mousme | Entries tagged with phnee is an optimist

You know, if all that was required of me to be successful in life was making plans, I would be acing this whole "being a successful human" thing. I love making plans, the more detailed, the better. The problem, of course, is that to actually succeed at things, you have to enact said plans, and that is where everything kind of falls apart for me.

KK kind of falls into the same category as me, and we are pretty terrible about enabling each other at making plans and then following through on maybe 10% of them. To be fair, it's a lot of fun to make plans, and I don't mind too much if all the low-stakes, castles-in-Spain plans don't come to fruition. It's actually really fun to talk about these things and throw ideas back and forth and build it up in our imaginations. I don't know if she is quite as aware as I am that our reach might exceed our grasp in a lot of cases, but I suspect she is.

I am also well aware of my propensity to make grand plans to completely turn my life around while I'm working night shifts (I talked about in in a previous post a few weeks ago, during another round of night shifts), and I have just come to accept it as one of my brain's quirky little ways of generating dopamine, so I just let it happen now and try not to convince myself that this time will totally be different, no, really! As long as I can accept that this is just an exercise in making my brain go *brrrt*, and that I have no expectations of actually doing anything about it, then it's a harmless little pastime during slower night shifts.

Right now I am trying to make sensible plans for packing up the house next week. Working 12-hour shifts this weekend means I won't get anything done, and there is no sense in deluding myself into thinking that I will somehow manage to do anything other than sleep and go to work. My current ambitious plan is to try to get a lot of packing done on Monday, when normally I'd spend a chunk of the day sleeping after my night shift. Don't get me wrong, I will still sleep when I get home, but it will be more of a two-hour power nap and then I'll aim to go to bed very early as a way of shifting over my sleep schedule as quickly as possible.

Tuesday through Thursday I've hired the professional organizer I had hired back in... March? I think? *checks calendar* Nope, first week of April. ANYWAY. I have hired her to come for six hours a day to help me pack up the garage and, if there's enough time, the basement. I am reasonably confident that I can pack up the upstairs on my own (minus KK's room and bathroom), and if I have friends able and willing to help pack the kitchen and dining room, that will also be really helpful. I might be able to do it on my own, but only time will tell.

So far most of the coworkers I have asked for a shift switch have said no, which is sad but not unexpected. I have two coworkers left who might be able to help me out. One is coming in for a shift today, and the other won't be in until Monday, so if the first one says no I'll just have to log into my email account from home to see if the second is willing to take one for the team. He very well might, since I agreed to swap weekends with him back in November so he could take his wife to go see Taylor Swift in Toronto, but it will of course be dependent on whether he has other commitments lined up already. Getting the weekend off to pack would be ideal, but if I can't get it, I will cope.

I have set one boundary with regards to the packing with KK, and that's that I expect her to pack up her own shit. I am by far the more able-bodied of the two of us, so I don't mind that I'm probably going to end up packing up most of the house on my own. I need her to still be physically functional by the time moving day arrives, so I'm perfectly willing to take that on. What I am not willing to take on, however, is packing up her office or her bedroom or her bathroom. Those three rooms are all on her, and I told her that many weeks ago. Like me, she hasn't started packing yet, but I don't plan on bailing her out at the last minute. Whatever she hasn't packed is just going to get left behind, and she can figure out how to get it delivered to the house. The chances of her not being ready in time are not super high, but they're also not zero, either. But I can't be responsible for myself, the whole house, the pets, AND her stuff. So she gets to be responsible for that.

Somewhere in the next ten days I am going to lose at least half a day to attend the closing for the house. I haven't heard from the lawyer, come to think of it, so I'll shoot them an email to make sure everything is still good on that front, or if they need more information from me or something. Great. Another thing to be paranoid about. Well, at least it should be a relatively easy fix, and it's 10 days before my official closing date (and more than one business week), so hopefully there's nothing to worry about. Anyway, I assume the closing will be done at the lawyer's office in Cornwall, so I'll have to drive out there and back, and even if it takes an hour or less to sign all the paperwork, it means at least a three hour trip, possibly longer.

I think it's still doable, God help me. I may just be deluding myself, but I am an incurable optimist when it comes to these things. I guess we'll find out!

