, I finally have the chance to think.
It's really strange how fast all of this has become routine. It's also really strange how thick a layer it is, of "feels routine" spread over a fast-moving current of terror-fear-grief. It's amazing how fast we all went from our normal lives to standing in line for flour and eggs, to cooking with what we've got instead of what we want, to staring out the window and doing all of our social interaction mediated by an electronic service. And yet, almost anything will make me cry right now. Not just eyes-watering, like my normal emotionally-close-to-the-surface self, but sobby, streaming face, uncontrollable ugly-cry.
... Okay and there I go again.
On Monday March 16th, when Mayor Breed was making her announcement along with the six other Bay Area county leaders, I was in a grocery store. It was a remarkably quiet, but tense store, and as word got out that we were about to go into lockdown, people started *jogging*. I realized, standing in line, not knowing what was happening or what would happen, that I was shaking, and my chest felt tight. 80% of the way into a panic attack in a grocery store, but I also realized that if I lost it and started crying, it might crystalize the situation and make things considerably *worse*. I waited in line, shaking. I paid for my groceries, got into the car and drove home. And as soon as the garage door closed behind me, I started to sob. It took me a good few minutes to stop, and I've long since realized that when I start doing this, there's nothing I can do but hang on until my meatsuit is done with it.
I keep thinking back to the Tom Hanks movie, Captain Phillips, and how everyone was amazed at the lifelike depiction of comedown-shock or safety shock. I feel like this is what I'm getting, in bits and blots, any time I acknowledge what's going on outside. At 7pm this evening, I heard a bunch of weird sounds outside; when I realized that it's the "applaud for our medical workers" thing I lost it and had to go inside. Fundraisers for the things that I love are making me cry. I donate, and it feels pitifully small and insignificant, never enough, and I'm afraid for them, and I cry.
But walking, in the afternoons, it all drifts away for a time, and I have to thank my bizarrely wired brain for this one bit of peace. I think we're all waiting in a state of trusting object permanence. Object permanence is something we learn around 6 months old, which is that things continue to exist even though we can't see, hear, or otherwise sense them. In the bright sunlight, walking in the chilly April sea breeze, I can forget that these things are in danger, and I can revert to how I've always been: I trust that when this is all over, I can look for them and they'll be back. I can't see them now, or drink their drinks, eat their food, listen to their songs, watch their dances, hear their speeches and performances, feel their care, but I can trust that they haven't gone away forever.
But I don't know if that's true.
The good news is that San Francisco seems to have flattened its curve; our hospitals are seeing huge ramp-ups in covid-19 patients, but we haven't (yet?) gotten to the point where we've got more sick people than capacity for them, and the current modeling seems to predict that... we might not ever get to that point. New York, on the other hand, is loading refrigerator semi trucks with dead bodies. New York is being hit hard, and fast but I wonder if this means they'll see the peak and begin to recover faster? San Francisco's estimated peak date is 24 days from now; I worry that every little thing I love will begin to wither on the vine, sustained only limpingly for a few weeks by our collective charity before succumbing to greedy landlords. People are thinking about the tyranny of landlords right now. I can and still do hope for some sort of centralized edict of rent and mortgage pause and forgiveness.
The centralized response has resembled more of a chaos-monkey script than an actual attempt to be helpful. But in contrast to the grandstanding, showboating, and profiteering of the current federal administration, we're seeing the seeds of a new federation, new cooperations between governing entities. It gives me the tiniest sparkle of hope.
Everyone wants to find something, anything, that they can do. We've got hundreds of people making masks, every university and makerspace is 3d printing ventilator parts and making homebrew DIY PPE, anyone with contacts in China is desperately trying to import supplies to distribute to hospitals, people are organizing in the neighborhoods to protect the vulnerable, organizing the feed the front line workers, and just plain ol' organizing (fuck yeah, bring back the unions). There is a real possibility that this crisis will help undo the distancing, disconnection, and suspicion of one's neighbors that social media (and its manipulators) have wrought, even while we're standing 6 feet apart, prevented from hugging or singing together.
And that's an interesting change as well - when everyone is apart, everyone is together in being apart. I've attended a bunch of digital events with friends I never get to see; geobreakfast, classes with my favorite yoga teacher who I haven't seen since 2014, impromptu jazz concerts from musicians I'd never heard of until now, livestreaming zoo animals, plays, concerts and productions that I'd otherwise never get to see in person.
