I spent my entire afternoon turning something on and then off and then on again. That’s kind of par-to-the-course for my job, since I’m a tester and sometimes what I’m testing is what happens when I turn a thing off and back on. This time, I was helping a coworker chase down a really bad issue he ran into a couple times in the last twenty-four hours. The likelihood of it ever happening was low, but it was a significant enough issue that the off-chance of it happen was so bad that we dropped everything to work on hunting this bug down. After a few hours of work, though, we never managed to reproduce it, which usually means there is another hidden step somewhere in the process that we missed during today’s work. Such is the nature of testing, though. Lots of effort for zero pay off, sometimes, paired with the possibility that we’re going to find the issue the instant we stop looking for it. It can be a tiring, frustrating job at times.
Continue readingReflection
Making The Most of My Horrible Housing Shituation
I’ve spent most of my time over the past month either hunting for a place to live, evaluating if I should buy a house, streaming, or writing. And, you know, working, sleeping, eating, commuting, etc. I’ve pretty much buttoned up every hour of my day and while it can feel exhausting to be doing something constantly, it nice to be on my grind again. I like having stuff to do and, until this month, didn’t have the mental energy to push myself to get anything done beyond what absolutely NEEDED to be done. Now, after the my trip and subsequent recovery, I’m feeling pretty primed for action. Most of the time, anyway.
Continue readingMeandering Thoughs About Apartment Hunting And Moving
As I’ve buried myself more and more deeply into apartment hunting (a task that requires daily effort given how quickly places are getting snapped up), it has been interesting to collect data and try to figure out the trends that I’m seeing. Sure, I’ve only been at it for about two weeks as of writing this (which is hardly a conclusive amount of data), but most of this stuff has held true throughout, to the point where I’m already making decisions based on it and seeing those assumptions pay off. Not in a huge way, unfortunately, since I still haven’t found a place to live, but in ways that are validating of my process and that make my life a bit easier (since it largely amounts to having an easier time winnowing the chaff). Now, I can get a decent scan of new apartments and an evaluation of which to contact in about fifteen minutes, across my four main sites.
Continue readingA Bite-Sized Gripe About Capitalism
These days, there seem to be a lot of signs that capitalism is ruining the world in ways both big and small. Most of the big ways are so large and complex that it’s difficult to tie systemic failures and the designs of capitalism together unless you’ve spent time learning the ins and outs of the systems connecting them. The idea is nothing new, of course, since activists of various affiliations have been pointing it out for decades now and we’ve seen a recent surge of attention to this fact as capitalist society continues to rot from the inside out in a way that makes it more and and more difficult to ignore unless you are emotionally or financially invested in pretending that this sinking ship of an economic theory is actually good for people. Still, that’s a little difficult to appreciate and far beyond my scope as a writer to discuss at length (due to a lack of expertise in economic theory, not skill at witing), so I’m going to narrow my scope to a common frustration that I’m sure we can all relate to: scalpers.
Continue readingA Protein Most Fowl Fuels My Apartment Hunting (and Workouts)
Between all the streaming and trying to get back into the swing of daily life after my trip to Spain, I’ve spent most of my free moments either hunting for a new apartment, figuring out how much it would cost to buy a house, or trying to continue improving my workout and dietary habits. I’ve had the whole working out and going on vigorous walks thing down for one and two years respectively, so now I’m trying to incorporate some more healthy diet decisions. Nothing as (personally) anxiety-inducing as counting calories or following any of the recent fad diets. I’m just trying to make small, incremental changes that will help me live a longer and happier life.
Continue readingIdentity, Masks, and The Self
I’ve been playing this Dungeons and Dragons character, currently known as “Lewis” to the rest of the party, for about two years now. He hasn’t really changed much since I first came up with the character concept at his core, but the themes I want to explore with him have shifted over time, as I’ve reflected on the similarities between myself and this character I’ve made. Initially, I wanted to explore what it looked like to be in a relationship that was not toxic to the people involved in it, but to the people who encounter those involved in it. I was planning to play it out through a modified Warlock and Patron relationship, which the Dungeon Master seemed to be on board with, but that idea lost its luster over time and has faded to the background. There will still be elements of it, I’m sure, throughout the rest of the campaign (or however long this character survives), but now I’m more interested in a theme that has had more relevance in my daily life, that I sort of incidentally worked into the character: how long can you pretend to be something before you become it?
Continue readingReflections on Vacation and Growth
After spending almost two weeks away from work, traveling around the US, flying to Spain, traveling around Spain (and Barcelona in particular), I finally understand why people use multiple social media accounts. Most of my pictures don’t really make sense for Facebook or Twitter, with their more connection-based platforms, so I might finally put some stuff up on the instagram account I’ve had for who knows how many years. I’ve got some nice nature and architecture pictures, along with pictures of my friends and I, so I’ll probably post those there. I’ve got enough pictures I want to post that I can probably put up a decent selection on all three of those platforms, plus Cohost (which is basically me shouting into a void still) and here, which is more of a text experience than a picture one so far as I’m concerned. I’ve still got to figure out how I want to use and balance all of these accounts, but I think I have some ideas after my friends suggested things. Who knows, though. Social media is kind of actively decaying these days, so it’s mostly just a way to share and collect the photos I took on my first cross-Atlantic international trip.
Continue readingFinding The Silver In All of Last Month’s Grey
The past few weeks have been a study in living with anxiety for me. After my coping mechanisms were overwhelmed during an incredibly stressful week, the nearness of my recent trip prevented me from taking the time I needed to recover. As I’m learning, though, it prevented me from taking the time I thought I needed to recover. This isn’t to say that I somehow did better because I was so busy, or even that I managed just fine. I think time to properly rest would have benefited me, of course, since I felt a deep, aching weariness by the time I had to drive across half the country for a flight and that drive, the flight, and settling in to my trip just added their own spins to my exhaustion. But I managed just fine and I don’t think it was even as self-destructive as I thought it might be. As it turns out, since I was so focused on doing something new and had to take care of or at least confront a bunch of personal issues I’d been putting off, I’m probably better off for being put in this position.
Continue readingPost Vacation Check-In
Well, I had a great time. There’ll be more coming about all that (especially once I’ve had time to sort through pictures and decide what is going where when it comes to social media and my blog here), but I wanted to interrupted my previously planned posting order to do a few updates about my schedule. I’ll get those out of the way quick so I can talk about something more fun/contemplative for the rest of the post.
Continue readingBeing Anxious Saved Me From A Worse Disaster For Once
I’ve been busy with getting ready for a trip. I’ve known about the trip for a while, but with everything else going on this past year, I couldn’t afford to spend time and energy on trip preparations until this month. Now, as the final weeks count down, I’ve had to systematically prepare myself in a situation where I don’t really have that much room for delays or procrastination. Unless I wanted to give myself a truly awful final week before the trip, I needed to methodically work through everything in a timely manner. Thankfully, I’m good at getting organized, so it was incredibly easy to come up with a broad to-do list and then sort tasks into a day-by-day order that would still leave me with time to rest so I wasn’t burning myself out before the trip. Unfortunately, everything blew up pretty much immediately when I lost an entire day to discovering that my flights had changed and the agency I booked with not only hadn’t notified me, but didn’t even seem to be aware that anything had changed when I started digging into it.
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