Corner of Bourbon & Division

I'm mostly back on a Monday to Friday schedule, even though I am working shifts again. I work two weekends every two months, and am rewarded with nearly two weeks off every two months as well. The rest of the time, though, I work Monday to Friday, albeit different hours than most people. For three weeks I work from either 8 to 4 or 7 to 3, and then I work a week of evening shifts, and then a week of night shifts plus the weekend, followed by five days off and then one weekend of day shifts.

So Fridays have resumed being the last day of the work week for me, for the most part, and Mondays are the first day of the week, which means that I'm being slowly reintroduced to looking forward to specific days of the week (e.g. Friday). It's a kind of novel feeling, even after two-odd years of working a regular schedule, because I spent so many years just dreading the first day of whatever "block" I was working and not associating that with any specific day of the week.

To be fair, there's very little dread these days. I'm still very much in the honeymoon period of this new job. My coworkers are all varying degrees of nice so far, and while there's the usual array of personalities with some who are more inclined to work hard than others, no one is actively an asshole. More importantly the manager appears to be a genuinely good guy, and if there's anything I have learned in 17+ years of working in the government, it's the manager that makes or breaks a department. So I'm cautiously optimistic that, as long as the current guy stays here (and he's fairly young and doesn't look like he's dying to climb further up the ranks right now), I should be okay. I'm currently looking at a minimum of 19 years before I can retire, so I'd really rather not spend all that time working for people who make me miserable. Should I be able to rise above poor management? Probably. But it's not a skill I've mastered, and I doubt I will ever fully master it before I'm either of retirement age or dead, whichever comes first.

KK is currently dealing with her manager, who is just kinda casually ableist and is therefore making her life extra hard. KK has had to either work from home or take sick days the past little while because her arthritis has been making it incredibly painful for her to go into the office three days a week, and her manager is taking umbrage. She (the manager) has moved into "performance management" mode on this, and is now officially documenting how KK is not being compliant with the Treasury Board directive on working three days in office. She has written down that the reason for KK's failure to attend is the dog and my work schedule, which is absolutely not true. The epileptic chihuahua and my shift schedule make things more complicated, for sure, but KK has been working around both those things, and what causes her actual absences is her chronic pain, which is made exponentially worse by having to go into the office as often as she does.

I am livid on her behalf, of course, but luckily KK is well versed in her rights and obligations as a federal employee, and is now taking action accordingly (the "performance management" conversations officially began yesterday). She's in an unrepresented position, meaning she doesn't get to have a union representative, but she still has all the same rights, so she's planning on talking to the Ombudsperson for Workplace Health and Safety today. If it comes down to it she can file a complaint based on a Human Rights Violation, but hopefully it won't come to that. She works in a tiny office (10 people or so), and it's never great to have a totally adversarial relationship with one's manager.

The manager says that she's been getting complaints from other employees about KK not coming in, for which I have no sympathy at all. As a manager, it's up to you to manage your employees, and that includes managing their expectations and telling them to mind their p's and q's when it comes to other people's business. If KK was having actual performance issues that had a direct impact on their work, that's one thing, but whether she does her work from home or the office has no bearing on the quality of said work. Apparently the manager's boss has also remarked on it, but again, as the manager it's up to her to explain that KK has a medical condition that needs accommodation. Of course, that's not what the manager has been doing and has instead thrown KK fully under the proverbial bus, which is infuriating, but hopefully they will get that straightened out soon.

On top of it all, the manager is faking concern that KK "doesn't do well" psychologically when she's at home all the time. In her capacity as a mental health professional, I guess. *eyeroll* She has absolutely zero basis for this opinion, of course. She herself is of the opinion that "no one does well on their own," which is, you know, her opinion, man. She has no qualifications to make mental health assessments, and so I am just adding that to the category of casual ableism.

That manager is lucky I'm not in their office, because I'd be obligated to go throttle her for the benefit of humanity.

In other news, we're going to see at least one more house tomorrow, possibly two. I say possibly because my real estate agent says the second already has two offers on it and may be conditionally sold by the time we get to it. It's not surprising, because it's a "turn-key" house on 1 acre of property at a very competitive price for the market. The price honestly made me wonder what was wrong with it. ;) I think it's probably because it's actually a really, really small house. Like, not quite Tiny House proportions, but really on the small side.

