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Kidney...Transplant

Last night I finally used the bath bomb Husboo gifted me as a birthday present three years ago. It was the first time we used the tub in the new place, and it struck me that it's in the *exact* place Cleveland's bathtub is in Family Guy. It might have been a high thought, but I couldn't shake the image of me falling out of the house going "No no no no nooooooo!" It still makes me chuckle. :)

Honestly? Wow. I felt so much more relaxed stepping out of the tub, my skin felt rejuvenated, and I'm two more episodes down in my Paradise re-watch. I have another bath bomb from the same gift set, and I'm really looking forward to using it. The iPad and the Wonderboom are a potent combo in the alcove that holds the faucet, and if I get one of those bath-tub trays I could easily see myself going for a soak at least twice a month.

I spoke with my manager yesterday and she made me feel a lot better about the situation. When it happened, I stepped back to look at my life and felt like such a loser. Here I am in my mid-40s with no solid career path to speak of, no savings, a job that barely pays the bills, with old ratty clothes and poor grooming habits. I don't have a degree and it really feels too late for me on that, so the best I can do is some kind of supplemental education that might help my network make a case for me somewhere. I'm always going to be making the lowest wages in the household; at worst, I'll be relying on the charity of my community. It wasn't a great feeling.

But she helped shift my perspective a bit. This wasn't an indictment of my work ethic or effectiveness, and the passion with which she jumped into helping me land somewhere else was grounding on its own. She heard about a position in the Sunnyvale office opening soon and encouraged me to speak to the hiring manager ASAP, so I did. They're looking for a Metrology Calibration Tech to work out of the lab there; it'd take me out of the house five days a week, but that's not the worst thing as long as the pay was good. I think I hit it off with him fairly well, and he liked that I have the mindset for the work being an internal applicant. There are knowledge gaps, of course, but my manager forwarded training materials that I can study ahead of applying and interviewing. She also gave me her personal email address so we can go over my resume and wants to set up a weekly meeting to track our progress. It's surprising to get this kind of help so quickly from someone who had to fire me, though I suppose I've had enough good managers at this point I really shouldn't be.

Someone in the fandom who knows me from my 2 Sense days popped up with a list of open positions at a waste management company; a colleague from Udacity forwarded me a job at an AI tech company; an old fandom friend forwarded me a position as a Library Page for Santa Clara, having remembered how much I loved them. I'm always surprised that there are so many people willing to rally around me in times of trouble, but again -- I've had so many good friends at this point I really shouldn't be.

I'm not out of the woods, but I feel like I've gotten my bearings at least. I would like the Calibration Tech position (as long as the pay is right), so I think I'll give that a good try. Ditto for the Library Page position. I think I'll pass on the AI tech company though, for multiple reasons.

Tonight I'll be putting together my 2025 Job Application Tracker tonight and working on the Unlicensed Adventures game. The gang is working their way through a "dungeon" of sorts full of mind flayers and for some reason they keep getting their asses kicked. >.> I'd like to offer a way for the group to get some much-needed story, but that's very tricky with this group. They have little tolerance for untrustworthy behavior, but I'd really like to see if they could make an alliance of convenience with a bad guy to stop something bad from happening. We'll see how it goes.

Kidney Punch

I got notice of being laid off last Thursday. The company is eliminating my position to create new ones that do the same work in Mexico for a fraction of the labor cost. My last day is October 24th, and if I'm still employed in good standing with the company by then I'm entitled to eight weeks' severance. Basically, I run out of money on Christmas Eve if I don't find another job.

It was a pretty big shock. I had been anticipating a smaller-than-desired pay raise based on what I had heard from a few friends (they had both received 1 - 1.5%), with a possible best-case-scenario that my pay was being raised to match what my colleagues were making. Instead, they cut five people from QA and QC after cutting six people or so earlier this year.

And they've made no secret of staffing the office in Mexico with reconfigured positions that do what we do, only with significantly lower labor. It's a really shitty way to lose a job; I can't fault the folks in Mexico for doing the same thing for lower costs, and I can't fault my managers who are only doing what they're told while being forced to absorb the immediate blowback. Still, it's radicalizing to know you could do your best work for less than you're worth and still be told you don't deserve the pay you get.

I went numb at the meeting where I was told, and cried a lot Thursday evening. I barely got anything done on Friday; just doing the work would set off a fresh wave of tears and I'd have to go somewhere else to collect myself all over again. I'm still emotionally fragile today, but I'm also in a headspace where the most important thing is to keep it moving. I have to absorb the blow and find another job somewhere, and being depressed isn't going to get that done. I guess being an adult is learning that the world doesn't stop when you feel like you can't go on and it's important to give the impression of being well-adjusted even when you're all but dead inside.