All right, time to close out this night shift. I have a little over two hours left before I can go home and get some sleep. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: optimistic

Today was only semi-productive. ( Day in the life stuff )

( The USA is imploding and it's kind of terrifying. )

( Much happier news that's given me hope. )

And I think that's enough from me for today. Catch you tomorrow!

Current Mood: optimistic

I forgot to report on the house KK and I went to see on Wednesday, mostly because it turned out to be totally not right for us.

( Read more... )

Anyway, as is my wont during night shifts, my brain is making a ton of plans. Or, more precisely, it's writing out a whole bunch of cheques that my body will not be able to cash later on, when it's time to actually execute those plans.

I learned this about myself many years ago, that when I'm a little sleep-deprived and the world is quiet and dark, I absolutely lose my mind and start planning all the ways in which I'm 100% going to turn my life around and become a completely different person--a better, more organized person, one who isn't constantly tired and has no energy, the kind of person who will voluntarily get up at 5am on a Saturday to go outside and get some exercise and then come home and spend several hours cleaning the house and cooking meals for the week and maybe do a little socializing with friends! I will become an unrecognizable, motivated version of myself who has all her shit together! This time will be different, because I have a Brand New System, I swear!

In practice, of course, this magical transformation never happens, because reality sets in pretty quickly once my night shifts are over. The sleep deprivation makes itself felt, and my usual brain fog/lack of energy takes over again. Tasks which I thought would take 15 minutes take three hours, and suddenly all my plans feel like A Lot of Work and I execute maybe 1% of them, if I'm lucky. I spend all of my down time doing the bare necessities to continue existing, and my projects never materialize.

So I have learned that it's fine to allow my brain to have wild fantasies about my future productivity, as long as the rest of me understands that this is all night shift-induced delirium and that I shouldn't actually expect to get most of it done. It's what my mother would call "Building castles in Spain." That way I can enjoy the fantasy and not feel like an abysmal failure when that fantasy doesn't become reality.

Many, many years ago, my friend fearsclave turned me onto TEOTWAKI, or "The End of the World As We Know It" ("and I feel fiiiiine!"). At that time, he was concerned about Peak Oil and the collapse that would inevitably ensue. Being a lawyer, he was pretty convincing when talking about this stuff, and so I started to look into it myself, and that's when I found myself going down the rabbit hole of Doomsday Preppers.

( Read more... )

These days, I have come to my own conclusions about what TEOTWAKI will look like, and I am firmly on the side of "slow collapse," meaning that I think we're in for a long, grinding descent punctuated by dire precipitating events that will cause periods of acute worsening, followed by more periods of slow, agonizing grind in which we are somehow still expected to go to work and pay rent and act as if the world isn't on fire all around us, metaphorically and literally.

There was a satirical Tumblr post several years ago about this, or maybe Twitter, that was captioned something like: "We'll be four horsemen deep into the apocalypse and still going to work."

Boss: "Why were you late for work?"
Employee: "A lake of fire swallowed the freeway."
Boss: "I feel like you're not considering how this affects the team."

So it's all very depressing, but I don't want to just lie down and die, you know? So I'm trying within my limited capacity to prepare my little household for collapse, and also eventually I'd like to extend that to my more immediate community.

( Read more... )

I think I've nattered enough about this for one day. I'll probably come back to it another time on a more granular level, energy and attention span permitting.

It's day 1 of 2025!

I'm trying to be at least a little optimistic about the smaller things in life, because the big things are, well... *gestures broadly*

I just checked the date of my last post (not counting yesterday's), and it's been almost three years since I last updated this LJ. Oops? I complained about the Freedom Convoy disrupting my life, and then never came back. What a note to leave on! I don't know if I should even try to sum up the last three years, but maybe I should note some salient points so anyone who's still around will have some idea of what's going on.

(Random note: I don't like this new post editor thing on LJ. I can't find anything! How do I make a bullet list anymore?)

( Read more... )

I'm sure I've forgotten a bunch of things in there. Whatever I've forgotten I'm sure I'll get around to writing about in a later post.

Having attempted to summarize three years of stuff, I'm now going to turn my attention to the future. Well, the near future, anyway. I'm turning 46 on Sunday, and apart from the fact that my body appears to be attempting to decompose ahead of schedule, I find I'm not minding middle age at all. I haven't had the time or the mental bandwidth for a full-blown midlife crisis, although I have had more than a few thoughts along the lines of "I thought I'd be at a different stage in my life by now." I will likely angst about that in future entries as well, but not here.

