Category: Current Events

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it’s okay…to not be okay

Earlier this week, I was feeling great about the possibilities of getting a job offer today.  Late yesterday I got an email saying that, like the last three jobs I felt sure I was going to get, the job has gone on hold while the company re-evaluates what they genuinely need.

To some degree, I’m used to it, as a technical writer. But, I have to admit that this time, it’s hitting me pretty hard.  The job boards have the same ten jobs or so that they’ve had for a month.  Everyone is re-evaluating.  Jobs are getting really scarce.

Earlier this week I was feeling pretty optimistic and I was happy to reach out to my extroverted friends, and read poetry on Facebook and help people get through this.  Today I’m feeling fairly hopeless.  Today I’m afraid.

Logically, I know these things come in waves, but I also know that we haven’t seen the worst of this.

I need to pay bills.  I need to pay rent.  But at the same time, I’m afraid to spend anything because I’m so unsure of when there will be more money.  If I spend nothing of my last unemployment check, or of the next two unemployment checks, I will just make my rent in May.

On Tuesday, I have an interview at Target to work overnights stocking shelves because it pays slightly better than unemployment, yet at the same time, I don’t want to take the job from someone who might need it more than I do.

I know we’re all in the same boat.  We’re all doing our best to keep that boat afloat in an ocean of uncertainty and fear.  And I know that I’ll find my optimism again, but for today it’s okay to not be okay.

I’m going to finish up this coffee and wait for the recruiter to call me for a remote tech writer job I heard about late yesterday.  Maybe this is the one?

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this is not the dystopian future I imagined

Hello, Readers!  I hope you are all taking good care of yourself as we isolate ourselves and hope this virus situation doesn’t get any worse.  I’m trying to stay optimistic, but I’ll admit it can be hard.

It’s so weird to see the traffic map completely green!  I’ve been in the SF Bay Area for twenty years, and I’ve never seen it before!  My town, which is normally filled with people out walking is a ghost town.

As someone who has read a LOT of dystopian stories, I’ll admit, when I considered what our future might look like, how our society would fall apart, I did not have my money on virus-caused-economy-crash.

So, how are you occupying your time, Readers?  I hope you have coffee and good books to read.  I’m still job hunting, and in a time like this there are still a lot of job postings, but not so much with the hiring.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better, so remember to wash your hands, stop touching your face, and take care of one another.

This crisis can make us better people, if we let it.  It is already helping out Mother Earth.  Check in on the elderly and vulnerable in your neighborhoods, and remember to keep your distance.

Meanwhile, I have a short story to write and a novel to start editing.  Hopefully some more editing work will be coming my way soon.  Happy Friday, my friends.

Photo by Jeffrey Blum on Unsplash

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is this really real?

I saw someone on Facebook say that it feels like we’re living in a simulation and wow, I felt that.  Reality seems so surreal these days where you can never be sure if “news” is actually news or parody, and even the real news is so skewed to reflect whichever side the reporter/news organization is supporting.

We seem to have lost out impartial press.

At the same time, we have a government that seems to be bent of self-destruction, forgetting that if it goes, so goes the country.  I’m not going to venture into a political discussion, don’t worry.  If you’ve read my blog for long, I’m sure you know which way I lean.

I am going to encourage you to never rely on any single source of truth when it comes to understanding the reality we find ourselves living.  Truth has become subjective and the onus is upon us to dig through the interpretations to the underlying truth.

If this is a simulation, it is a sucky one.  Maybe I’ll just go play SIMs and make the world I want to see.

Happy Thursday, Readers.  I hope your sim day is a happy one.

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and so it is…

Pride week. Second week on the new job.  Deadlines for writing and editing.

Yeah, it’s been a week.  And it’s only Wednesday!

I turned over my writing and editing stuff to all the various people who I needed to get it to early this morning, seeing as I was awake at 5 am, even though I’m pretty sure I meant to sleep a few more hours.  Might as well make use of the time, am I right?

I have to work the day job for a few hours this morning (it’s amazing how quickly you can burn through an allotted 20 hours!!), before turning my attention to the rest of my Pride prep, which at this point of the week includes doing laundry, sorting out my meds for the weekend, making sure the laptop is set up for sign ins over the weekend and making some hard boiled eggs.  Because Protein.