I have to believe, for now. There's no use and no sense in breaking down until after the damage is done and we're safe again; only then can we take our grief and rage and turn it into something productive.
Friday, April 3, 2020
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Fear
They say that we're living in historic times, and we should journal.
Well, okay. It's been literally a decade since I fell so hard into work that I forgot to write, and I forget how much it feeds my soul. But this has been hard, so hard, and it's not making it any easier to write about.
Let's start with anxiety mixed with survivor's guilt: I still have a job, I can still pay rent, I still have healthcare and groceries and I can pay bills and my home is pleasant and lovely. I do not appear to have contracted the virus in the many pre-order activities we did.
We're now approaching a full month of shelter in place, and while I find that I'm starting to finally hit my stride in taking the time I need away from work, I'm also finding that the fear and waiting is ramping up, not down. The list of things I want to keep alive and somehow preserve keeps growing. The number of places and services, events and providers who I want to support is growing longer and this doesn't appear to be stopping any time soon. I am afraid that so much of what I loved in the last few years will be gone when we all are able to poke our heads out of hiding. I am so scared, and so overwrought, almost anything will make me cry and I *cannot* seem to stop.
And I'm not even on the front lines. I can't even imagine what's going on for my friends who are healthcare workers, delivery drivers, other essential services. I feel helpless and useless and terrified, and I see all the dreams and plans I had, that others had, foundations cracking in slow motion as the rentier class demands its pound of flesh, crumbling a little more to dust each week. What the opera, theaters, the little independent movie house that serves truffle popcorn, of our favorite Indian places, the all-beef ramen shop, our favorite coffee shops, the tiki bars we've come to view as home? What of the sweet lady who cleans my house, my acupuncturist, chiropractor, the fine arts museum and the science museums and the MOMA, the botanical gardens, the antique fair, the bakery that makes the amazing cinnamon bread, the coffee shop that holds kink events, the tech writer conference, Burning Man? What of the home of our own we'd thought to buy? What if it's all gone when we reemerge?
I am sitting here adrift, despite my own comforts.
Well, okay. It's been literally a decade since I fell so hard into work that I forgot to write, and I forget how much it feeds my soul. But this has been hard, so hard, and it's not making it any easier to write about.
Let's start with anxiety mixed with survivor's guilt: I still have a job, I can still pay rent, I still have healthcare and groceries and I can pay bills and my home is pleasant and lovely. I do not appear to have contracted the virus in the many pre-order activities we did.
We're now approaching a full month of shelter in place, and while I find that I'm starting to finally hit my stride in taking the time I need away from work, I'm also finding that the fear and waiting is ramping up, not down. The list of things I want to keep alive and somehow preserve keeps growing. The number of places and services, events and providers who I want to support is growing longer and this doesn't appear to be stopping any time soon. I am afraid that so much of what I loved in the last few years will be gone when we all are able to poke our heads out of hiding. I am so scared, and so overwrought, almost anything will make me cry and I *cannot* seem to stop.
And I'm not even on the front lines. I can't even imagine what's going on for my friends who are healthcare workers, delivery drivers, other essential services. I feel helpless and useless and terrified, and I see all the dreams and plans I had, that others had, foundations cracking in slow motion as the rentier class demands its pound of flesh, crumbling a little more to dust each week. What the opera, theaters, the little independent movie house that serves truffle popcorn, of our favorite Indian places, the all-beef ramen shop, our favorite coffee shops, the tiki bars we've come to view as home? What of the sweet lady who cleans my house, my acupuncturist, chiropractor, the fine arts museum and the science museums and the MOMA, the botanical gardens, the antique fair, the bakery that makes the amazing cinnamon bread, the coffee shop that holds kink events, the tech writer conference, Burning Man? What of the home of our own we'd thought to buy? What if it's all gone when we reemerge?
I am sitting here adrift, despite my own comforts.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Life in the time of Coronavirus
On Thursday morning, my CEO sent a Slack message to the company ( 🙄) telling folks who hadn't already started for the office that they now had the option to work from home, and that, from Thursday on, we were encouraged to work from home. On Thursday afternoon, my team waved to each other and said "hey, see you in two weeks."
We worked from home Friday, and it was fine. We worked from home Monday, and it was fine, but the stock market kept butting into everyone's day. Today, Tuesday, my new work-ordered monitor arrived, and I have Coronavirus alerts coming into my feed every fifteen minutes or so. (The stock market, showing what feels eerily like Gibson-predicted instability, appears to have spiked up in recovery, only to tank again after hours. I have to wonder about the volatility of the markets since 2016. Are we being tinkered with by forces from alternative continua?)