The other house has a lot less property but looks to be bigger, and also seems pretty turn-key by the looks of things. That being said, it's about $40k more. Still within my price range, but much more in line with real estate prices in the area these days.

It would be nice to see both houses and see if either or both would be a good fit. This isn't truly an ideal time to be buying a house for me, since I'm a little on the strapped-for-immediate-cash side of things, but if we find a house that we absolutely fall in love with I can probably swing it. I just have to get my shit together and hope that the deposit required isn't horrendously high. I'm honestly still a little insulted that there's a deposit required in Ontario, when that wasn't at all a requirement when I was purchasing a house in Québec. What's so different between my home province and this one, I'd like to ask?

In the meantime, a third house has cropped up! So I have asked if we can see that too. Our poor real estate agent will be run off her feet tomorrow. Usually we see one house and that's it, but tomorrow it might be as many as three. Yikes. It's January. I have no idea why there are suddenly a bunch of houses on the market within our price range that actually look like they could be a decent fit, but I am not complaining. Well, I am complaining a tiny bit, but mostly because I really wanted another couple of months to save up more money for a deposit. But mostly I'm not complaining. Mostly.

Initially I thought I had only one commitment today, which was going to KK's to help de-clutter. Then I remembered partway through writing yesterday's post that I'd forgotten about my Skype call with my parents (we were supposed to Skype Thursday but both they and I ended up postponing it to Friday and then Friday was the Night Of Epic Dog Vomit so I asked them to put it off to today). And THEN this morning at 4 am I awoke and realized I'd forgotten that I was also scheduled to play Mage tonight.

Luckily these were all at different times, but OH MY GOD, self, you need to put things in your freaking calendar already! I keep not putting my social stuff in my calendar because... I don't know, reasons? My habit is to put work stuff and things like medical appointments in, but not things like when I'm spending the day with friends, or Skyping with my parents, or have a tabletop game scheduled, and that leads directly to my forgetting and double or even triple-booking myself.

CALENDAR, self. CALENDAR.

Anyway, because I forgot about Mage I thought I'd use this post to write about/think through my plans, but it's basically midnight now which means I absolutely have to go to bed. I'm unlikely to start the week on great footing by going to bed this late as it is. I had fun playing Mage, though, so no regrets there. We hadn't played in nearly two months due to the Storyteller getting eaten alive by his job (end of the fiscal year and all that), so it was great to get back into it.

I'm having a mild existential crisis inasmuch as I keep wondering how the fuck normal/neurotypical people get so much done. So many of my friends have families and young children, and yet they seem to be able to keep their houses clean, hold down full-time jobs, keep their kids alive/fed/happy/healthy/entertained, and do cool things like write entire books, spin yarn, knit and crochet gorgeous things. In the meantime, it's a goddamned miracle if I can manage to do all of the basics of housekeeping, my job, and walk my dog regularly. I have so many things I'd love to do, but I'm constantly getting in my own way. *sigh*

I will continue this moment of angst tomorrow, I guess, and kill two birds with one stone by combining it with ramblings about the things I want to do and then never end up doing.

 Before I launch into a more boring ramble about my life, I want to make sure I actually write about what happened yesterday which I didn't have time to get to before D&D.

I will put this behind a cut because there is material here potentially triggering for BIPOC friends who don't necessarily want to read even an abbreviated account of the story of George Floyd yet AGAIN.

( Context for my own records about George Floyd )

And NOW, the boring stuff about me. I had a serious, but SERIOUS, executive function fail this week. It was 1pm today when I realized I hadn't taken my meds since last week. *headdesk* That explains in part why I could not get my act together this week, holy shit. So I took my meds then, and suddenly I was all HYPERFOCUS FOREVEEEEERRRRRRR until after 7pm.

My week is still a bit of a shambles, but I got more done this afternoon and evening than I had since last week, so I am calling it at least a partial win. Tomorrow I will try again, and at the very least try to remember to take my damn meds on time. I have a fuckton to catch up on, but at least if I take my meds I'll have a fighting chance at it.

I suppose it might be less difficult to come up with original subject lines if my days were a little more varied. Alas, I am leading a very staid and boring life these days, at least to the outside viewer. I myself am not bored for most of the time, which is the main point. It's not to say that I am never bored, of course, because I am in possession of a human brain, and human brains get bored. I was about to say 'a normal human brain,' but that is patently not true, not to mention that there isn't really such a thing as a 'normal' brain anyway.  


