Adulting.
Even the word itself is juvenile in form and function. A simple act of rebellion infantalizing the very acts necessary to keep us alive. A slap in the face of reality and a declaration that "I AM FUN DAMN IT!" A desperate plea of a wide open heart in the face an uncaring universe. It at once screams "screw you" and "help me" in equal measure and is elegant in its balance.
Or something. I don't know, hell I don't think half of us know exactly what we're doing half the time. We wing it, falling back on whatever we have that passes for wisdom and hoping beyond hope that the chips land in our favor more often than not. Some of us have an unfair thumb on the scales, but even we're at the mercy of the ones who own the damned things.
I've had some successes recently. I've pushed myself really hard to do the things I'm doing. I read the memories as they appear on Facebook and see myself one or even two years ago and see what I was going through. I see myself 6 and 7 years ago going through these same struggles I am right now with the health and fitness and I failed. Every time. But this time. This time at least feels different, but am I fooling myself?
Every time, it seems like "this time is different." I would post pictures of the hills I climbed in triumph or the losing of weight and finally being below 400 pounds again and then... I'd slide. Something would happen and my confidence would be shaken. usually, it would have to do with money.
I've never bee good with the stuff in my personal life. I can do money for business or for other people great, just not my own. I've always had a problem with saving. I think a lot of it has to do with the times of my early 20s of being on the streets and on the road. In an environment like that, you have to spend what you have just to live. Then, once you have the money for nicer things, you buy them while you can... because you can, and tomorrow? You might not be able to again. So you grab on to your piece of the "American Dream" and buy that PlayStation or that TV or totally fix up your car instead of planning for a tomorrow you're not even sure will be there.
But then it is.
Even if I am not entirely sure how everything is falling into the places it is, I am seizing it with both hands. We plunged below the poverty line for a good 2 months. It was enough of a reminder of what it's like to need. I've had enough times in my life with Korray that I've had to resort to ramen with broccoli in it for dinner because that's what we had left. I don't need to go there again. I saw us slipping, so when this job at Hulu came along, I had to make it work.
Not that it's onerous mind you, I love the place. The people and the work are amazing and supportive. It's a place I enjoy going to most days, knowing it will be fun and challenging. I just had t... make it work. Nothing could stop me from going full time. Tek Systems had touted this as a best path out of contracting and I was determined to make that happen. I even quit something I really was dedicated to in junior derby because I would. not. fall. again. It was too important.
So I did it. And I am doing it and it's wonderful and I can, for the first time in a very long time see a future. I have a vision of a tomorrow that doesn't end with me eating cat food in a senior apartment complex praying for my social security check to come. I can see a way out, and it's amazing. I can schedule bills for auto pay and I now they will not bounce and cause a cascade financial collapse that takes months to dig out of. I can think in terms of "what do I want" instead of "what do we need".
I know not everyone can get as lucky as I did. Hell, if not for the people I have known and the advantages I have had, I would probably have never gotten as far as I have. But I am here. and for the first time in my life I can say "OK, so what can you *actually* do about using your advantages to help others." I just have to have the discipline to keep myself from fucking it all up too badly.
I suppose that's what "adulting" is, really. Fumbling forward and finally being able to make those steps to find your way through the minefield. To act instead of react. To do, even when you really would rather be in bed with a good book and a cup of hot cocoa with little, pink marshmallows.
And then you keep on doing that.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Gaming
I had found this world, a world I had no idea existed. A world with orcs and hobbits and elves. A world with dragons and grand quests to rescue treasure and a kingdom. A world with giant spiders and goblins and secrets hidden in dark places. A world brought to life by Bakshi and Rankin in vibrant color on my television screen. A world I would never want to leave.
I found other worlds. Worlds written about in books with covers featuring dragons and the women and men who would fight or ride them. I found farther off worlds, too. Worlds with machines and sentient computers. Worlds with corporations run wild, dark dystopian worlds where heroes had to fight against the whims of power in an effort to just survive the best they could, and worlds where the heroes only chance was to simply hold out against the horrors hidden in the corners.
I wanted to live those worlds, so I did.
Don't get me wrong, the worlds were not the end all be all, but they were an escape. An escape from the horrors I faced in this one. It gave me the chance, for a half an hour during lunch and maybe an hour after school to be someone else, somewhere else. A place I could win out against the bad people, or slay the monsters and get the gold and accolades of a grateful people as well as the accolades and cheers of my fellow players. A place that didn't mean I had to be small, or weak or different.