I'm trying to be more honest about my mental state here, but I also realize how important it is to manage my own emotional state. I...don't think I can fall apart the way I want to. There's no one to pick up the slack.

Falling apart doesn't really make the situation better, either. I'm just tired of having to eat shit and smile about it. Especially since everything happening this year feels like it's geared toward push people like me out of society completely. I don't have many credentials or certifications or degrees, but I'm pretty good lubricant for any team I find myself in. There are all these ways that I work to make things run more smoothly and that's hard to quantify on paper. Now that local tech companies are abandoning any pretense of DEI and also purging workers like crazy, any possible safe haven is flushed with better-qualified, younger candidates with fewer personal boundaries around work-life balance. It's going to be really, really hard finding something that pays enough for me to feel OK about working there.

Other friends I've known a long time, slightly older than I am, have been out of work for months without finding something. There are so many open positions for garbage pay that senior-level workers are applying for just because the market's that brutal. And when you add the impossibility of beating AI screeners so your resume can be seen by a human being, it...feels like I might never find work again.

But what else can I do but try? What else can I do but pretend things will be OK and I'll land on my feet somehow? If I give in to the sense of doom in my heart, I might as well disappear entirely. I can't do that, so trying it is.

Still, it would be nice if it felt like society wasn't forcing me to circle the drain so billionaires could make impossible amounts of money even more easily.

(no subject)

I think it's safe to say I'm in a depression. :) Just thinking of my mental state that way shifts me over into a different mindset that's...gentler, I guess. Less nest of angry bees and more blind mole snuffling around in an unfamiliar forest.

I meditated for the second day in a row and already it's pushing me into better choices. Instead of losing time playing video games or listening to YouTube, I cleaned the kitchen. It was in a bit of a state, with corn cobs, arugula, tomato jam, and bacon grease all left out overnight. D: I saw a couple cat hairs on the tomato jam, so I know Goldie was keenly interested and likely couldn't help herself to have a taste.

That makes me feel guilty, of course. I really don't want to be the cause of a bad turn for her, and the more chances she has to go off-diet the more likely that will be. I'll have to take extra care with the kitchen for a week or two; at the very least, I want to make sure she doesn't have access to any tasty food scraps that might be bad for her.

Husboo was not happy about the dishes early in the morning, which...eh. I'm in this mood where if something has to be done, I'd really rather not procrastinate about it if I can do something about it. I have no idea what my energy is going to be like later today, so if I have the juice to clean now I'd much rather use it then and there.

Discovered an ant trail in the master closet where Biscuit lives, which set me off on a cleaning jag. There are some small gaps in the baseboard where they must be getting in, and though I could trace the trail from the back corner all the way to the closeable gate we have keeping Biscuit in, I couldn't figure out where their ultimate destination could be. The master bathroom is the closest water source, so maybe there?

Anyway, Husboo asked why it set off this urge to clean and I had to stop to think about it. I guess for me, it's a sign that a place is unclean -- the places I grew up in had permanent roach colonies, and we were hit with a pretty bad flea infestation that really scarred me in high school. The thought of insects crawling around in high-pile carpet, mostly invisible, just makes my skin crawl.

But ants are relatively harmless insects and can even keep out more harmful pests by taking care of the grubs. There's a part of me that would like to figure out how to encourage the colony to look elsewhere for food and water, but who knows how well that would work? Ratty recommended a liquid trap that combines sugar water and borax, which attracts ants, kills them dead, and actually spreads through the colony. If I set them in the master closet, I'd have to be ready with the vacuum every day to get the fallen soldiers. I...don't want to eradicate an ant colony just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so I'll have to sit with my feelings on that and just keep watch. If it ends up causing issues for Biscuit or getting worse, I'll use them.

Got word from my coworker-friend that the annual raise was...exceptionally small (1.4%) so that's about what I can expect. It's not enough to lift my regular "salary" (I'm paid by the hour) up to $50K, so that pretty much forces my hand. In the short-term, I'll see if I can get the Patreon up and running again for some extra cash. But what I really need to do is get my resume in order so I can start putting in applications. I don't want to leave where I am, even with their dog-shit health insurance, but I'm tired of not being able to buy stuff I need because monthly bills take everything and then some. If I can't make a living wage here, I *have* to find some place that offers one.

The rough part about that is it will likely mean going back to the office at least two days a week. Beyond the normal hesitance to be in public spaces, I don't mind that so much -- but it might make car-sharing a bit more complicated. It'd honestly be worth it if I could make $75K again, though.

For now I'm just trying to simplify life again, focus on the next best thing. It made me feel better to clean things than "rest" with video games, so maybe doing other stuff I should have been doing all along will help just the same.