Anyhoozle, I discovered today that I am NOT ready to start running. I kind of forgot that when I haven't done any proper training in a while that I get really painful inflammation in the tendons (or something?) in my ankles when I try running right off the bat. When I did the C25K thing five years ago I first started out by walking every day (it helped that I was off work for an entire summer, but I think I can still manage), and even then when I started the running I'd have to do a minimum of 30 minutes of walking to "warm up" before my ankles stopped hurting so that I could run. So I'm going to set myself the goal to "just" walk every day for two weeks. I'm also rather fatter than I was then--not by much, but at my age and weight every extra pound does take its toll--so that's bound to affect things as well. On top of that, I have crossed the threshold of 40, and like it or not, the human body does change as it ages. That doesn't mean I'm unwilling to continue, of course, it just means that I have to remember to maintain a certain amount of mental flexibility about it.

The good news is that I am finding it reasonably okay to get up early-ish in order to get some exercise these days, although I have yet to manage getting up early enough to take Peggy for an off-leash run in the fields and be on time for work. I took her with me on my walk today, though, so that's something. Maybe I will take her with me for the walks in the morning and try to get her out to the fields in the evenings after work instead. The system will require tweaking as I go.

In work news, I had a better day than Tuesday and Wednesday, so I am pleased about that. I still wasn't as productive as I could be, because I've been procrastinating on my very last employee evaluation. I did about half of it today, and I'm pretty confident I can finish it tomorrow and just have done.

I am having a lot of negative thoughts and feelings about this evaluation, because this is someone who has long been considered a "problem employee." Among other things he tends to throw temper tantrums when he feels as though he hasn't been praised enough. He can't take even the slightest criticism, and is of the opinion that he is owed "respect" by the other employees because of his seniority and experience. He keeps falling into the fallacy I saw best described in a meme online: "If you don't respect me for my position I won't respect you as a person." The other employees don't respect him because he is condescending and often rude. He's also very close to retirement (he'll be 60 next month), and over the past year especially he's been doing less and less of the regular day-to-day work, even though he has never been particularly gung-ho since I've worked with him, and his coworkers understandably find it very frustrating when they perceive him not pulling his weight. (I say "perceive" because the situation is a touch more complex than that, but still.) Every time I've had to give him feedback or do performance management with him over the past six months or so, he has pitched hissy fits that lasted for days, sometimes weeks. So my resistance to doing his year-end evaluation is 100% down to the fact that what I write will reflect his performance, which he is not going to like, and then I will have to deal with yet another tantrum. *sigh*

What I should do is do a "thought work" model (or ten) about this, in order to feel at least neutral about this whole thing. The basic principle of thought work that would apply here is that almost everything I said about him in the previous paragraph isn't a circumstance, or an objective truth of some sort, it's just a bunch of thoughts I have about him and his behaviour. So if I work on changing how I think about all of it, then I will feel less terrible about it, and if I feel less terrible about it I won't procrastinate to avoid the feelings I don't like. Maybe. Or possibly I won't feel less terrible about it, but it's also okay for it to feel terrible: I am not going to die if I write the evaluation while feeling terrible, after all. It will suck, and then it will be done.

Okay. Time for bed, I think. Tomorrow's plan is to get up early again and take Peggy for a walk before work. Then I will leave work ON TIME, DAMMIT, and take her for a run in the fields. Side note: it makes me laugh when I say "early" because after years of shift work and getting up at 4 am, it seems ridiculous to think of anything after 6 am as "early," but since I'm aiming for 6 am I think it's okay to qualify it as such. But yeah, I remember reading all sorts of articles about productivity, back in the day, and all of them would say ridiculous things like: "The most productive people are up early, so try getting up an hour before your usual time. Some people get up as early as 5 am!" and I would just lolsob because nothing on God's green earth will ever convince me to wake up at 3 am before a 12 hour shift in the name of "productivity."

 I need to do some mental work on, well, working on things I don't want to do.

