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Varia
I don't have a specific topic for this entry, just general catching up and making plans —most of which will never come to fruition, knowing me, but it's nice to dream. It's what my mother calls "building castles in Spain." I seem to recall that has a historical origin somewhere... hang on, I'm going to go look it up. Okay, I'm back (not that you can tell in textual form that I was gone), and the internet was mostly unhelpful, but it seems to stem from Charlemagne's abortive attempt at conquering Spain. So, there you go.
My therapist suggested that I should try the tried-and-true method of putting a Post-It Note with a nice message/mantra on my mirror that I can repeat to myself. The main problem with that, of course, is that I don't actually believe any of the nice things that you generally put on
those motivational Post-Its. So it gets mentally filed under "Bullshit," and eventually the Post-Its just become that much more background noise. Luckily, my therapist understood, and then asked if there was a phrase I thought I *could* get myself to believe, that might be encouraging. Honestly, all I could think of was the pre-recorded messages from Hyperion in Borderlands 2, which are read in a lovely female voice in the tone of a motivational message, but are full of snark and sarcasm (and I love them for it). The one that sprang to mind was from the Hyperion Extraction Plant: "Keep it up, robots! You are adequate."
In conclusion:
With bonus photobomb from Juno, who was thrilled I left the bathroom door open so she could come in and explore. The cats are not allowed in the bathroom, because Juno likes to chew on the toilet paper. Cats, man. For the record, it's really hard to take a picture of a mirror without taking a picture of your own reflection.
At the very least, the idea is that the Post-It will give me a giggle in the mornings, so we shall see if it has any effect. I tried to find a recording of the Hyperion voice to put on here, but I can't find one that's not part of a really long playthrough on YouTube. Alas.
I've idly poked at learning Go since spending a weekend with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fearsclave. Honestly, it's not nearly as much fun without a live opponent, especially one who is also a mentor to whom I can pose questions. I can't imagine I will ever become a serious or even good player, but I'm glad I know the very basics, at least. I figure I should try to improve until I can hold my own against another beginner player. That seems like a pretty decent goal. The shallow part of me is a lot more interested in the lovely boards and stones than the game itself.
fearsclave also reminded me of one of the projects I'd been meaning to get to, which is improving my penmanship, which has suffered greatly over the years. I learned cursive in elementary school, but my penmanship was terrible. It was cramped and slanted every which way, and in fact it physically pained me to hold my pens and pencils the way my teachers wanted me to. We had these horribe triangular pencil holders which were meant to improve our grip, but all it did was give me cramps in my fingers and palm, and my handwriting got even worse when I used them. When I went to a different high school (my elementary school didn't continue past 6th grade), I discovered that my teachers didn't actually care if I used cursive, so I developed a hybrid of half-print, half-cursive, which allowed me to hold my pens the way I wanted to, and which in turn made my handwriting much more fluid and legible, and that's what I've been using ever since. That being said, my writing is still kind of messy, and it would be nice to be able to write in the lovely cursive that my mother always seemed to manage flawlessly. (My mother despaired over my handwriting in school, and couldn't understand why it was so awful)
So the plan is to get myself a decent fountain pen and some exercise books. This dovetails nicely with a new thing thattoughlovemuse and owldaughter have got me onto (mostly the former), which is bullet journalling. I gave it a go in May of this year, but found that the format I had chosen simply wasn't for me. I don't need it as a daily thing, but I think it might work better with weekly and monthly uses for myself. toughlovemuse in particular has decorated her bullet journal with all sorts of cool things and washi tape and beautiful inks, and I am in awe of how gorgeous it is. I'm torn between getting a small notebook for the portability, or getting a larger one so I can put more stuff in it. I'm thinking the former option is probably better. I always work better with a fresh start, and having multiple small notebooks is likely going to be more motivating for me than one large one, especially if I get part of it "wrong," which would end up discouraging me from continuing. Yes, I am weird about that. Just one more thing to add to the list.
I'm probably going to be going back to work either late next week or, more likely, early the following week. It'll be a GRW, or Gradual Return to Work, and I have no idea what form that will take. I'm seeing my doctor on Wednesday, so I'll find out then. The summer has given me a lot of time to think, though, and I've decided that I can't do what I'm doing for the rest of my life. The schedule is just terrible for my health. I've gained a lot of weight and have become really sedentary in this job, moreso even than when I was in Montreal. The way our current schedule is set up, working 48-60 hours in a row (often up to 80 or more per week with overtime), means that I spend all my days off trying to recover, and I never "catch up" on my sleep or even rest properly. I also can't do anything with any kind of regularity. My schedule decisively prevents me from taking weekly or even bi-monthly classes or signing up for activities, because I'm only completely free half the time, partially free one-quarter of the time (which means purposefully missing sleep), and at work the other quarter of the time. It's very frustrating. Sure, I enjoy having lots of "free" days, doing my shopping when there's no one else around, but there has to be more to life than simply working, sleeping, and taking the dog for Pokéwalks.