There is probably going to be some house cleaning and sorting through the piles of clothing I’ve pulled out of places to decide whether it stays or goes…and if it goes, where is it going to?  Having lost 122 pounds since my heaviest weight is great, but it does make clothing occasionally problematic.  I picked up two pairs of size 18W capri pants the other day…they’re already a bit baggy, and yesterday I put on a pair of size 16W that were too tight for comfort, but I could zip them up and everything.  Won’t be too long before I’m in those.  But that means the piles of 20Ws need to find new homes.

I should probably get on with the day job work.  More deadlines, you know?  And that cup of coffee I set down somewhere and is probably getting cold…I should go find that too.  Happy Wednesday, Readers!  And Happy Pride!

 

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

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into the fire

I’ve been struggling all day to come up with something to write about today that wasn’t just about my terror over money and work, or the impatience of not knowing when or if the unemployment information would come through, or how I’m going to manage healthcare costs if I’m not employed before the end of the month (or if I’m forced to take a contract job where benefits won’t start for 2 months).

I could tell you about my frustration with recruiters who can’t read a map and realize that a six hour drive is not a doable commute, or the ones who think that two hours one way is totally normal.  Or how it seems like all of the people with their hands out seem to come out of the woodwork when you’re unemployed.

It isn’t even that I don’t have work to do.  I currently have a number of freelance editing jobs that will feed me and keep my cats fed for a while, especially with how little I eat these days.  I also have wonderful friends who brought me a bunch of food yesterday, in an effort to help out.

So, if I’m not talking about any of that, what do I have left in me to say on this gorgeous Wednesday afternoon?  If my ankle is done being cranky with me, I was hoping to get out for a hike this afternoon, after a wonderful two mile hike on Sunday (which is probably the cause of my ankle pain).  There is something wonderful about hiking up big hills and over rocks, and through trees that helps settle my soul.

It makes me wish for long weekends in the mountains, and good food cooked over an open fire.

And I think I’ll leave you with that notion, Readers, and get back to my editing.

 

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Beltane blessings

Today is the first day of May.  May Day.  Beltane.  It is a holy day of promise for the future, a day of planting seeds for the harvest to come.

This is a day that celebrates spring, when the youngest flowers bloom and the air is filled with the light fragrance that whispers of the summer that is just around the corner.

And yes, it is a day closely associated with fertility.  In some Pagan traditions it is celebrated with bawdy tales of trysts in the woods between willing partners, or with drinking and feasting and ritualized representation of the sex act.

All of that is to remind us that this is the time when Mother Earth is her most fertile, when she is waiting for us to run our plow into her and deposit our seed into her soil, so that she may nurture and grow it to provide for our sustenance in the long months of winter.

So, blessings you, Readers, if you celebrate…and if you don’t.  Happy Wednesday either way!  May your planting find fertile ground so that the harvest is plentiful!

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the road through 15 years

I have a confession to make, I love the television show Supernatural.  Sure, it has its faults.  Yes, it’s had some less than stellar story lines.  Or course, some of it is over the top outlandish.  Yep, the characters are all deeply flawed.  I think maybe that’s part of why I love it.  For all that it’s about the supernatural, it’s about the very human family at the center of it. And not just blood family.  It’s about that, but it’s also got a very strong understand of made family, the family you chose.

I’ve just finished a rewatch of the show from the beginning through the end of season 13.  When I started my rewatch, I didn’t know that they would soon be announcing that season 15 would be the end of it, but it made me glad I had decided to go back to the very beginning.

I can remember when we waited, heads bowed and praying for them to announce that we’d get another season…back before it became the juggernaut of fan-conventions, before the fandom rose up to perform some truly amazing acts of charity (despite all of ITS flaws and backbiting and judgement).

Marathoning through 13 seasons in the last few months gave me some insights I probably wouldn’t have gotten any other way.  It made me appreciate those flawed characters and the amazing actors that bring them to life even more.

I’ve never been to a Supernatural convention due to my agoraphobia and the cost it would involve to get me what I need to cope, but there’s a part of me that wishes I could.  I’ve come to love, not just the boys Jared and Jensen, but the entire family of actors who inhabit the Supernatural universe.

I’m glad they get to go into the final season knowing that it’s the final season, and I hope that it provides them to give us a fitting end to 15 years of hunting trips.  And if they wanted to give us another episode with Jeffery Dean Morgan popping by, I wouldn’t complain.

I’ve been mulling over what I might like that ending to be, and I have a few ideas, but I think I’ll keep them to myself for now.  Feel free to drop your ideas in the comments.  I’d love to know!