I set aside Friday to work on employee evaluations, and I got almost nothing done, for a couple of reasons. The first is that I got interrupted a fair bit by stuff that I did need to address. The second reason is that I worked on an employee evaluation for two hours, and when I tried to save it in the web portal where I'd been working on it, the whole thing refreshed and took me back to the start and wiped everything I'd written.

What I should have done is just started over. Instead, my brain refused. Here is a pictorial representation of what happened:



Today I was in meetings part of the time, and the rest of the time when I should have made the best of a bad situation, my brain continued to sulk, and I let it. So tonight I am going to go to bed at a reasonable hour (which I super succeeded at yesterday, I am happy to report: I had the lights out at 8:25!) , and tomorrow's "thought work" homework will be working through why my brain is yelling NOPE about employee evalutations, which I've never had THAT much trouble with up until this year.

I am going to bed early (ish) tonight. I went to bed quite late last night due to Mage, but the nap I had beforehand seems to have really helped to mitigate any tiredness today. I'm still a little tired because going to bed very late results in less good sleep, but it's not as bad as if I tried to "power through" the whole day without a nap.

I am trying to do some "thought work" based on the podcast I've been listening to/the website associated with it, and it's a bit of a slog. I am apparently very attached to many of my negative thoughts, and some of what the coach on said podcast says just doesn't quite jive with me. A lot of it does, on a theoretical level: the idea that thoughts create feelings and that ultimately I have control over my thoughts makes a certain amount of sense. Now, I've also dealt with super intrusive thoughts for the past 20 years that have more to do with mental illness than anything else, and so it's an interesting exercise for me, because while I can't really control those thoughts, I no longer react to them the way I used to. It's like the intrusive thoughts are actually some annoying dude named Bill who randomly pops up and says mean shit to me, and these days I just kind of roll my eyes "Oh, there's Bill again, telling me I should die," like Bill is some kind of internet troll, and Bill therefore has no real impact on my day to day existence.

Where I've been having more trouble is the idea that other people can't control your feelings, because really your feelings are only about your thoughts. And... okay. On the surface of it, yes, I can agree with it. If a person tells me, I don't know, "You're a fat ugly cow!" then the reason my feelings get hurt is because I let myself believe the thought that their sentence has triggered. "Oh God, I *am* a fat ugly cow!"  or "What the hell, that is such a rude thing to say, how dare they!" and then I am sad or angry or whatever other emotion happens. The podcast host's basic premise is that the only reason you get upset about what other people say or do is because you're not managing your mind/your thoughts.

I am tripping up on the logical extension of that reasoning, or at least the extension that's happening in my brain with that reasoning. If ultimately no one can make you feel bad except for you, it means that there is no such thing as bad behaviour. If someone abuses me emotionally, I'm not really being abused, I'm just not managing my mind properly. If my boss yells at me every day, or constantly tells me I'm incompetent, or makes suggestive remarks about my body, I should feel fine about it just so long as I manage my own thoughts. I'm sure this isn't what the podcast host is trying to say, but her whole "there is no such thing as gaslighting" stance because no one can control your mind has really been bothering me. Like, if a person threatens me with violence, I am going to feel frightened, and that seems like a normal reaction to an outside threat, even if the feeling results from the thought of "this person is very likely going to hurt me." Sure, theoretically it's my thought that caused the emotion, but I can guaran-damn-tee you that I would not have had the thought at all if said person hadn't uttered a threat. Surely there is some responsibility to be held by the other party?

I don't know how to reconcile in my mind the very real benefit of doing thought work with something that just... feels wrong, without my being able to quite put my finger on why it's wrong, exactly.

I am not going anywhere in particular with this. Just noting an area in which I'm having difficulty. I love the idea of being more aware of my thoughts and how they're affecting my emotions, and thereby getting a better handle on my day to day existence, especially at work. I struggle with impostor syndrome a LOT, and I tend to internally panic and flail at the drop of a hat, and although I am much, much better than I used to be, I still feel that I can do some good work on myself in this regard. I am just really resisting some of the ideas in this podcast, and I can't tell if I'm resisting because I just don't want it to be true, or if it's because it's objectively not true.

I ended up taking a very long nap today, which I very obviously needed. I have my Mage game tonight which got cancelled last time due to the Storyteller coming down with something that was Not Covid But Still Brutal, and tonight was the earliest we could reschedule. I'm not thrilled about it being on a work night, and given my poor life choices all of last week another late night probably isn't the best idea, but I figured a nap would offset some of it.