I have a few goals/resolutions for this year, so I may as well document them here f0r my own benefit as well as a way to try to keep myself more accountable. I'm not going to break it all down into detail here, just note the broad strokes, and I'll get into the weeds of it all later. So, in no particular order:

( Read more... )

Okay, I think that's more than enough for now. Time for bed over here.

Take care, friends, and I will see you on the flip side!

Current Mood: optimistic

Those of you who are more recent arrivals to this LJ (i.e. less than ten years ago, ahem) may not know that I actually have crazy nutbar prepper tendencies at heart. One of the reasons I've always wanted a hobby farm is to be more self-sufficient. I don't have any delusions about rugged homesteading and becoming 100% self-sufficient, because that's just not feasible, no matter what the Libertarians would have you believe. ;) Nonetheless, being less reliant on The System(TM) has always been an aspiration of mine.

For the past five or so years, I kind of let that dream die a little. I didn't have the money to put down on a property, and after the Saga of Cruella de Froot Loops (named thusly by

blackmare, actually), I kind of went into a bit of a tailspin about everything from finances to keeping the house clean to being organized about anything at all. I was a bit of a trash fire for a few years, although I did mostly keep myself from completely falling apart. During this time I stopped all of the "emergency prep" I used to engage in, and actually made my way through my stash of food *right before* the pandemic hit, because of course. The one time I could have used an emergency stash. I had to laugh about that one, because the irony was THICK. I also didn't engage in any kind of gardening, because my yard is tiny and it's mostly just been where the dogs go to do their business. I kept telling myself that where I was living was "temporary" and that I'd be buying a house "soon," and here we are five years later, and I am still renting the house I had to move into in a rush and which still doesn't really feel like home.

I was hoping to purchase a small property in 2020, and we all know how that turned out. I have a small hope that maybe this year will be the year I can do it, but it will depend a lot on whether the housing market will have calmed down enough that I can afford what I want. I have only my income to depend on for a mortgage, plus the down payment I've been saving for (which is okay but not as much as I'd like it to be), and while my salary is decent (more than many, but rather less than the median salary in Canada), the price of real estate is far outstripping the buying power of a single salary these days. If I were a much handier person, it might be worth buying a fixer-upper and putting some sweat equity, but I don't exactly have the skills for that at this point, and my plans at the beginning of 2020 to learn all about carpentry and home renovation got scuttled HARD by the pandemic). I'd likely be biting off more than I can chew, given that I have pretty limited amounts of energy on my days off work, and I don't think KK would enjoy living in a house that's one giant reno project.

This whole subject is never far from my mind, but it has been weighing on me especially heavily since the pandemic hit. I have been acutely aware of how vulnerable we are, especially in urban centres. I have no energy alternatives other than the grid. I am pretty much entirely reliant on the current supply chain for everything from toilet paper to dog food to clothing to fresh vegetables. I have a single rain barrel in my back yard which is currently frozen solid, so no reliable water source other than city plumbing.

I have been watching the beginnings of the Omicron variant wave with mild alarm, is the short version.( Dooooooom... )

Like the title of my post says, it's not all doom and gloom. In spite of the above rant, I am actually cautiously optimistic about this coming year. I have plans to try to pay down my debt, maybe finally buy the property I've always wanted, and to learn new skills. I want to learn to spin (wool, not the exercise), and some basic carpentry, and to start thinking about planting a vegetable garden again (although I keep hesitating about starting seeds, because what if I move in the summer and have to leave it half done?). I take great delight in my dogs (although KK informs me that Pixie peed in her car on the way home from doggie daycare today, oops), and am really looking forward to doing more training with them this year.

I think that we're mostly going to make it through all of this terribleness, although not all of us will, and not all of us will come out unscathed even if we do make it. I worry about my friends and my family, and I worry about society at large, too. In all the scenarios I had envisioned in the past, it honesltly never occurred to me that I would have to keep going to the office during the apocalypse. ;)

It kind of reminds me of this:

On that note, dear friends, I will leave you for tonight. In the words of R.E.M.: The world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Be well. <3

Current Mood: gloomy

For the past five or so years, I kind of let that dream die a little. I didn't have the money to put down on a property, and after the Saga of Cruella de Froot Loops (named thusly by blackmare, actually), I kind of went into a bit of a tailspin about everything from finances to keeping the house clean to being organized about anything at all. I was a bit of a trash fire for a few years, although I did mostly keep myself from completely falling apart. During this time I stopped all of the "emergency prep" I used to engage in, and actually made my way through my stash of food *right before* the pandemic hit, because of course. The one time I could have used an emergency stash. I had to laugh about that one, because the irony was THICK. I also didn't engage in any kind of gardening, because my yard is tiny and it's mostly just been where the dogs go to do their business. I kept telling myself that where I was living was "temporary" and that I'd be buying a house "soon," and here we are five years later, and I am still renting the house I had to move into in a rush and which still doesn't really feel like home.