Now, the coffee is getting cold, so I best get to the drinking of it, and start putting some words to the page.

Photo lovingly borrowed from Entertainment Weekly.

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running against the clock

A bit of oatmeal, some coffee and we ease into the day.  Well, not so much.  By the time I got to the oatmeal and coffee, I had already walked 1.2 miles, with a train ride in the middle, plus the whole getting out of bed and getting dressed and all of that, including makeup and jewelry.

It’s a whole thing.

I have a Samsung Galaxy watch, and one of the programs on it allows me to set a “must wake up by” time, which is set to 4:30 am, and then it monitors my sleep cycle and wakes me at the end of an REM cycle closest to that time, provided that there isn’t time for another complete cycle.

For the last 3 days, it’s gone off at 4am.  It’s amazing to me how much better my mornings have been.  I’m up and out of bed, dressed and answering emails before my 4:30 alarm goes off.  If I had gone that extra half hour, I would have gotten up groggy and cranky and slow.

Time is a funny thing, really.  A human construct that lets us function within a society, a measurement of when rather than what.  At one point in my life, I was so addicted to knowing what time it was, that I looked at my watch about 20 million times a day (an estimate, of course, probably slightly overstated).  I had to stop wearing a watch to get past it.

In fact, I went without a watch for close to 8 years before I got my first fitbit.  I’d broken the addiction, and didn’t fall back into it, but I came to love having that fitbit.  I’ve only recently upgraded to the Galaxy watch as my Fitbit Charge HR 2 was on its last legs.  I love the versatility of it, I only wish the associated Samsung Health app was a little more robust, like the Fitbit app.

Speaking of time, it looks like I should get myself back to my work.  Emails to respond to, pages to write…you know, the usual.  And I don’t want my coffee to get cold.

Happy Wednesday, Readers!  I hope time is on your side today!

 

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the last stand

I haven’t really talked enough about Where Shadows Fall. I struggled a bit with getting this book done, maybe in part because I knew it would be the end of my living in that world, at least for a while.

The grand finale takes place in Washington D.C., which I think was rather inevitable, given what we know about the man pulling the strings.  I didn’t set out to have a meglomanical bad guy.  In the beginning he was just a guy who believed that Others were evil.  Clearly, I maintained some of that in the overall story however.

To me there is nothing as frightening as a person who believes without doubt, someone who fears that other for no concrete reason but because they have been told to believe. They can’t be reasoned with. No argument will penetrate the protective barrier of that belief mixed with fear and hate.

I always thought that it came from religion, from man’s need to control mankind’s access to gods and the power that came with that.  However, as we can see in America today, it doesn’t have to come from within religion.  It need only wrap itself in the cloth that resembles religion to draw people in.

I find that terrifying.  Maybe that’s why the 8th Battalion became one of the big bads in these books.  It certainly drives the character of Colonel Shallon.  Blind belief is a dangerous weapon.

That is where my thoughts are today, Readers.  I hope yours are more pleasant on this cold, January Saturday.

 

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welcome to the future

It’s an odd thing, really.  By which I mean time and our visions of the future.  We’ve arrived at the year 2019, which past us predicted would be in varying degrees of dystopian decay, with technology that we haven’t quite realized.

We may be well on our way to dystopian entropy, given our current political, social and economical situation, but our cars don’t fly yet, at least not at the common man level (I’ve seen the prototype, but it’s a far cry from being affordable or even legal)…which I suppose is good, considering the terror it could cause.

I’ve been feeling pretty ho-hum about things since Christmas.  My idea of New Year’s eve, was a Star Trek:Voyager marathon that ended around eleven.  I’ve never been a big resolution maker, because I realized young that most of us just make some big proclamation about big changes that we’re are never actually going to follow through on without any plan for how to accomplish them.

That said, however, I am resolving to work on two specific goals this year, and I already have plans in place for how to accomplish them.  I probably won’t really be discussing them, but they are health and finances.

Today is my first day back in the office, like many other Americans, I assume.  I like first days, they feel like a fresh start.  My goal for the next three days is to finish up a few unfinished projects from last year so that next week I can begin new things.  I also hope to get at least three hundred words written every day, whether on the current project or something else.  My daily writing has been slacking lately.

I guess I should get myself busy with that.  I have a mile long list of emails to respond to this morning, so I’m off to the day job.

Happy New Year, Readers!  Welcome to the future!