Greetings
2013 was not a great year for me. It made me think, it gave me too much time to think in since not much happened. I thought about the past a lot. My history with work bounced around my head. The jobs I have hated, the jobs that half worked, the gaps between. It is the gaps that I have on my mind today, and have had on my mind for sometime. My professional history seems to be a series of entry level technical jobs whose upstream career options were either unattractive or have remained unavailable. I have been bitter about my jobs before and that is not where I am going today. Today is about the other bittering agent in my life, unemployment.
In some ways my professional life exists as a negative, as much defined by the what is not there. Layoffs and the very slow claws back to employment are not new things for me. In this respect 2013 was too much like 2008 and 2009. Yet 2013 was worse. Previously several things had remained untested, and I believed I could safely return to a line of work that has since precipitated a burnout. As I start to search out jobs a nearly identical list of alternatives to geology work enter my mind. I applied with roughly the same success as I had back then. It is all I can think of, because at least it touches on what I know.
And that's a lot of my troubles, I focus on what I know, because I can't reliably call in on who I know. Largely because I don't know many people, especially in the professional world. Every employment resource I have seen since I was 21 has barked endlessly it's not what you know it's who you know. This message has led to the desire to throat punch the people delivering it.
It is not that they are wrong, the Canadian job market is a series of nested old boys clubs. No the problem is I hate the process, and can't even say I like the people. The process an endless series of phone calls or emails towing the line between a sales pitch and begging. Any source of advice starts to feel like a used car salesman. No matter how well I try to play that game I always get results through dumb luck, or craigslist. Or so it feels.
And this brings me to what has made 2013 such a downer year, and why I delayed the job search from the beginning. It feels as though there is no return on investment. The networking done in 2009 was just enough to land me a practicum in 2010, I had just enough leads left in the geology world to land me a job that spring. Those resources did not carry forward. No for me each time it feels as though I am starting anew. There is this sinking feeling that despite nine and a half years of off and on professional employment I am no more employable than when I started.
It is only a feeling, the list of interviews, and recruiter enquiries this session hint at the opening up of a better class of job, but I don't have one yet. My fear, and what has drags down my mood to the point that on bad days I will hid in the bed at midday and cry to myself, is that I will have to do it all over again. It is not a fear failing time around, but that the job will fail again. That I will have another job that dies after two years because the money behind it walks away. The fear that I will not escape this cycle. The fear that at 36 or 37 I will be dropped again because I am only employable at boom times. Only to have to do this all over again. And again. The fear that I have already had the highest salary I will ever have, or that the knowledge base I gain at a job will not be enough to gain the next one.
Now that I have stopped shaking I can work on this next paragraph. The low points in 2013, grew out of this fear, and fleas. These worries are grounded in truth. None of which was helped by my cat's running away, or her long convalescence and all the stresses and stressors that came with that. This is why I started writing, I did not want to face a reality where the work I did before gained me no advantage. This job search loomed, the very idea dragged me down, so I wrote. I occasionally flung resumes at the internet like a monkey flings feces, but with worse aim, and far less enthusiasm. Currently nothing has really stuck.
Now I should try to keep my head up for 2014.
PS.
Also since I am hosting this on Google's blogger, which uses US based servers. Happy New Year NSA. Do you think if I use the words, Yellow cake, centrifuge, device, and physics package, that you could drive my this blog's traffic up. K thanks bye.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Thursday, January 2, 2014
My Brain has Fleas
Greetings.
Anyone that knows me and quite a few that don't know my cat is lucky to be alive, and I am very happy about that. To recap, she was gone for five and half weeks and given up for dead. Once she rescued and accessed she had lost her tail, broke her pelvis, and dislocated her hip. It would later be revealed that she took a bite to the shoulder that developed into an abscess. Somewhere in her adventures, or during her hiding in her deathly hallow she picked up fleas.
Fleas could be expected from an adventure like that. This neighbourhood is full of dirty corners, wild animals, and wild people. Soon after her rescue she was treated and showed no signs of active infestation when I took her home. The treatment was never designed to be a once off, and was intended to be coordinated with careful management of the environment, none of which I knew in the first month I had her home.