Somewhere along the line, the games and how I played them began to change. It wasn't just me, either. These games were teaching us things. They let us role play out situations and problems we had and likely never would have to face in our teenaged lives. Problems of meeting people and speaking to them. We had to role play them out, figure them out and we found that it wasn't always the dice that led to our success. It wasn't so random as all that, no if we managed to role play around the conflicts, we had even more success. Sure, you had to kill the monsters, but even the bad guys could potentially be talked out of things with a good argument and the people cheered even louder with a good speech to back it all up so we did that.
And we started taking those things we learned into other kinds of games. Games with costumes and people and nothing *but* roleplaying. Sure, we added foam swords and ways to "cast our magics" in the real world through bird seed or simple descriptions or rock paper scissors, but the games were still just games. We would practice things with people or use our minds to solve complex storylines, dismantling plots and counterplots from story tellers and players alike, but we always went back to our pencils and papers and dice.
These worlds built us, just as we built them.
Our worlds became ones of real armor and wooden weapons. Worlds where we faced not monsters or bad people, but real foes on the other side of a stick trying their damndest to ring our helms loud enough to force us to fake our own deaths. A competition of physic and mind and speed to simply touch the other person with the blunted end of 42 inches of steel or a contest to send a golf ball ended shaft or a tennis ball across a crowded battle field into the opposing force. We fought wars during the day, dreaming of times past and imagined chivalry. We became paragons of duty and honor and love at night, or at least what we imagined those paragons should be through the lens of Victorian imaginings of what those knights should have been.
We took and taught classes, resurrecting techniques and clothing and fighting styles long dead, and we imagined ourselves as the people who did these things. We crafted and cooked and brewed and all of this as entertainment and learning, we bonded together in our imaginings and we created households and friends and family. Our 30 year old selves, banding together to stand against the darkness we feared would surround us alone.
We became the world we wanted to be.
We took those lessons and we learned them. We took them out into the wider world and became those dauntless warriors in our every day lives. We fought against the tyranny of our circumstances and parlayed them into worlds where the nerds were the winners. We worked in computers and in technology, sure, but in other worlds as well. We brought it into science and finance and our ideas have rocked the world.
We brought our entertainment with us, creating new ways of telling our stories through screens large and small. We brought our comics to life and the world embraced them because they needed that escape. They needed to see a hero win.
Now I come to those worlds in thanks. I teach them to the new generations and I bring them to my friends and family. Now, more than ever, we need these worlds. We need these times together to and in the shared victory of slaying the dragons we face every day. To remind us that friends and family working together can overcome the odds and win out. We can take 3-4 hours and sit together, spending a good chunk of it just chatting things out, or spend a weekend as someone else in the woods or spend a Saturday night on a campus somewhere dressed in satin, leather and velvet pretending to be the monsters.
I am a gamer. We live in this world while we visit others from time to time. The worlds may be imaginary, but the lessons they taught us are real. We learned through them, and we became through them and those worlds have shaped us as we learned to shape our own. We are geeks and freaks and we stand together as we change the world.
Just be careful not to become the darkness when you do.
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Fitness
Friday update!
OK, so it has become a bit of a tradition on my Facebook to do these Friday updates. Since I am not reading Facebook... No, really. I only went on there and looked at the alerts because someone sent me a link to a funny video via messenger! I wasn't reading the timeline or anything!
Anyway! The Friday update.
As people who have been following might remember, I had a problem in that I was only making 36% of my fitness goals. People who have been following also may have noticed I don't hold much for allowing myself to backslide on this. Since then, I have been making 56% of my fitness goals with plans to add more walks over the weekend.
That was really where I was falling off was on the weekends. I was also taking Lyft to go too many places or renting a Zipcar. While this is all well and good if I need to, I also need to remember that a HUGE portion of my fitness success has to do with the fact that I am eschewing driving in favor of busing because busing means walking and walking means more exercise and... you get the picture.
On the one hand, it will allow me to walk more, but it will also save money. and right now? Every spare dollar goes into paying down debt and eliminating student loans. Over the years, I had fallen woefully behind on some things. If I am going to make my goals of home ownership in 5 years, I need to get better at that, and that necessarily means the spare stuff now goes to take care of when I had no spare stuff.
All of this, of course, has most to do with my having a job which allows me the comfort to be able to take care of these things. It's extremely difficult to worry about your fitness or your credit rating if you don't have food security or housing security, and this job means I have both.
I was worried for a bit there. As mentioned in my last post, I had my annual review. I hadn't had the best reviews in the past, and that came as somewhat of a surprise the first time. I hadn't been getting a lot of negative feedback at Real, but that first review hit hard. They had a policy of comparing your progress with your peer progress. If you did not do as good or better than your peers, you received a bad review. In the first review, it was attendance. While I was within the bounds of the leave policy, I had missed 2 more days than my peers. That meant a Personal Improvement Plan which followed me for the next year.