I do feel better rested, but I'm a little off-kilter. I have a weird feeling of pressure in my left ear (normally it's my right ear that gets affected by Menière's) and my FitBit has my resting heart rate in the very high 90s, which is not usual for me. My resting heart rate is high, it's true, but it usually hovers  in the mid to high-70s, so this is all very uncomfortable. I am pretty sure it's because I decided to indulge in salt and vinegar chips this weekend, so I've been drinking water for the past 20 minutes in the hopes that the extra hydration will help calm things the fuck down.

If nothing else, this will serve as a reminder that I can't just put "junk food" in my body willy-nilly anymore. You can get away with that sort of shit in your 20s and even your 30s, and maybe if I were in better overall physical condition this wouldn't be an issue, but right now I need to be more careful. *sigh*

The water does seem to be helping a bit. I was probably dehydrated on top of everything else. My ear still feels weird but I can feel my heart rate has gone down even without checking my FitBit.

I'm trying a five week "self-coaching" course  on thought management, and in Week 1 it's all about identifying feelings. I have a little workbook in which I'm supposed to write down my thoughts, and then examine the physical sensations that go with them, and then identify the feeling/emotion associated with those physical sensations. It's Day 1 and I am struggling with this, because I have a long history of not feeling my feelings in my body. Like, if someone were to typically describe anxiety, they'd say their heart was racing (yes, I can appreciate the irony given what I was just writing about), their face felt hot, or their chest felt tight or they had a knot in their stomach, or their hands were clammy, or whatever else. I don't ever remember feeling anxiety in that way: for me it just results in all my thoughts racing ahead a million miles a minute.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to do this exercise right now. I identified a negative thought, and... my body feels the way it always feels. I'm going to persevere, but I can't help thinking "God, it's Day 1 and I'm already doing it wrong." Accompanied by my body STILL not feeling different, I might add. :P

On a more positive note, I've now been posting every day since the beginning of January, and I've found it's overall become easier to remember to come back here every day and check my friends' list and talk a little about my day, unless something major happened to distract me. But the general trend is getting easier, which is nice. Not too many people from my old friends post on LJ or DW these days, but it's been nice to come back and just do a thought dump about my day.

I decided to get myself a birthday present(ish), and bought a laminator and laminating sheets, a Nakia Funko Pop figurine, and a packet of fidget toys. The latter are for an experiment at work to see if they help me focus better during longer meetings. It's a packet of ten and it cost a few dollars, so I think it's worth trying out.

I have the worst headache today. I woke up with it, medicated it almost entirely into submission, but then it came back with a vengeance. It didn't help that I had nothing to eat for lunch. Having a lunch ready for work has been a hell of a challenge for me since I started this new position. Before if I forgot a lunch or was disorganized I could always just run out on my lunch break and grab something, but now I'm "only" working 8 hours a day and I often work through lunch. I take frequent very small breaks throughout the day because I find that more helpful, but it does mean I don't get a proper lunch break. So after work today I went to the grocery store and got myself a bunch of emergency back-up meal replacement drinks. I am going to also make an effort to be more organized and bring a lunch with me, but for the days I inevitably fail I know I won't be spending the whole time hungry with nothing to eat except my own words.

I found out yesterday that my immediate boss is stepping back from his supervisory duties for mental health reasons (he was off for nine months and only came back full time in November) and will be working a reduced number of days a week, so I'll probably be reporting to the Director for the next little while. I like the Director and I think we'll work very well together, but I am going to miss my boss--we don't see eye to eye on everything, but he has a lot of experience and a willingness to mentor and I was looking forward to collaborating with him. Hopefully this is temporary and we'll still get to work together before my time is up. He DID mention that he was mindful of what I'd told him about not wanting to work with my manager when she returns, and he wants to find a solution for that, so that's a good thing. I am not going to hold my breath, but at least it hasn't been forgotten.

The week went by in the blink of an eye. It's so hard to believe tomorrow is already Friday. I have one big project that I want to get done before the weekend, which is the first draft of the standardisation of the PSE evaluation criteria, so I must devote most of my time to that tomorrow. I really don't want to have to work on it over the weekend, and the timeline I have to do it is *tight*. Hopefully the interruptions will be few and I will have the time to finish it.