Not understanding the first thing about the problem I made several errors. that extended the life of the problem. I failed to get a second dose of the topical treatment before they emerged. So I started treatment again only after having seen fresh evidence of the fleas. And at that time I underestimated the need for environmental management, and so I had failed to give things the deep cleaning needed. This was all happening during a period I was particularly depressed by the prospect of searching for work. The war effort was partly held back by a lack of the proper tools, at the start my vacuum cleaner could barely get the cat hair off of half a foot of carpet let alone the couch. In any case the fleas came back a second time.
Now a bit about the enemy. Fleas are tough. The adults may stretch to 3 millimetres but their small size is to their advantage, they can hide in places I couldn't image cleaning. But the adults are only the top 5% of the population the remainder being eggs, larvae and pupae. The eggs and little white points they'll slide right off the fur into the environment, they are impervious to most forms of chemical warfare and are plentiful. You can kill the larvae but they can slip into many deep corners. The pupae share the egg's near indestructible nature. So I am faced with a foe who at two stages of its life is near impossible to kill, looks like dust and dander, and could be anywhere. I learned this during the second outbreak. This outbreak occurred after she had gained the strength and mobility needed to gain the run of the houses, including keeping my feet warm at night.
So one morning I awoke to my kitty scratching too much, and with that scratching the black specks that are flea feces. She was exiled from the bedroom at that moment, and I started an OCD cleaning process. That morning started the process of my brain getting fleas.
After I shooed her out of the bedroom I changed the sheets, and started the process of washing all the things. During that morning I found the carcass of an adult flea in my bedding. My bed and bedroom felt instantly unclean, and over time so did I. It did not matter that I cleaned myself, my cloths and my bedding regularly, I could never be sure they were gone. I took to worrying about every minor itch, any millimeter sized grit that found its way onto my bed, dander is treated with suspicion. Questionable and large debris were interrogated with my 10X or 30X hand lens, always to answer of inconclusive.
I updated my vacuum cleaner during the height of this paranoia. The tool I started out with was never up to the task of clearing up behind two hair mammals in a carpeted apartment. It has helped, both on the physical front with its ability to clear more dust from a greater depth, things felt cleaner the instant I started using it. Even with multiple washings, vacuumings, dustings, and an absence of hear evidence of their return I still worry.
On a bad day of which there are plenty, when mood is down, and my housekeeping falling with it I will question every iche, distrust all the crumbs. If such a bad day occurs near the time I should change my sheets I will sleep badly, a process that starts with checking the pillows for suspicious dander, as I continually fear that I have become a host. I am getting better, on nights when I am over tired I may still pull out the hand lens and head lamp to check on questionable grit.
In the end I can understand why traumatized cats will groom themselves bald after having fleas. Don't let your pet or your brain get fleas.
Anyone that knows me and quite a few that don't know my cat is lucky to be alive, and I am very happy about that. To recap, she was gone for five and half weeks and given up for dead. Once she rescued and accessed she had lost her tail, broke her pelvis, and dislocated her hip. It would later be revealed that she took a bite to the shoulder that developed into an abscess. Somewhere in her adventures, or during her hiding in her deathly hallow she picked up fleas.
Fleas could be expected from an adventure like that. This neighbourhood is full of dirty corners, wild animals, and wild people. Soon after her rescue she was treated and showed no signs of active infestation when I took her home. The treatment was never designed to be a once off, and was intended to be coordinated with careful management of the environment, none of which I knew in the first month I had her home.
Not understanding the first thing about the problem I made several errors. that extended the life of the problem. I failed to get a second dose of the topical treatment before they emerged. So I started treatment again only after having seen fresh evidence of the fleas. And at that time I underestimated the need for environmental management, and so I had failed to give things the deep cleaning needed. This was all happening during a period I was particularly depressed by the prospect of searching for work. The war effort was partly held back by a lack of the proper tools, at the start my vacuum cleaner could barely get the cat hair off of half a foot of carpet let alone the couch. In any case the fleas came back a second time.