I was hoping to purchase a small property in 2020, and we all know how that turned out. I have a small hope that maybe this year will be the year I can do it, but it will depend a lot on whether the housing market will have calmed down enough that I can afford what I want. I have only my income to depend on for a mortgage, plus the down payment I've been saving for (which is okay but not as much as I'd like it to be), and while my salary is decent (more than many, but rather less than the median salary in Canada), the price of real estate is far outstripping the buying power of a single salary these days. If I were a much handier person, it might be worth buying a fixer-upper and putting some sweat equity, but I don't exactly have the skills for that at this point, and my plans at the beginning of 2020 to learn all about carpentry and home renovation got scuttled HARD by the pandemic). I'd likely be biting off more than I can chew, given that I have pretty limited amounts of energy on my days off work, and I don't think KK would enjoy living in a house that's one giant reno project.

This whole subject is never far from my mind, but it has been weighing on me especially heavily since the pandemic hit. I have been acutely aware of how vulnerable we are, especially in urban centres. I have no energy alternatives other than the grid. I am pretty much entirely reliant on the current supply chain for everything from toilet paper to dog food to clothing to fresh vegetables. I have a single rain barrel in my back yard which is currently frozen solid, so no reliable water source other than city plumbing.

I have been watching the beginnings of the Omicron variant wave with mild alarm, is the short version. We've already seen in two years what the waves can do to the supply chain, and because Omicron appears to be so much more contagious than anything we've seen to date, I am pretty confident that we're going to see some pretty massive disruptions in the coming weeks and months. We haven't yet hit the two-week mark from the Christmas holidays, which is when we're going to see the fallout from everyone getting together in other people's homes and sharing turkey, potatoes, and viruses. Even before this fallout, the medical system is straining under the weight of Omicron, and it's likely going to break down in a significant way once the numbers really start to climb. I don't mean that it's all going to just collapse in a heap, but I do anticipate that it will be next to impossible to get emergency medical care because all the emergency rooms and all the ICU beds and all the ventilators will be taken up by COVID-19 patients.

( Doooooooom... )

I think if you break your leg, you will be waiting for upwards of 48 hours on a gurney in a hallway because half the doctors and nurses are out with COVID-19 or because their family members have it and they have to quarantine, and then you are very likely going to catch it yourself from breathing in the same air as the doctors and nurses who were ordered to come into work even though they're symptomatic (it's already happening in Québec), or the other patients all around you who might be masked and vaccinated but are still coughing not ten feet away from you because the ER is so crowded. I think if you have a heart attack there may not be enough paramedics to get an ambulance to you in time, or if they do get to you in time there may not be room in the ER for you, or you may not get a much-needed ICU bed.

If you have a life-threatening condition that's not an emergency, you are a lot more likely to die. An underreported statistic has been the number of dialysis patients who died during the pandemic because they couldn't go to the hospital for their treatments, or they got COVID-19 and died from those complications. If you need chemotherapy or radiation therapy, you will be told to wait because the risk of infection is so much worse than the risk of waiting a few more weeks. But sometimes cancer only needs a few more weeks to do its worst. Everything will be about risk management: do I risk getting COVID-19 in order to get treated for my life-threatening condition and risk dying anyway?

For those of us fortunate enough to not have chronic conditions and fortunate enough to not sustain an acute injury or become acutely ill with something unrelated to the pandemic, we have other things to worry about. Omicron is so contagious that it's all but guaranteed to run rampant through all of the employees considered to be in "essential services." That means that every single "essential" business is going to be facing even worse staffing shortages than before, and that means a massive disruption to both goods and services. The people making the things won't be making them--they will be sick, or quarantining with sick loved ones. The people packaging and shipping the things will also not be doing that. There will be fewer people to transport the things, fewer people to put the things on the shelves, fewer people to ring them up at the cash register or deliver them to your door. There will be far fewer people to fix things when they go wrong: plumbing, electricity, basic emergency repair. There will be fewer people running electricity plants (hydro, nuclear, coal, whatever), fewer people running oil rigs, fewer people doing maintenance on city infrastructure like roads and pipes and cell phone towers.