I think it is time to go sleep off this headache. Tomorrow night is the first official session of my Mage campaign with all the players. We've been doing mini-sessions in two separate groups with the Storyteller in order to set the stage for when all the characters finally start working together. I am pretty excited to see what happens, as we are split down the middle into two diametrically opposed character types. It ought to be very entertaining.

Dreamwidth didn't crosspost this, for reasons which escape me, so I'm doing it manually. Apologies if this somehow ends up posting twice.

( Trigger warning for cancer and death. )
Moving on to stuff that's not about cancer and death...

I've been watching a lot of TV recently. Probably more than is reasonably good for me, but that's actually par for the course. The difference is that, rather than watching it during the down times on my night shifts, I've been doing it more at home. At work I've actually been working a bit more. But in the meantime, at home, rather than do anything productive, I've been watching Veronica Mars (among others) and playing an unhealthy amount of Stardew Valley.

Shockingly, I've been having a lot of trouble managing my time. It feels like I'm juggling too many balls at once (funny story, I can't physically juggle even two balls, I've tried), and so, true to form, I did what I always do when I feel overwhelmed and just kind of, well, avoided everything except the bare minimum of what I needed to do to get by.

The good thing is that I have a puppy, and she needs me to get out of the house every day. I haven't always taken her for long walks, but I have taken her out each day, and I try to work with her on her training each day, so that's probably been the best thing for my mental health. That, and the fact that she is the cutest, sweetest, most loving dog in the universe. It's all very helpful. :)

Otherwise, though, things aren't awesome. I think the trigger for this latest massive avoidance is the extra $1,500 I'm getting charged for university. There's nothing like financial stress to knock me for a loop and make me metaphorically crawl under my own bed and refuse to deal with the world. Is it productive? Nope. Is it my default behaviour? Yep. So, something to work on, I guess.

I'm heading to fearsclave 's this weekend for some romping around in the wilderness with Peggy, and introducing her to the joys of fishing. Or, more specifically, to the joys of fish. fearsclave has a long-standing tradition of letting his dogs lick the fish before they get taken back and cleaned (thoroughly!) for later consumption. Hopefully we will have an excellent day of fishing, which means actually catching fish. Not catching fish is still a good day of fishing, but I would really like to see Peggy's reaction to a fish. My guess is that she will go bonkers.

I've got a short list of things I want to get done before I leave on Friday. I'm working on keeping things realistic, because I have a tendency to over-plan and have a poor sense of how much I can actually accomplish in a given amount of time. Apparently that's a common thing with ADHD, the inability to properly gauge the length of time unfamiliar tasks will take. That, and forgetting that you need to plan time *around* the task. Also, I get overambitious about plans when I'm on nights at work. I have hours stretching in front of me, and it always seems like future!me is going to have tons of energy and motivation to do all these things, and in practice future!me is way more interested in catching up on sleep. So I hope I've worked it out correctly this time.

Okay, time to get back to work. These night shift duties aren't going to do themselves.

 I promised an update, so an update you shall have! For all that it feels like nothing ever happens in my life, actually there's a fair bit to catch up on. I can't guarantee it will be interesting to anyone but me, though, fair warning.

Here we go, in order of importance, I guess:

• Sad news first: Sergent died just under a month ago. He was my dog, for those of you who may not be fully up to speed on things. Anyway, he'd been slowing down a lot over the last year--his arthritis was clearly getting worse in spite of treatments, and he became incontinent right after I moved house and basically never recouped his house training after that. Then Father's Day weekend, while my parents were visiting, he got really sick, which usually happened about once a year for him, but this time when I brought him to the emergency vet, he didn't bounce back the way he usually does. He stopped being able to walk, lost all interest in food, water, and his surroundings, and generally made it very obvious to me that he was ready to go. The vet concurred with me that euthanasia was the best course of action, and so that's what we decided to do. He went quickly, and at least at the end he wasn't in pain anymore.
• Not-sad news: I am starting university again in the fall! I took a two-day course in conflict resolution at my workplace, and really loved it. I also spied an opportunity, as the instructor said that they were thinking of expanding the Informal Conflict management program. So I discreetly inquired as to what one might need to become part of said program, and she said I'd need a degree in Conflict Studies from St. Paul University. Uncharacteristically for me, I took the plunge and not only immediately started researching the degree, I actually pulled together all the necessary paperwork to apply, and applied. To my shock, I was actually accepted for a Bachelor of Arts in Conflict Studies. So I start again September 5th, and am freaking out ever so slightly, because it has been roughly eighteen years since I was last in university, and I am pretty sure I have forgotten how to Academia. Still, it's pretty exciting. If I study part-time but manage some summer courses, I can finish in about five years. Possibly less, if I can apply to be fast-tracked to a Masters' Degree, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, just getting my feet wet again will suffice.
• In weirdly related news, I have resumed going to therapy. There's no official diagnosis yet, but it looks like I might actually have ADHD, or at least some sort of executive dysfunction disorder. ai731 asked me if I'd ever been tested, way back in November, during one of our cooking days, when I YET AGAIN skipped a step in a recipe/forgot an ingredient/whatever. Obviously I've never been tested, but the more I looked into it, the more it seemed to fit. If it is the correct diagnosis, then I'd have what's called the "inattentive" presentation, rather than hyperactivity. So, anyway, I'm working with a therapist who specializes in ADHD and related things, and we've been trying to make me less of a trash fire of a human being. It's slow going so far, but at least she's been keeping me honest about a few things. I think I'll expand on that in a separate entry.
• Work has been chugging along, in much the same way as before. We go through periods where it looks like we'll maybe pull ourselves out of the hole we're constantly in, by hiring people and training them, and then before we know it a ton of people jump ship for various reasons, and we're practically back to square one. Right now one employee is out on maternity leave, another is on paternity leave for nine months, one just up and left after being back only a few months after being out on stress leave and has dramatically declared he's never coming back, and we STILL haven't filled previous vacancies. One was out on bereavement leave for three weeks, one was out for two months on medical leave for two months and is only coming back part-time next week, and won't be full time until probably September. It's a mess. Right now we are 9 full-time permanent employees (including supervisors), 2 full-time contract employees, 1 part-time contract employee, and one guy who is helping us out because he's being super nice and knows we're in trouble. We're supposed to be 16 full-time permanent employees (including supervisors), but that has not been the case once since I started working there. Oh, and our Director just retired and our Staff Sergeant just announced she was leaving in August for another section, so we will have two completely new people above us in the chain of command, who have NO experience in our section and no idea what we do, and it will take a year of work on our part to get them up to speed.
• Related to the above, it's kind of the reason I'm looking to get out of my current position. It's not the only reason, of course, nor even the primary one. The primary reason is that the long weeks and ridiculous rotating shifts are getting increasingly difficult to recover from. I work 60 hour weeks, then get several days off in between, but those days off are increasingly spent sleeping or being useless because I'm so tired from work. I also do much better on a set schedule, and my work schedule is not regular enough for that. It's doing my head in. Another reason I was considering getting out is that my Staff Sergeant seems to have decided that I am super incompetent and that I need to be micromanaged. Now, granted, I did make a mistake. It was a mistake that was mostly minor, but unfortunately it got noticed by officers who were senior to my Staff Sergeant, and so they called her and yelled about it, and therefore that shit rolled downhill to me. I will give her props, she did not throw me under the bus, but I think she's still holding the grudge months later. I have been on the receiving end of irrational grudges from management before, and I wasn't relishing the prospect of continuing working for her, but since she's leaving in a month or so, I'm a lot less worried about it now.
• I'm still streaming on Twitch! I've really found my groove, and am having a lot of fun with it. (If you're interested, you can catch me here: https://www.twitch.tv/ratherastory) I'm part of some great communities, have made wonderful new friends, and have discovered amazing video games it never would have occurred to me to play on my own. I've also started doing cooking streams on my free Saturdays, and am having a blast with that, too. I've been managing to stream on average three times a week, and even have something of a schedule set up for it, as much as my work schedule allows for, anyway.

I think that's many of the broad strokes of what happened over the past few months. There were smaller things, too, minor drama at work, adventures with friends, cool Christmas parties, but this should give you an idea of where I'm at these days. I'm going to try to update more regularly. If not every day, then at least a couple of times a week. Once upon a time, this LJ was a good way for me to keep a record of what was going on in my life, so it'd be nice if I could start that process up again.