Now a bit about the enemy. Fleas are tough. The adults may stretch to 3 millimetres but their small size is to their advantage, they can hide in places I couldn't image cleaning. But the adults are only the top 5% of the population the remainder being eggs, larvae and pupae. The eggs and little white points they'll slide right off the fur into the environment, they are impervious to most forms of chemical warfare and are plentiful. You can kill the larvae but they can slip into many deep corners. The pupae share the egg's near indestructible nature. So I am faced with a foe who at two stages of its life is near impossible to kill, looks like dust and dander, and could be anywhere. I learned this during the second outbreak. This outbreak occurred after she had gained the strength and mobility needed to gain the run of the houses, including keeping my feet warm at night.
So one morning I awoke to my kitty scratching too much, and with that scratching the black specks that are flea feces. She was exiled from the bedroom at that moment, and I started an OCD cleaning process. That morning started the process of my brain getting fleas.
After I shooed her out of the bedroom I changed the sheets, and started the process of washing all the things. During that morning I found the carcass of an adult flea in my bedding. My bed and bedroom felt instantly unclean, and over time so did I. It did not matter that I cleaned myself, my cloths and my bedding regularly, I could never be sure they were gone. I took to worrying about every minor itch, any millimeter sized grit that found its way onto my bed, dander is treated with suspicion. Questionable and large debris were interrogated with my 10X or 30X hand lens, always to answer of inconclusive.
I updated my vacuum cleaner during the height of this paranoia. The tool I started out with was never up to the task of clearing up behind two hair mammals in a carpeted apartment. It has helped, both on the physical front with its ability to clear more dust from a greater depth, things felt cleaner the instant I started using it. Even with multiple washings, vacuumings, dustings, and an absence of hear evidence of their return I still worry.
On a bad day of which there are plenty, when mood is down, and my housekeeping falling with it I will question every iche, distrust all the crumbs. If such a bad day occurs near the time I should change my sheets I will sleep badly, a process that starts with checking the pillows for suspicious dander, as I continually fear that I have become a host. I am getting better, on nights when I am over tired I may still pull out the hand lens and head lamp to check on questionable grit.
In the end I can understand why traumatized cats will groom themselves bald after having fleas. Don't let your pet or your brain get fleas.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
A temporary Resolution
Greetings.
It was brought to my attention that the post I wrote a couple days ago was a near carbon copy of one written in June. It is perhaps an embarrassment that I nearly doubled the size of the project while not properly addressing the bug, but it leads to a conclusion and a solution. Create the voids.
So last night I stayed up past my bedtime, my cat trying to eat my toes through the bedding and a notebook in my hands. In doing that I concluded I do want a least one other perspective. I also am revising the technologies that exist in that universe, this will force me to reconsider how some things fail, and will remove some redundant scenes. Again parallel perspectives will make this work far better. Some of these ideas I have considered before but they more clearly set now.
My Nanowrimo project was a failure in that I did not reach 50,000 words or tell a concrete story, but it did produce 10,000 words and do some world building. Thankfully for my intellectual laziness, the story is set in the same overall universe as the main project, there may be a gap of several generations but the basic backdrop is consistent. This left me with historical and technological elements that I had not build. Including evidence for advanced alien technology older than 500 million years, weathered beyond comprehension. This is not panspermia, or ancient Aliens did it.
So as I used the cat to keep my feet warm I created a new set of outlines both for the expanded opening and second half of the tale. Admittedly the many of these are little more than a single line, merely a chapter title, but they hint at how the story will playout. A little inspiration does make me feel better.
It was brought to my attention that the post I wrote a couple days ago was a near carbon copy of one written in June. It is perhaps an embarrassment that I nearly doubled the size of the project while not properly addressing the bug, but it leads to a conclusion and a solution. Create the voids.