Society isn't going to collapse all in a heap, but I think it's not beyond reason to imagine that we are in for a rough first half of the year. I think we're going to have power outages (a day here, two or three days there), issues with potable water, and shelves in the stores that are a lot more bare than what we've seen even to date. I think that the timing is especially terrible, since January and February are by far the coldest and most unforgiving months of the year where I live.

So I'm going back to my old prepper roots. I've been stocking up on staples, and putting emergency supplies aside in case we lose power. I haven't stocked up on potable water yet, but that's my next step. I have a small stash of shelf-stable food which I'm adding to with every paycheck, and backup batteries, and about four months' worth of dog food (there's already been shortages a couple of times). I am pretty confident that we can heat the living room if we need to, and if worse comes to worst we have friends who have offered refuge at their little farm about an hour away from here (with available wood stove for heating and the ability to "survive" off-grid for a while).

I want to be wrong about this. In six months' time I want to come back to this post and point and laugh about how paranoid I was, and to have all of my friends make fun of me and never let me live it down.

Like the title of my post says, it's not all doom and gloom. In spite of the above rant, I am actually cautiously optimistic about this coming year. I have plans to try to pay down my debt, maybe finally buy the property I've always wanted, and to learn new skills. I want to learn to spin (wool, not the exercise), and some basic carpentry, and to start thinking about planting a vegetable garden again (although I keep hesitating about starting seeds, because what if I move in the summer and have to leave it half done?). I take great delight in my dogs (although KK informs me that Pixie peed in her car on the way home from doggie daycare today, oops), and am really looking forward to doing more training with them this year.

I think that we're mostly going to make it through all of this terribleness, although not all of us will, and not all of us will come out unscathed even if we do make it. I worry about my friends and my family, and I worry about society at large, too. In all the scenarios I had envisioned in the past, it honestly never occurred to me that I would have to keep going to the office during the apocalypse. ;)

It kind of reminds me of this:

On that note, dear friends, I will leave you for tonight. In the words of R.E.M.: The world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Be well. <3

Current Mood: gloomy

I am trying to be better at recording what's going on in my life, but so far I've been kind of failing at that.

Things are chugging along here.

I got a good evaluation at work, which I am choosing not to question but am nonetheless perplexed about. It's not that getting a good evaluation is surprising in and of itself, because I am quite competent at my job. However, my new manager has been making my life super unpleasant for the better part of seven months, implying that I am incompetent and also allowing rumours to that effect to keep circulating, to the point where it has thoroughly undermined my job as a supervisor here. I've been having to work twice as hard to get half the results of the other supervisors, because some employees refuse to take me seriously as a direct result of management's attitude toward me, which is super frustrating. So to say I am surprised at getting a good evaluation from her is a hell of an understatement. I mean, she'd be hard-pressed to put her insinuations on paper, since I actually perform my job satisfactorily, but still, you'd think she'd be able to invent something that sounded negative, at the very least. *shrug* Whatever, I will take it.

I am still in the midst of de-cluttering my home. I kind of slowed down after the overhaul of my kitchen, although I *did* clean up the whole living room so that it would look more like a living room than just a place where I stack boxes. :P I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I got many compliments from my mother when she visited, so I am taking that as a win. I got a small shelving unit for the kitchen, too, which has freed up some cupboard space and actually looks quite nice. My next step in the kitchen will be getting rid of a bunch of glassware and maybe one set of plates/bowls so I can free up even more cupboard space. Eventually I will have that space completely functional, I am sure of it.

The last time I updated this journal, I hadn't heard back from university admissions. I have now heard back, and have been accepted to the Master's program without reservations, which is very happy news indeed! Less happy news is that my university profile hasn't been changed to reflect my new status, which has made it impossible for me to register for graduate classes starting in the fall. Urgh. I emailed several times this week, but so far have not received a response. I will have to telephone on Tuesday (Monday being Canada Day, and therefore everything will be closed) and see if I can get that fixed. It might be temporarily unfi-able, as I am finishing up an undergraduate class. My working theory is that I will have to wait until this class' grades are posted before my profile changes. Maybe. I'm still doing well in the class: mostly A+'s and one A-, so I should be able to pass without too much trouble. The class finishes in two weeks, if memory serves, and all that's left is one quiz, one group discussion, and one short paper (3 pages or so). Nothing too terrible.