It's hard being here right now.
Since my last blog post here, I've settled into City life. We've gone out, we've stayed in, I haven't made any new friends per se, but I've been happy and contentedly active. In the past two weeks we went to the SF Symphony twice, visited our favorite tiki bar a few times, gone to a lecture and movie, and did a number of other social things out and about in the City. And now we're all waiting, fretting, to see if we're part of the 14- or 24-day cohort of covid-19 incubation. Because we know that, like the killer in a horror movie, that it's out there somewhere, and also like a horror movie, not everyone is going to survive this.
And yet it's spring. Last night was warm, and the supermoon hung over Mount Sutro like an orb spider in her web. Someone's backyard trumpet flowers are blooming, and the smell comes in through the back kitchen door in the evening.
But the muni trains passing in front of my front window are empty at unusual hours. The commercial district two blocks away on Irving is quieter than I've ever seen it; the businesses open shorter hours, with wary proprietors tucked behind glass and masks and blue nitrile gloves. We're all watching the numbers rising, wishing that there was some way to know if we'd been exposed - but the absolute lack of testing in the state has made it impossible to do anything but wait.
So in the meantime, I'm doing what I can in order to find something beautiful at least once a day, and photograph it. If you follow me on the socials, you'll start seeing them, and I'm going to try to post them here, as well.
We worked from home Friday, and it was fine. We worked from home Monday, and it was fine, but the stock market kept butting into everyone's day. Today, Tuesday, my new work-ordered monitor arrived, and I have Coronavirus alerts coming into my feed every fifteen minutes or so. (The stock market, showing what feels eerily like Gibson-predicted instability, appears to have spiked up in recovery, only to tank again after hours. I have to wonder about the volatility of the markets since 2016. Are we being tinkered with by forces from alternative continua?)
It's hard being here right now.
Since my last blog post here, I've settled into City life. We've gone out, we've stayed in, I haven't made any new friends per se, but I've been happy and contentedly active. In the past two weeks we went to the SF Symphony twice, visited our favorite tiki bar a few times, gone to a lecture and movie, and did a number of other social things out and about in the City. And now we're all waiting, fretting, to see if we're part of the 14- or 24-day cohort of covid-19 incubation. Because we know that, like the killer in a horror movie, that it's out there somewhere, and also like a horror movie, not everyone is going to survive this.
And yet it's spring. Last night was warm, and the supermoon hung over Mount Sutro like an orb spider in her web. Someone's backyard trumpet flowers are blooming, and the smell comes in through the back kitchen door in the evening.
But the muni trains passing in front of my front window are empty at unusual hours. The commercial district two blocks away on Irving is quieter than I've ever seen it; the businesses open shorter hours, with wary proprietors tucked behind glass and masks and blue nitrile gloves. We're all watching the numbers rising, wishing that there was some way to know if we'd been exposed - but the absolute lack of testing in the state has made it impossible to do anything but wait.
So in the meantime, I'm doing what I can in order to find something beautiful at least once a day, and photograph it. If you follow me on the socials, you'll start seeing them, and I'm going to try to post them here, as well.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Algorithmic Loneliness
Hello, friends who're just finding this blog. It's funny that, after all this time dithering and missing LJ, I've just gone and YOLO'd into posting my most intimate personal life for anyone who hasn't got the foresight to look away. ;)
I've lived in San Francisco for six months now. And... I didn't think this was likely, but I'm more cut off from folks than ever. I started thinking about it - I see that friends are gathering, I see that things are happening, but I have no idea when or why. (There are also a lot of events I see happen at which I feel unwelcome, but that's another story entirely.)
Some time in the last month, Facebook or Google discontinued the FB-Events-feed-to-Gcal integration. Is it a bug? A Product choice to make people look at the Events page, thus increasing DAU (daily active users, for those of you so blessed as to not have to think about these things)? Since the feed apparently still works with iCal, is it some sort of competitive maneuvering between Google and FB? All three? Possibly. But the end result is the same - I no longer know what's going on, and it's made me take a hard look at the infrastructure of my social life.
Years ago, we used to plan our lives on Yahoo Calendar. These days it's GCal. Evites went out by email, and we added them laboriously to our To Do lists. Blogs were written, invitations to those who found them. Parties were had.
Now, we have better technology (automatic add-to-calendar! feeds of events!) and yet the experience is so much worse. Why? Ads have broken the internet.