So last night I stayed up past my bedtime, my cat trying to eat my toes through the bedding and a notebook in my hands. In doing that I concluded I do want a least one other perspective. I also am revising the technologies that exist in that universe, this will force me to reconsider how some things fail, and will remove some redundant scenes. Again parallel perspectives will make this work far better. Some of these ideas I have considered before but they more clearly set now.
My Nanowrimo project was a failure in that I did not reach 50,000 words or tell a concrete story, but it did produce 10,000 words and do some world building. Thankfully for my intellectual laziness, the story is set in the same overall universe as the main project, there may be a gap of several generations but the basic backdrop is consistent. This left me with historical and technological elements that I had not build. Including evidence for advanced alien technology older than 500 million years, weathered beyond comprehension. This is not panspermia, or ancient Aliens did it.
So as I used the cat to keep my feet warm I created a new set of outlines both for the expanded opening and second half of the tale. Admittedly the many of these are little more than a single line, merely a chapter title, but they hint at how the story will playout. A little inspiration does make me feel better.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Stuck In a loop.
Greetings.
So November passed, I started Nanowrimo, made it 10 days and 10 thousand worlds before other things took my attention off the project. This project suffered from a lack of a plan, the story was borrowed from a short I never made an progress on. The details needed to build it up to Nano's 50,000 words did not add much. This however did get me thinking about the other novel I had been working on. In there I added a few more words and realized why the project had been so hard to pick back up.
I have gotten my self good and stuck. The core of the story is the failure of a deep space mission, inspired by both Scott's and Shackleton's expeditions to the south pole. Things going wrong and scraps being salvaged is par for the course. As I circled what has been since the story's first version a pivotal moment I realized I was doing it again and again. A similar scene had been played out several times during the various chapters that preceded what I was trying to write, it was tiring.
Now being a disaster story, where most people will live, and living will involve improvising some scenes of the mechanics of the universe and the ship are needed. There is value in knowing first what they had and how little of it they keep, but too much time has been spent on those mechanics. The interludes are too small, and fail to build the characters into people I either want saved, or will be missed if I kill them off. It is a first draft of something far larger than I have ever worked on before so flaws are expected, massive flaws should be considered normal. Some of the flaws are simple I started too close to the middle, I did not know who was who before I started throwing near death experiences at them. I am unsure as to the view point, I have drifted in and out of the first person, and currently have only one character's view point. There is a real reason why the interludes between disasters are lacking, they are the hard part.
In writing about a stranded starship crew I am facing my experiences in the North. Perhaps I have not spent mucht time there, the bulk of two and a half years, mostly in one space. A world that was ripe with adventure when I first got there but became tiring toil quickly. When I left the last time long after having lost the heart to work so far from home for so long I was angry and despondent. It was a world I did not fit it, beautiful but I never made an inside of myself, I seldom do. It was out there I nearly blew a gasket trying to change a tire on a pickup on the side of an ice road. It was a different patch of ice that swallowed a company truck and took one of its passengers with it. A man I had worked with loosely for a year and a half or so. So I find myself taking on the easy parts, the stark white on white of the depths of winter, but avoiding the hard things.
The old advice of write what you know has value. I hated the advice when I was 21, in a way similar to how I still hate the advice of "It,s not what you know it.s who you know". Now I have had time to live, even if I have not built a top notch network, and it has given me material to add to writing. Unfortunately getting into those head spaces is the hard part. Also, just keeping focused on a task can be frightfully hard, and it gets harder as my life stays empty of external pressures longer.
So the novel got stuck somewhere between the beginner and the middle. I added a introduction and parts of opening chapters that will build the characters and world, but to really make it work I fear it needs a massive restructuring. That weight, knowing that even if I push forward to new parts much of what is behind me will have to change. Now the truth is non of this is new, non of this should keep me from writing, ultimately I have also been lazy. Both these things need remedied.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Part one the approximate now.
Greetings, and a warning this is going to be a rambling stream of conscience.