In light of that, I'm trying an experiment, of sorts. I'm going to take some steps to switch careers. I did it ten years ago, and it worked out very well for me: I took a dispatching class, got some experience, and landed myself this nice government job. So now I'm going to try again, this time trying for a career that will likely have less income stability, but will force me to have a more active lifestyle, and keep me going to bed and getting up at regular hours. I've signed up for dog training classes (not obedience classes, but rather classes to teach me how to train dogs). I'm thinking, in the long term, of trying to open up my own boarding kennel and obedience school, maybe even do some animal rescue in there, depending on how things work out. Step One is to figure out if I'm any good at this, hence taking classes. If that works in my favour, then I'll need to start learning the ins and outs of running one's own business, figuring out a business plan, figuring out how to obtain capital (ack), and all that jazz. None of these things come easily to me, and I'm not sure where to begin. Besides, if it turns out I suck at dealing with dogs in a more general way than simply having one of my own, I'll know I need to look in a different direction.
And that sums up my current list of projects, I think.
Oh, and before I forget, I saw Ghostbusters last weekend withtoughlovemuse and owldaughter, and it was amaaaaaaaaazeballs! I can't emphasize how much I enjoyed that movie. It did have some problems, but overall it was fun and engaging, and the women were all fantastic, and there was not one single fat joke in the whole movie! I was sort of bracing for impact on the latter, because of Melissa McCarthy. She's a fat woman in Hollywood, and the price of admission for that is to constantly have to make jokes at your own expense about your weight. I understand that that's how it works, but it doesn't mean I have to enjoy fat jokes. There were none, not even jokes about food apart from a running gag about wonton soup having a bad soup-to-wonton ratio. It was glorious. I have also joined the legions of fans who are super in love with Jillian Holtzmann. She has the most bad-ass fight sequence in the movie:
I mean, HOT DAMN.
She's weirdly not my favourite character, but she's definitely the character I'd want to hang out with/possibly take on a date. She's arguably the most brilliant/mad scientist of all the women, and she is entirely glorious.
If you haven't seen this movie, you should definitely go watch it (unless you are not into this sort of movie at all, in which case you probably won't like it).
My therapist suggested that I should try the tried-and-true method of putting a Post-It Note with a nice message/mantra on my mirror that I can repeat to myself. The main problem with that, of course, is that I don't actually believe any of the nice things that you generally put on
those motivational Post-Its. So it gets mentally filed under "Bullshit," and eventually the Post-Its just become that much more background noise. Luckily, my therapist understood, and then asked if there was a phrase I thought I *could* get myself to believe, that might be encouraging. Honestly, all I could think of was the pre-recorded messages from Hyperion in Borderlands 2, which are read in a lovely female voice in the tone of a motivational message, but are full of snark and sarcasm (and I love them for it). The one that sprang to mind was from the Hyperion Extraction Plant: "Keep it up, robots! You are adequate."
In conclusion:
With bonus photobomb from Juno, who was thrilled I left the bathroom door open so she could come in and explore. The cats are not allowed in the bathroom, because Juno likes to chew on the toilet paper. Cats, man. For the record, it's really hard to take a picture of a mirror without taking a picture of your own reflection.
At the very least, the idea is that the Post-It will give me a giggle in the mornings, so we shall see if it has any effect. I tried to find a recording of the Hyperion voice to put on here, but I can't find one that's not part of a really long playthrough on YouTube. Alas.