Spammers are ruining email. (Spammers send ads on an incredible scale for marginal return, but since the services are "free" and the tools are easy to come by, they're happy to hydraulic mine the virtual world.) An acquaintance of mine maintained a Google Group for mailing invitations to her (very popular) annual event (she'd outgrown the threshold where she could use her normal email client), but at some point she ran up against the limits for spam reputation scoring. She'd send the invitation, and suddenly her account would be locked down (rate limited). Only a third of the emails would be delivered (SMTP ban). In the end, she split the invitations into more groups that were below the "bulk email" threshold - but like so many of us in the small-Silicon-Valley, she has more than two thousand friends (including partners and plus ones) who'd be welcome at this party. Last I heard she was considering a newsletter service like MailChimp to get around how we've broken email.
What about commercial invitation services, like Evite? Evite is clearly struggling to monetize - they need clickthrough on their emails to make sure that they get their ads served, and so the "invitation" is now an envelope, which you must click, and then click again, and then a third time (three pages of ads!) in order to read the details and RSVP. If there's an "export to calendar" link I haven't yet found it. And this explains why, in an age when, when making a dinner reservation I automatically have it on my Gcal in seconds, and when my partner's arrival gate is on the calendar minutes from their plan touching down, Evite, Green Envelope, and other commercial services will never add this convenience feature. Which means that in the deluge of email, if I miss one that contains an invite, I'm effectively not invited to that party. (There are of course edge cases with spammers sending Evites to think about... but guh.)
There are Public Gcals, but nobody has time for that, somehow. There are RSS feeds, but it seems like since the death of Google Reader, so few people are actually willing to shell out a few bucks to maintain continuity of feed.
No, let's call it what it is - integrity of feed. When companies started dicking with the chronological order of information in order to show more ads, they broke... everything. We've got dark patterns, corporate skullduggery, and human suffering as a result.
So now we come to Facebook Events, and why I don't like to use them.
Facebook events are subject to The Algorithm. I noticed this the second time I tried to host a birthday party - Only about 1/3 of the list was actually shown the event. You can imagine how that felt. And yet I tried a few times to host birthdays this way - at one point I had thirty people RSVP and six show up. Two years ago, three people. Last year, none but my partner. So this year I messaged some people who were local, and who wouldn't be too put out, and I put an event on my Gcal and I invited the eight of them *by email*. It was the best birthday in years.* At some point I can't blame this on having shitty friends (though there's literally a meme about "The San Francisco RSVP") but on algorithmic meddling.
I also work with a few groups who put on semi-professional events, and I've seen where the Algorithm gets its hooks in to monetize. "That's a lovely event invitation you have there. It's a shame if something were to... happen to it. Maybe you'd like to buy some... ahem... insurance for it? Say like $5 in promotion? Look how many more people will see it!" That works for the first event, but the next event it's $8, and then at some point it's $20 and the service says "Oh huh, you should just get a monthly subscription to promotion services! It'll save you money!" Not today, Satan. Every single person on our list is here because they specifically signed up, and you're holding our audience hostage?
In the end, most of these groups I've recommended get... a email newsletter service like MailChimp, so that we know that the people who want our notes actually get them.
It's interesting, because post-Tumblrgeddeon, Patreon is also building what's essentially a cul-de-sac, walled-garden shadow RSS service. I should also mention that post-Tumblrgeddeon, I *miss* seeing content (however inane) from my friends, and knowing that they're out there.**
So here's my request to you - email me.
Let's go low(er)-tech for a bit. We'll start a conversation, and I'll invite you to things. No ads need be involved.
(* Modulo some health stuff which I haven't blogged about.)
(** Though if I can't tell your posts from sales pitches, it's not "friend" content. That's a blog for another-'nother time.)
I've lived in San Francisco for six months now. And... I didn't think this was likely, but I'm more cut off from folks than ever. I started thinking about it - I see that friends are gathering, I see that things are happening, but I have no idea when or why. (There are also a lot of events I see happen at which I feel unwelcome, but that's another story entirely.)
Some time in the last month, Facebook or Google discontinued the FB-Events-feed-to-Gcal integration. Is it a bug? A Product choice to make people look at the Events page, thus increasing DAU (daily active users, for those of you so blessed as to not have to think about these things)? Since the feed apparently still works with iCal, is it some sort of competitive maneuvering between Google and FB? All three? Possibly. But the end result is the same - I no longer know what's going on, and it's made me take a hard look at the infrastructure of my social life.