Logging on to Blogger I looked at the posts from the last few months. The titles and what I remember of the content based on those titles tells me most of my writing has been about looking back. Perhaps a few flirted with a couple ideas on how to go forward but little thought has been put into that, and similarly little progress made. The short answer is I don't know what to do next, the better answer is I have never been able to imagine what I wanted to do that is still true.
When my work is heavily self directed and or the number of tasks is small a failure to commit to one early in the day compromises my effectiveness at both. These days I will wake up and ask should I write today or apply for jobs. The answer will be yes. Unfortunately I don't ask which task gets priority, once the indecision takes root ways are found to avoid doing either, and damn my laid back personality from not beating me up over those failings.
In applying to jobs I submit to postings that come within throwing distance of what I had done in my last post. Now the thing with me and throwing is I am often off by 30 degrees in 5 different directions. So the returns are low. Here comes the part where I blame external forces. In what approximates my profession, I exist in a small niche a user of an obscure software suit for a recession pron industry, a suit I like little in an industry I am indifferent to. When my search steps away from the industry I started out in the jobs become more interesting but less accessible. Yet I apply, with varying amounts of care and attention bordering on The Onion's take on job applications. Online job applications are like a monkey flinging feces, without the passion, aim, satisfaction, or results, when a monkey does it a least something is covered in shit. I have had a few nibbles a couple real interviews and a few calls from recruiters who neither understood my work nor the industry I have worked in.
Now I have tried to make this post about going forward, but right now I am thinking more about trying to get back to where I was, if not in job description but a steady job would be great. So before I explore some other options or decide to delay them for another post I will address the next thing people tell you to do, network. I hate that term, it always brings to mind people dressed better than me with confident smiles, I can not pull of a confident smile for a sustained period. Now I understand that in order to connect the services I can offer with the needs they can fill connections have to be made but the way the process is sold makes me feel unclean. It is at this point in the dialog someone will chime in with the patronizing advice of "It's not what you know, it's who you know". That may be true, but I will hate you for saying it. It has always had the effect of devaluing the knowledge I spent time and energy gaining.
It is so much easier to look back. I know what I did, what parts were enjoyed what parts were endured, it is easy to imagine something the same but different. I have orbited the same but different since I started working. It is the easy thing to do conceptually. The work I did for two years at Independence was the dull end of an interesting field and leaving open the prospect that I could land better work employing similar tools must be considered. It is only the start of my GIS profession and getting started is the hard part. When the commodity prices were high and I was still taking Geology jobs, offers were more frequent, a healthy reminder that I have be employable in the past.
I have romanticized the notion of landing in a totally unexpected field or weird new job that fits me perfectly but honestly I have no idea how that could happen. What value is it to most people that I can break open a rock efficiently, or that I can actually use my 30X handlens, and if you give me a few weeks and leave me alone I can cobble together a simple program. If I squint just right I feel clever and can believe that I can be of good value to people. Yet I see a job market full of short term contracts demanding specialized skills, and feel useless again.
Damn it I was trying to think ahead. Currently I have rambled on about the now. The question of how to land an interesting job, possibly within GIS or the geosciences remains poorly considered. Mostly I have reminded myself that mostly I have learned what I don't want to do. I am not done with this pondering. I will revisit the subject soon and perhaps move beyond complaining.
Logging on to Blogger I looked at the posts from the last few months. The titles and what I remember of the content based on those titles tells me most of my writing has been about looking back. Perhaps a few flirted with a couple ideas on how to go forward but little thought has been put into that, and similarly little progress made. The short answer is I don't know what to do next, the better answer is I have never been able to imagine what I wanted to do that is still true.
When my work is heavily self directed and or the number of tasks is small a failure to commit to one early in the day compromises my effectiveness at both. These days I will wake up and ask should I write today or apply for jobs. The answer will be yes. Unfortunately I don't ask which task gets priority, once the indecision takes root ways are found to avoid doing either, and damn my laid back personality from not beating me up over those failings.