I am mildly concerned about my finances these days. It's been an expensive few months (vet bills, car repairs, random things), and I've ended up accruing a bit more debt than I had, after well over a year of paying it down, which is a little disheartening. I'm hoping to turn it around soonish, but it feels like every time I have a plan in place, something messes it up, and right now I am kind of worried about not being able to afford the more expensive graduate school tuition come the fall. That's probably not the case, but still, I am antsy about the whole thing.

Peggy continues to be a delight and an utter pain in my ass. XD She is the puppiest puppy to ever puppy, and she has SO. MUCH. ENERGY. This is fine on my days off and even during my day shifts, when I can take her out in the evening for a decently long walk, but so far it has proved killer on my night shifts. She sleeps through the night, and then is full of vim and vigour just as I need to sleep for at least five hours, and understandably she starts losing her mind long before I'm in any shape to take her out. She's now old enough to go to doggie daycare once she gets her Bordetella vaccine (I need to check her certificates), and I think I will be taking her there when I need to sleep for most of the day. She loves other dogs (and people, and kids, and babies, and bicycles, and cars, and basically *everything*), so if I can get her to blow off a bunch of steam that way, we'll be all set. Another reason to try to switch away from shift work: I want to be home with my puppy more, and actually spend time with her, and not be cranky when she does normal puppy things like try to eat my table cloth. :)

Otherwise, she graduated from Puppy Kindergarten I yesterday (I was a tiny bit afraid she'd be the first puppy to ever flunk out of that class), and we start Puppy Kindergarten II in two weeks' time. I need to carve out more time in the day to work on her training. I've been a little lax of late, and it's been showing in her behaviour. She's still a sweetheart, she's just extremely excitable and prone to trying to jump on the cats. Her house training has also not improved in the slightest, in spite of my best efforts. I feel like my best efforts are maybe not as good as they should be, too, so I'm going to try new things. This is one of the few times in life that I regret being single or at least not having a roommate who can tag-team me with the puppy. I don't want to keep her in her crate all the time, but I also need to get things done, and when I get things done *and* let her run around, she a) has accidents and b) gets into all sorts of mischief. Having a second body in the house to wrangle the puppy while I do my chores would be super useful, but, alas, it is not to be.

That's actually it for now. I have other things at the back of my mind, all of them relating to changes I want to make in how I'm living my life, but most of it is percolating in the back of my mind, still, so I shall hold off on posting about it for a few days more, at least, until thoughts have properly coalesced.

And now, I must away back to my actual job.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: https://mousme.livejournal.com/1234109.html

I hadn't heard about the latest bullsh*t with LiveJournal, but I'm sticking around for now. I have a back-up under the same name at Dreamwidth, if it comes to that, but I've never liked DW as much, and LJ is where I have my permanent account and ten billion icons. The idea of losing that and more makes me a little sick to my stomach, to be honest.

I should probably go back up my creative writing journal, to be on the safe side. *sigh*

Like every other major change with LJ, though, I suspect this will end up being another tempest in a teapot, because I'm an optimist that way.

Three entries in a week! This one is going to be short, but since tonight is Critical Role night, I don't feel bad about it, because I plan to come back with a longer post yelling at all of you about how AWESOME Critical Role is. No, I mean it, there will be yelling/capslocking, and general squeeing. You have been warned!

For those of you who are new to these parts, I must explain that, as much as I would like it to be otherwise, I basically have no chill. So whenever I come across something new that I like, I tend to throw myself into it unreservedly, and yell about it excitedly for quite a long time. (I should probably tag for that. LJ tags, so useful.) It will be easier to post about from home (I am on the stand-alone internet station at work), since I actually went out of my way to find fun gifs of the show, which I never do. You know I have to feel strongly about something if I did that. ;)

Anyway, I have to leave you hanging, because today is shaping up to be a busy day at work. I've been training a newbie since March, and we have another newbie coming in today. I told my boss last week that I couldn't train two newbies at once (my current newbie is... having trouble learning the ropes, alas, and needs a lot of supervision), and he agreed. So naturally yesterday he introduced me to the latest newbie and then was, like, "Okay, I have to go to a meeting, so I'm leaving him in your hands!"