Years ago, we used to plan our lives on Yahoo Calendar. These days it's GCal. Evites went out by email, and we added them laboriously to our To Do lists. Blogs were written, invitations to those who found them. Parties were had.
Now, we have better technology (automatic add-to-calendar! feeds of events!) and yet the experience is so much worse. Why? Ads have broken the internet.
Spammers are ruining email. (Spammers send ads on an incredible scale for marginal return, but since the services are "free" and the tools are easy to come by, they're happy to hydraulic mine the virtual world.) An acquaintance of mine maintained a Google Group for mailing invitations to her (very popular) annual event (she'd outgrown the threshold where she could use her normal email client), but at some point she ran up against the limits for spam reputation scoring. She'd send the invitation, and suddenly her account would be locked down (rate limited). Only a third of the emails would be delivered (SMTP ban). In the end, she split the invitations into more groups that were below the "bulk email" threshold - but like so many of us in the small-Silicon-Valley, she has more than two thousand friends (including partners and plus ones) who'd be welcome at this party. Last I heard she was considering a newsletter service like MailChimp to get around how we've broken email.
What about commercial invitation services, like Evite? Evite is clearly struggling to monetize - they need clickthrough on their emails to make sure that they get their ads served, and so the "invitation" is now an envelope, which you must click, and then click again, and then a third time (three pages of ads!) in order to read the details and RSVP. If there's an "export to calendar" link I haven't yet found it. And this explains why, in an age when, when making a dinner reservation I automatically have it on my Gcal in seconds, and when my partner's arrival gate is on the calendar minutes from their plan touching down, Evite, Green Envelope, and other commercial services will never add this convenience feature. Which means that in the deluge of email, if I miss one that contains an invite, I'm effectively not invited to that party. (There are of course edge cases with spammers sending Evites to think about... but guh.)
There are Public Gcals, but nobody has time for that, somehow. There are RSS feeds, but it seems like since the death of Google Reader, so few people are actually willing to shell out a few bucks to maintain continuity of feed.
No, let's call it what it is - integrity of feed. When companies started dicking with the chronological order of information in order to show more ads, they broke... everything. We've got dark patterns, corporate skullduggery, and human suffering as a result.
So now we come to Facebook Events, and why I don't like to use them.
Facebook events are subject to The Algorithm. I noticed this the second time I tried to host a birthday party - Only about 1/3 of the list was actually shown the event. You can imagine how that felt. And yet I tried a few times to host birthdays this way - at one point I had thirty people RSVP and six show up. Two years ago, three people. Last year, none but my partner. So this year I messaged some people who were local, and who wouldn't be too put out, and I put an event on my Gcal and I invited the eight of them *by email*. It was the best birthday in years.* At some point I can't blame this on having shitty friends (though there's literally a meme about "The San Francisco RSVP") but on algorithmic meddling.
I also work with a few groups who put on semi-professional events, and I've seen where the Algorithm gets its hooks in to monetize. "That's a lovely event invitation you have there. It's a shame if something were to... happen to it. Maybe you'd like to buy some... ahem... insurance for it? Say like $5 in promotion? Look how many more people will see it!" That works for the first event, but the next event it's $8, and then at some point it's $20 and the service says "Oh huh, you should just get a monthly subscription to promotion services! It'll save you money!" Not today, Satan. Every single person on our list is here because they specifically signed up, and you're holding our audience hostage?
In the end, most of these groups I've recommended get... a email newsletter service like MailChimp, so that we know that the people who want our notes actually get them.
It's interesting, because post-Tumblrgeddeon, Patreon is also building what's essentially a cul-de-sac, walled-garden shadow RSS service. I should also mention that post-Tumblrgeddeon, I *miss* seeing content (however inane) from my friends, and knowing that they're out there.**
So here's my request to you - email me.
Let's go low(er)-tech for a bit. We'll start a conversation, and I'll invite you to things. No ads need be involved.
(* Modulo some health stuff which I haven't blogged about.)
(** Though if I can't tell your posts from sales pitches, it's not "friend" content. That's a blog for another-'nother time.)
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Return
Well, it felt good until the bubble popped, at least.
Work has been frustrating, but apparently not just frustrating, but the person I'm reliant on's inability to hit deadlines is actually endangering my employment. I'm pretty freaked out. I'm being given another task to prove myself, but... It also feels like I'm being given enough rope to hang myself.
Time will tell, I suppose.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
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!
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
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.
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.
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