In applying to jobs I submit to postings that come within throwing distance of what I had done in my last post. Now the thing with me and throwing is I am often off by 30 degrees in 5 different directions. So the returns are low. Here comes the part where I blame external forces. In what approximates my profession, I exist in a small niche a user of an obscure software suit for a recession pron industry, a suit I like little in an industry I am indifferent to. When my search steps away from the industry I started out in the jobs become more interesting but less accessible. Yet I apply, with varying amounts of care and attention bordering on The Onion's take on job applications. Online job applications are like a monkey flinging feces, without the passion, aim, satisfaction, or results, when a monkey does it a least something is covered in shit. I have had a few nibbles a couple real interviews and a few calls from recruiters who neither understood my work nor the industry I have worked in.
Now I have tried to make this post about going forward, but right now I am thinking more about trying to get back to where I was, if not in job description but a steady job would be great. So before I explore some other options or decide to delay them for another post I will address the next thing people tell you to do, network. I hate that term, it always brings to mind people dressed better than me with confident smiles, I can not pull of a confident smile for a sustained period. Now I understand that in order to connect the services I can offer with the needs they can fill connections have to be made but the way the process is sold makes me feel unclean. It is at this point in the dialog someone will chime in with the patronizing advice of "It's not what you know, it's who you know". That may be true, but I will hate you for saying it. It has always had the effect of devaluing the knowledge I spent time and energy gaining.
It is so much easier to look back. I know what I did, what parts were enjoyed what parts were endured, it is easy to imagine something the same but different. I have orbited the same but different since I started working. It is the easy thing to do conceptually. The work I did for two years at Independence was the dull end of an interesting field and leaving open the prospect that I could land better work employing similar tools must be considered. It is only the start of my GIS profession and getting started is the hard part. When the commodity prices were high and I was still taking Geology jobs, offers were more frequent, a healthy reminder that I have be employable in the past.
I have romanticized the notion of landing in a totally unexpected field or weird new job that fits me perfectly but honestly I have no idea how that could happen. What value is it to most people that I can break open a rock efficiently, or that I can actually use my 30X handlens, and if you give me a few weeks and leave me alone I can cobble together a simple program. If I squint just right I feel clever and can believe that I can be of good value to people. Yet I see a job market full of short term contracts demanding specialized skills, and feel useless again.
Damn it I was trying to think ahead. Currently I have rambled on about the now. The question of how to land an interesting job, possibly within GIS or the geosciences remains poorly considered. Mostly I have reminded myself that mostly I have learned what I don't want to do. I am not done with this pondering. I will revisit the subject soon and perhaps move beyond complaining.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
F this Shit.
As usual things do not work out as planned, if there was a plan. My life is suffering from the Sunk Costs Fallacy. Time and energy were spent to reach a goal, only to find less there than I had hoped. I have said that before, but I still cling to the notion that I should try to keep the value of that effort. I question that logic more now.
In question what sunk costs are worth holding onto I often find myself trying to ponder what to instead. The hope had always been that correctly applied down time would lead to an enlightenment, guiding me to what I want. It turns out I suck at finding myself. Down time does not lead to finding a clear resolution. The question of what do I want to do when I grow up remains unanswered. What I have are qualifications for jobs in an industry that I am indifferent to and they fail to engage me.
Looking for work makes me bitter, I have done it too often and have fear I will have to do it again too many times. This seaming low return on investment is discouraging. So I delayed in all the ways I could. Starting with 48,000 words of a first draft. Because obsessing about the lives of explores hundreds of years into the future is infinitely more interesting than trying to write a cover letter again. At least at the start of the period I was feeling overdue for some vacation and there was no real shame. Things went sideways after June. So late spring and early summer saw me deep in a creative project. High summer eroded that spirit with heat and too many social engagements.
July was by all accounts a good month, many of the summer things were done and enjoyed. Heat was deadly to my creative process, sprinting through May and June tired me, but the heat finished me off. I describe high summer as oppressively sunny. Long hot days where I am expected to love the heat, I don't. I can chill at the beach or in the shade but elsewhere the heat becomes something to be endured. This took a toll on my writing process. A great deal of my thinking for the project happened in mind afternoon walks, a time of day made unavailable thanks to sun and heat. It was not the only reason. I did let the story line get tangled up, and found I was wanting to restructure it.