ARGH.

I feel like I should have seen this coming. The newest guy was only supposed to start next week, but here he was, a full week early, being dumped in my lap. I had nothing ready for training purposes, and my other newbie made a pretty big mistake (while I was distracted) which took a long time to fix, and I'm pretty sure I didn't keep all my plates spinning properly yesterday. We'll find out today how much broken crockery I'll need to pick up, I guess. I'm still going to be training both of them today, but at least this time I've had a chance to prepare some material the newest guy can work on while I'm training the other girl.

Time to start pushing that boulder back up the hill. Tonight, a more joyous post about Critical Role!

Current Mood: determined

Two days late, and probably more than a dollar short, but who cares!

To all my friends who had a rough 2015, may 2016 treat you ever so much better!

Last year, someone (I believe it was

bodhifox, but I could be mistaken) said that it always felt like people at the end of the year only ever saw the bad in the preceding months, and that's why everyone was always glad to see the old year go by the wayside. That stuck with me, because 2014 treated me like utter shit, and I was really happy to get a new start on things. I decided I'd pay attention, and see if I'd be as glad to see the door close on 2015.

I am happy to report, for myself, that it's not the case. It's a relief to know that I'm not the sort of person who only focuses on the negative in life. 2015, while not perfect, certainly treated me very well overall. Let's make a list.( 2015, in bullet-point form )
And that's it for my 2015. Overall? A pretty great year. :)

I am making resolutions this year, but they haven't gelled in my mind yet. I figure I can mull them over some more, let the ideas percolate, before I set them into stone.

Current Mood: optimistic

Well, Canada, you didn't exactly vote for change, but at least you didn't vote for the status quo. Many of my non-Canadian friends have congratulated me on having a Disney prince as a Prime Minister, which I think is hilarious. I have my hopes set to "cautious optimism," since the Liberals are basically a centre-right party who are slightly to the left of the Conservatives, so I don't expect any kind of radical change.

I just spent the last four days at a fan-centric convention (no stars, no special guests, just fangirls fangirling about what we love), and it was wonderful but totally exhausting. I spent 12 hours driving yesterday (8 with friends, 4 by myself), and I am paying for it today in very sore muscles and stiff tendons. I'm not looking forward to going to the gym in a little while. It was fantastic to get away and hang out with like-minded people for a few days, though. I have been very spoiled this year in terms of travel, I must say.

I have become a Busy Person, and I don't like it. I'm not sure how to fix that, because I genuinely enjoy my extracurricular activities, and all my errands need to be run, but I still need to fix it because I have spent nearly two months without any alone time. As an introvert, this is making me a little crazy. It's not like I have all that many extracurriculars, either: I have the soup kitchen on Mondays, and Meeting for Worship on Sundays, and that's pretty much the only regularly scheduled stuff I have. It's not like I can suddenly stop grocery shopping or going to doctor's appointments. What has really started eating into my time is my return to my local gym, which, while good for me, doesn't (to me) count as down time. I am working with one of the trainers, and she only ever seems available in the middle of the day, which tends to put a crimp in any other plans I'd want to make otherwise. Anyway, I'll have to give it some thought, and see what I can do. I don't enjoy worshipping at the altar of busyness. It's a social sickness that needs to be eradicated.

The adoption process is going along at a moderate clip so far. I finished my PRIDE training a couple of weeks ago, and had my first home visit around the same time. It was actually a lot less invasive than I had anticipated. I thought for sure that my assessor would poke into every nook and cranny in my home, and so I dutifully tidied the whole house so that it would be as "child-safe" as possible, but she barely glanced into each every room, and pointed out a couple of things I'd need to do to conform to safety standards. So far, so good. My next "home" visit is actually an interview at the Ottawa CAS, and takes place on Thursday. During this bit we're apparently going to detail my own personal history from Day 0 all the way to today. Holy hell, Batman. It will be interesting, to say the very least. I understand why we have to do it, but I think I should invest in some lozenges. I foresee a lot of talking. I still have two classes to take: one on Openness in Adoption, and the other on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. After that, if I'm approved, it's all a waiting game. CAS has a child-centric approach, so what they do is look at the current children in care and determine which families would be a good match for them. So even if there are lots of children in care, that doesn't mean that I would be the right parent for them. Adopting could take a few weeks, or it could take a few years.