I've idly poked at learning Go since spending a weekend with
fearsclave. Honestly, it's not nearly as much fun without a live opponent, especially one who is also a mentor to whom I can pose questions. I can't imagine I will ever become a serious or even good player, but I'm glad I know the very basics, at least. I figure I should try to improve until I can hold my own against another beginner player. That seems like a pretty decent goal. The shallow part of me is a lot more interested in the lovely boards and stones than the game itself. fearsclave also reminded me of one of the projects I'd been meaning to get to, which is improving my penmanship, which has suffered greatly over the years. I learned cursive in elementary school, but my penmanship was terrible. It was cramped and slanted every which way, and in fact it physically pained me to hold my pens and pencils the way my teachers wanted me to. We had these horribe triangular pencil holders which were meant to improve our grip, but all it did was give me cramps in my fingers and palm, and my handwriting got even worse when I used them. When I went to a different high school (my elementary school didn't continue past 6th grade), I discovered that my teachers didn't actually care if I used cursive, so I developed a hybrid of half-print, half-cursive, which allowed me to hold my pens the way I wanted to, and which in turn made my handwriting much more fluid and legible, and that's what I've been using ever since. That being said, my writing is still kind of messy, and it would be nice to be able to write in the lovely cursive that my mother always seemed to manage flawlessly. (My mother despaired over my handwriting in school, and couldn't understand why it was so awful)So the plan is to get myself a decent fountain pen and some exercise books. This dovetails nicely with a new thing that
toughlovemuse and owldaughter have got me onto (mostly the former), which is bullet journalling. I gave it a go in May of this year, but found that the format I had chosen simply wasn't for me. I don't need it as a daily thing, but I think it might work better with weekly and monthly uses for myself. toughlovemuse in particular has decorated her bullet journal with all sorts of cool things and washi tape and beautiful inks, and I am in awe of how gorgeous it is. I'm torn between getting a small notebook for the portability, or getting a larger one so I can put more stuff in it. I'm thinking the former option is probably better. I always work better with a fresh start, and having multiple small notebooks is likely going to be more motivating for me than one large one, especially if I get part of it "wrong," which would end up discouraging me from continuing. Yes, I am weird about that. Just one more thing to add to the list.I'm probably going to be going back to work either late next week or, more likely, early the following week. It'll be a GRW, or Gradual Return to Work, and I have no idea what form that will take. I'm seeing my doctor on Wednesday, so I'll find out then. The summer has given me a lot of time to think, though, and I've decided that I can't do what I'm doing for the rest of my life. The schedule is just terrible for my health. I've gained a lot of weight and have become really sedentary in this job, moreso even than when I was in Montreal. The way our current schedule is set up, working 48-60 hours in a row (often up to 80 or more per week with overtime), means that I spend all my days off trying to recover, and I never "catch up" on my sleep or even rest properly. I also can't do anything with any kind of regularity. My schedule decisively prevents me from taking weekly or even bi-monthly classes or signing up for activities, because I'm only completely free half the time, partially free one-quarter of the time (which means purposefully missing sleep), and at work the other quarter of the time. It's very frustrating. Sure, I enjoy having lots of "free" days, doing my shopping when there's no one else around, but there has to be more to life than simply working, sleeping, and taking the dog for Pokéwalks.
In light of that, I'm trying an experiment, of sorts. I'm going to take some steps to switch careers. I did it ten years ago, and it worked out very well for me: I took a dispatching class, got some experience, and landed myself this nice government job. So now I'm going to try again, this time trying for a career that will likely have less income stability, but will force me to have a more active lifestyle, and keep me going to bed and getting up at regular hours. I've signed up for dog training classes (not obedience classes, but rather classes to teach me how to train dogs). I'm thinking, in the long term, of trying to open up my own boarding kennel and obedience school, maybe even do some animal rescue in there, depending on how things work out. Step One is to figure out if I'm any good at this, hence taking classes. If that works in my favour, then I'll need to start learning the ins and outs of running one's own business, figuring out a business plan, figuring out how to obtain capital (ack), and all that jazz. None of these things come easily to me, and I'm not sure where to begin. Besides, if it turns out I suck at dealing with dogs in a more general way than simply having one of my own, I'll know I need to look in a different direction.
And that sums up my current list of projects, I think.
Oh, and before I forget, I saw Ghostbusters last weekend with
toughlovemuse and owldaughter, and it was amaaaaaaaaazeballs! I can't emphasize how much I enjoyed that movie. It did have some problems, but overall it was fun and engaging, and the women were all fantastic, and there was not one single fat joke in the whole movie! I was sort of bracing for impact on the latter, because of Melissa McCarthy. She's a fat woman in Hollywood, and the price of admission for that is to constantly have to make jokes at your own expense about your weight. I understand that that's how it works, but it doesn't mean I have to enjoy fat jokes. There were none, not even jokes about food apart from a running gag about wonton soup having a bad soup-to-wonton ratio. It was glorious. I have also joined the legions of fans who are super in love with Jillian Holtzmann. She has the most bad-ass fight sequence in the movie:I mean, HOT DAMN.
She's weirdly not my favourite character, but she's definitely the character I'd want to hang out with/possibly take on a date. She's arguably the most brilliant/mad scientist of all the women, and she is entirely glorious.
If you haven't seen this movie, you should definitely go watch it (unless you are not into this sort of movie at all, in which case you probably won't like it).
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Also, I love your post-it note *grins*
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The rest was great, though!