August was the cat's fault. She ran away at 6am on July 30th. An SPCA volunteer would later extract her from the loading bay of a charity on the 5th of September. As a nearly crazy cat person this disappearance had a serious effect on every aspect of my life. Including working through most of the stages of grief. I was a mess. As I said she was found, not entirely in one piece but all the important bits were working. Between her vanishing and return, along with minor complications that arose during that time my focus was on cat things. Now mid way into October I am getting some focus which is leading me to being bitter.
Like everyone else I hate looking for work, I also feel I am worse than average at it. Gods know I was scrambling for scraps while university classmates had multiple offers on the table. The hope was that things would get easier. Hope is a fucking lie. While I can still pretend that I have hope, here are some of the things I would like out of a job; Neither all drudge work or overwhelming responsibility within an organization large enough to have different roles I could advance or transfer to. That is fantacy.
Adding to frustrations, so many jobs are contract positions, temporary in nature. Especially it seems with the jobs that I am on paper qualified for. Through the power of limited foresight I have created an condition where I am not very happy doing the work I am trained for, seldom likely to land a stable position. This leaves me doubting too much. On bad days, and this post was only written in bad days, I doubt my own judgement enough to not want to conceive of a new plan for fear of ending up even less happy.
I am increasingly wondering how much I want to remain in Vancouver. Perhaps all I want is an apartment with less street noise and a bigger kitchen. Or do I want the slower quality of life that a lesser city can offer. Damned if I know.
In question what sunk costs are worth holding onto I often find myself trying to ponder what to instead. The hope had always been that correctly applied down time would lead to an enlightenment, guiding me to what I want. It turns out I suck at finding myself. Down time does not lead to finding a clear resolution. The question of what do I want to do when I grow up remains unanswered. What I have are qualifications for jobs in an industry that I am indifferent to and they fail to engage me.
Looking for work makes me bitter, I have done it too often and have fear I will have to do it again too many times. This seaming low return on investment is discouraging. So I delayed in all the ways I could. Starting with 48,000 words of a first draft. Because obsessing about the lives of explores hundreds of years into the future is infinitely more interesting than trying to write a cover letter again. At least at the start of the period I was feeling overdue for some vacation and there was no real shame. Things went sideways after June. So late spring and early summer saw me deep in a creative project. High summer eroded that spirit with heat and too many social engagements.
July was by all accounts a good month, many of the summer things were done and enjoyed. Heat was deadly to my creative process, sprinting through May and June tired me, but the heat finished me off. I describe high summer as oppressively sunny. Long hot days where I am expected to love the heat, I don't. I can chill at the beach or in the shade but elsewhere the heat becomes something to be endured. This took a toll on my writing process. A great deal of my thinking for the project happened in mind afternoon walks, a time of day made unavailable thanks to sun and heat. It was not the only reason. I did let the story line get tangled up, and found I was wanting to restructure it.
August was the cat's fault. She ran away at 6am on July 30th. An SPCA volunteer would later extract her from the loading bay of a charity on the 5th of September. As a nearly crazy cat person this disappearance had a serious effect on every aspect of my life. Including working through most of the stages of grief. I was a mess. As I said she was found, not entirely in one piece but all the important bits were working. Between her vanishing and return, along with minor complications that arose during that time my focus was on cat things. Now mid way into October I am getting some focus which is leading me to being bitter.
Like everyone else I hate looking for work, I also feel I am worse than average at it. Gods know I was scrambling for scraps while university classmates had multiple offers on the table. The hope was that things would get easier. Hope is a fucking lie. While I can still pretend that I have hope, here are some of the things I would like out of a job; Neither all drudge work or overwhelming responsibility within an organization large enough to have different roles I could advance or transfer to. That is fantacy.