Tomorrow I'll be interviewing for a potential promotion at work. The other candidates are all very strong, and all of them have interviewed before (I have not), so I'm not holding out much hope that I'll get the position. That being said, I do interview very well, so I refuse to despair, either. I will prepare as best I can, and that will have to suffice. The promotion would be nice, though, as it comes with a pay increase, too. I'm not hurting for money, but I'm trying to get rid of some consumer debt, and a bit of extra income would go a long way to fixing that.

I've also got a doctor's appointment on Thursday. Partly it's to get a form filled out for Ottawa CAS, so that they can make sure I'm not about to keel over and leave any prospective children orphaned, and partly I want to get my shoulder checked, as I seem to have mysteriously injured it, and it's not getting any better after several weeks.

So there you have it. My life isn't very exciting, but I thought I would update anyway. How is everyone else? How's kicks?

Current Mood: exhausted

Clearly, it's not working for me. I used to post to LJ a million times a day, but that was before Twitter gave me an outlet for all those random thoughts that pop into my head that I feel compelled to share with the world. ;)

So nowadays I wait until I feel I have something of substance to say in order to post here, but let's face it, I rarely have anything of substance to say these days. It's all fleeting thoughts and superficial impressions, all the time!

( Volunteering and Google Alert Weirdness! )

( Rambling about routines and health and sleep and stuff )

I think later this week I'll make a more upbeat post with all the new projects I want to do in my copious amounts of spare time. Those are a lot more fun than all this whining about being tired and out of shape and not having enough time or energy to do things. So, an upbeat post to look forward to!

This has been a rambly, long-winded post. Thank you for bearing with me as I basically process everything in my head out loud. ;)

Current Mood: determined

The universe rewarded me for turning 36 with a wicked bout of vertigo in the middle of my night shift, which I was working alone. So I had to call my boss in disgrace for the second time in six months and crawl home and wait for death, but not before I ended up puking in the trash can at work because I couldn't make it to the bathroom. It was extra humiliating. /o\ I also had to cancel my first ever volunteer session at Shepherds of Good Hope, which also sucked.

So things are a little like my icon, but without the vodka, and it's not nearly as fun as it looks.

I spent today curled up with my laptop, posted some fanfiction and took a nap. I also did dishes, so that today wouldn't be a total write-off. I'm scheduled to have a Skype chat with my parents later on too, which will be nice. The world has (mostly) stopped spinning, and moving doesn't make me throw up anymore, so that's a win. :)

Now seems like as good a time as any to talk about my plans for the year. I've decided not to do "resolutions" in the traditional sense of the word. That being said, I do have a lot on my plate for the foreseeable future.

( 2015 behind the cut! )

Anyway, that concludes my lengthy rambling about what I have in mind for the year. I'd promise to post more, but that's probably a lie. I seem to go through phases when I post a lot, and others in which I post only sporadically or not at all, and I think I'll just stick to that. I'll post when I feel I have something of value to share, and that will have to suffice.

Happy New Year again, everyone!

Current Mood: optimistic

In a fit of optimism I have decided to send out Christmas/holiday cards this year. I have never before succeeded at this task, but there's a first time for everything, am I right? ;)

If you'd like a lovely non-denominational card (though I can't claim you will be receiving anything like the brilliant cards

prolixfootle sends out), then I will require your full name and address. The full name is because Canada Post decided (shortly after 9/11, if memory serves) that they would no longer send out mail that wasn't addressed with a proper name or company name.

I've screened the comments to this entry. Or you can email me at my username at gmail, if you prefer.

Happy trails!

Current Mood: optimistic

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I am so much better at planning than executing
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Corner of Bourbon & Division

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Entries tagged with phnee is an optimist

I am so much better at planning than executing

TikTok University and other life stuff

Night Shift Delusions

Prepping for Tuesday

Where to begin?

It's not all doom and gloom

(no subject)

Is regularly NOT doing something considered a habit?

I'm sticking around

Not quite in a row...

Happy New Year! (Yes, I know what day it is)

What a lovely day!

I should stop waiting to have something to say in order to post...

Happy Birthday To Me!

Holiday Cards!

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