Tonight, we're going to watch the new "Superman" movie. I'm fully expecting it to make me cry, which would be the first Superman movie to ever do that. But from what I'm hearing, this version is Kindness & Empathy Man, and I'm so starved for characters pushing that it might overload my little brain

Untangling the Elephant's Leash

Hey, remember when talking about my family depressed me so much I stopped journaling for four months? Good times.

Actually, that's not quite what happened. We're settling into something of a routine in the new household, but I haven't added regular journaling to it. I think it would definitely help if I picked it up again, though, so here we are.

I had meant to give myself a little space between the last family post and picking it up again, but this was a longer hiatus than I had meant to take. I'll get back to the self-therapy, but for now, I want to catch up on where I am these days.

I think the biggest positive thing I have going right now is an ever-shifting, deepening web of connections that I've really come to appreciate. I know so many awesome people who are striving to do awesome things. All I have to do is look around for inspiration or hope that life isn't completely terrible. Everywhere around me, people are creating, expressing, drawing, writing, speaking, performing...it's a constant reminder of how beautiful life is and how great humanity can be. It's cheesy, but I mean it. I really appreciate getting peeks inside someone else's life. No matter how corporate and awful the Internet gets, most of us know that the connections we forge here are the entire point.

It's made me painfully aware of how neglectful and flighty of a friend I can be. I've spent so much time these past several years not doing...anything, and now I'm on the fringes of almost every social group I'm connected to. I can't pretend to be surprised by this -- it was mostly my design to be this way. But I've spent so much time being quiet and unobtrusive that it feels like my ability to communicate has calcified. I could feel myself disappearing in a way, retreating entirely into this fugue state I construct for myself so I can pass time without feeling anything.

In a weird way, I feel myself becoming my adopted father. He spent all his time around us being quiet and out-of-the-way that I really don't remember much of a personality. He spent so much time away from us, and I realize now it was because he felt like he couldn't be himself around us. Remembering all those nights he'd come home completely blotted drunk, I see now that he wasn't some asshole who couldn't control himself. He was deeply unhappy and desperate to feel something other than...whatever he felt when he was home.

That's why he'd come back to us after the divorce, saving whatever was leftover in his allowance to take the bus. It feels like we became that escape, the place where he'd feel better than whatever he was feeling then. I can't guarantee that's the way he felt, of course I couldn't, but...it feels that way for me sometimes.

I say this a lot, but I've spent so much time trying to escape my feelings I've forgotten what they are -- or at least, how to talk about them. Why feel feelings you don't really understand and can't talk about with anyone when you can be numb instead? That way no one has to hear your emotional flailing and you don't have to feel it!

It feels easier to numb myself so I can get on with the business of living most days. It's important to keep the job I have because if I lose it I really worry about my ability to find anything that could pay nearly as well. I might be able to find something that pays even less, but chances are it would be a lot more stressful. And...well, considering my emotional state now, that's not a great proposition.

Work is fulfilling because I finally feel like I've gotten my sea legs. There's still an awful lot to learn and I'm not entirely sure I've made the best impression on my bosses this year, so it feels like I have to dig myself out of a slight hole by working faster and harder. Reaching out to the blue-collar technicians whose work I'm checking is fraught, so that's more stress. It's *such* a detail-oriented job that I just want to turn my brain off at the end of the day, but I can't really. There's exercise, and hobbies, and dinner, and cleaning/upkeep. There's the whole second job of trying to live up to my friend group -- and I'm failing pretty hard at that too.

My self-esteem isn't great right now. :) But I can't...do less than what I'm doing because what I'm doing already isn't enough. My brain serves me an entire litany of ways I'm failing someone at any given time. I know it's an irrational thought coming from an irrational place, but it doesn't make it any less demoralizing.

So I've made an appointment for a therapist at Kaiser Permanente to hopefully get help, because I can feel myself getting worse and I don't have the tools to stop it. I'm not very happy about that, but it's what I have access to so it's what I'll use. I wish I had the ability to choose a therapist I could be comfortable with. I wish I could see them more often than once a month. I wish I didn't get pushed to group classes so often. But here we are.

I could go for another 30 minutes about the socio-political situation in the United States, but who wants to hear about that? I can see some kind of societal collapse coming and none of us are prepared for it because...how could you be? It feels like so much death is coming, death to people who are really close to me, and there's nothing I can do about it. When all you can see is a broken world in front of you, it's really hard to sustain energy for any long-term project. Why should I bother learning to write if I won't have anyone to share it with in five years? Why bother getting this certification when the international organizations that recognize it will cease to be soon? Why do anything but fucking numb yourself and do nothing until it's your turn to die?

This is the constant voice in my brain whenever I think about starting a garden, or sprucing up the house, or getting back to writing. It feels impossible to start anything because everything feels pointless.

So...yeah, that's why I'm going to therapy. I don't want to keep feeling this way, and I can't keep numbing it down to make do and keep it moving.