Adding to frustrations, so many jobs are contract positions, temporary in nature. Especially it seems with the jobs that I am on paper qualified for. Through the power of limited foresight I have created an condition where I am not very happy doing the work I am trained for, seldom likely to land a stable position. This leaves me doubting too much. On bad days, and this post was only written in bad days, I doubt my own judgement enough to not want to conceive of a new plan for fear of ending up even less happy.
I am increasingly wondering how much I want to remain in Vancouver. Perhaps all I want is an apartment with less street noise and a bigger kitchen. Or do I want the slower quality of life that a lesser city can offer. Damned if I know.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
The Lady Found
So as of 3pm, September 5 The Lady Baroness von Softpaws of Gallifrey is found.
She is not yet home. She was found near Quest food exchange, several blocks north of Hastings. This was far outside the area I had searched. Kitties Hiding spot.
A staffer at from the SPCA found her in a corner of Quest's loading bay, crawled over filth and dirt to get to her. The Lady's condition is not great. Most of her tail was lost, according to the rescuer likely an encounter with a racoon, the remainder will have to be amputated, it is necrotic. Her hip at first inspection is dislocated possibly broken, at time of consultation the X-rays had not been taken and a final assessment could not be made. Of the three outcomes for her hip, two are likely to result in the same operation.
It turns out a difficulty with cat hip dislocations is soft tissue and other material getting into the socket, making a persistent relocation difficult and unreliable. The simple option appears to be remove the ball part of the ball and socket joint, cats are light enough and have the muscles to function well like that. It is suspected that the hip was injured either from squeezing past the bug mesh, or a possible collision with a car.
I did see her, she was doped up on pain meds, I don't think she recognized me, her pupils were so wide I doubt she was seeing anything. They had her on an IV drip because of dehydration. But it was her, without a doubt my Lady.
Several things will happen, One, I have put a down payment on the operation, she will be cared for at the SPCA animal hospital, if nothing else I want her to avoid moving and keep her with people she knows. Poppy, as she was known was well loved by the Shelter care takers and she may yet remember them. This operation will cost several moneys, and might cost slightly more if it takes longer.
The other thing that will happen is The Kitten Katana will have to return to her other home. As much as I want her about I can not introduce a cat in recovery to a healthy cat. In a couple weeks or a month I will consider bringing Katana back into the house, she still needs a calmer home than what can be provided. But the first thing is to get the Lady back and as healthy as can be.
She is not yet home. She was found near Quest food exchange, several blocks north of Hastings. This was far outside the area I had searched. Kitties Hiding spot.
A staffer at from the SPCA found her in a corner of Quest's loading bay, crawled over filth and dirt to get to her. The Lady's condition is not great. Most of her tail was lost, according to the rescuer likely an encounter with a racoon, the remainder will have to be amputated, it is necrotic. Her hip at first inspection is dislocated possibly broken, at time of consultation the X-rays had not been taken and a final assessment could not be made. Of the three outcomes for her hip, two are likely to result in the same operation.
It turns out a difficulty with cat hip dislocations is soft tissue and other material getting into the socket, making a persistent relocation difficult and unreliable. The simple option appears to be remove the ball part of the ball and socket joint, cats are light enough and have the muscles to function well like that. It is suspected that the hip was injured either from squeezing past the bug mesh, or a possible collision with a car.
I did see her, she was doped up on pain meds, I don't think she recognized me, her pupils were so wide I doubt she was seeing anything. They had her on an IV drip because of dehydration. But it was her, without a doubt my Lady.
Several things will happen, One, I have put a down payment on the operation, she will be cared for at the SPCA animal hospital, if nothing else I want her to avoid moving and keep her with people she knows. Poppy, as she was known was well loved by the Shelter care takers and she may yet remember them. This operation will cost several moneys, and might cost slightly more if it takes longer.
The other thing that will happen is The Kitten Katana will have to return to her other home. As much as I want her about I can not introduce a cat in recovery to a healthy cat. In a couple weeks or a month I will consider bringing Katana back into the house, she still needs a calmer home than what can be provided. But the first thing is to get the Lady back and as healthy as can be.
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