Hulu is different. The review was about the level of work in comparison to the job and the skills displayed. I am "consistently working above" my job level, which means a promotion and an 8% raise. Booya. After years of feeling that I wasn't good enough and fearing that my impostor syndrome was actually me being an impostor, I can now say with confidence that I *am* a good tester. That boost was just what I needed.
See, the anxiety around the job front along with generalized anxiety and a feeling that I was failing myself in some other areas was effecting my ability to avoid self destructive behaviors. I was turtling on paying some bills I needed to for fear I would need the money because I was going to lose my job. A ridiculous assumption, sure, but one which some people with depression can attest is overwhelming when it hits.
But it doesn't need to hit anymore. I can relax a little and enjoy while I continue to make the improvements I need to. I mean, hey, if I can get a promotion and an 8% raise this year, what can I do in the future? Fine, fine, I do need to address a small piece of constructive feedback. Apparently there is a feeling I can be a bit condescending if someone doesn't know a thing I think they should, or if someone comes across as willfully ignorant or constantly forgets an important piece of process.
Pff. Whatever. ;)
And that's what all of this is about. A quest for constant improvement. Whether it is my fitness, my job or my emotional well being, I need to take the steps I must to get to where I want to be. Right now that's more "not that" than "yes, this", but I'll figure that out. In the mean time, 364 on the scale, higher up on the job ladder, less me to move, more money in the checks, and goals. I think I am doing pretty well.
OK, so it has become a bit of a tradition on my Facebook to do these Friday updates. Since I am not reading Facebook... No, really. I only went on there and looked at the alerts because someone sent me a link to a funny video via messenger! I wasn't reading the timeline or anything!
Anyway! The Friday update.
As people who have been following might remember, I had a problem in that I was only making 36% of my fitness goals. People who have been following also may have noticed I don't hold much for allowing myself to backslide on this. Since then, I have been making 56% of my fitness goals with plans to add more walks over the weekend.
That was really where I was falling off was on the weekends. I was also taking Lyft to go too many places or renting a Zipcar. While this is all well and good if I need to, I also need to remember that a HUGE portion of my fitness success has to do with the fact that I am eschewing driving in favor of busing because busing means walking and walking means more exercise and... you get the picture.
On the one hand, it will allow me to walk more, but it will also save money. and right now? Every spare dollar goes into paying down debt and eliminating student loans. Over the years, I had fallen woefully behind on some things. If I am going to make my goals of home ownership in 5 years, I need to get better at that, and that necessarily means the spare stuff now goes to take care of when I had no spare stuff.
All of this, of course, has most to do with my having a job which allows me the comfort to be able to take care of these things. It's extremely difficult to worry about your fitness or your credit rating if you don't have food security or housing security, and this job means I have both.
I was worried for a bit there. As mentioned in my last post, I had my annual review. I hadn't had the best reviews in the past, and that came as somewhat of a surprise the first time. I hadn't been getting a lot of negative feedback at Real, but that first review hit hard. They had a policy of comparing your progress with your peer progress. If you did not do as good or better than your peers, you received a bad review. In the first review, it was attendance. While I was within the bounds of the leave policy, I had missed 2 more days than my peers. That meant a Personal Improvement Plan which followed me for the next year.
Hulu is different. The review was about the level of work in comparison to the job and the skills displayed. I am "consistently working above" my job level, which means a promotion and an 8% raise. Booya. After years of feeling that I wasn't good enough and fearing that my impostor syndrome was actually me being an impostor, I can now say with confidence that I *am* a good tester. That boost was just what I needed.
See, the anxiety around the job front along with generalized anxiety and a feeling that I was failing myself in some other areas was effecting my ability to avoid self destructive behaviors. I was turtling on paying some bills I needed to for fear I would need the money because I was going to lose my job. A ridiculous assumption, sure, but one which some people with depression can attest is overwhelming when it hits.
But it doesn't need to hit anymore. I can relax a little and enjoy while I continue to make the improvements I need to. I mean, hey, if I can get a promotion and an 8% raise this year, what can I do in the future? Fine, fine, I do need to address a small piece of constructive feedback. Apparently there is a feeling I can be a bit condescending if someone doesn't know a thing I think they should, or if someone comes across as willfully ignorant or constantly forgets an important piece of process.
Pff. Whatever. ;)
And that's what all of this is about. A quest for constant improvement. Whether it is my fitness, my job or my emotional well being, I need to take the steps I must to get to where I want to be. Right now that's more "not that" than "yes, this", but I'll figure that out. In the mean time, 364 on the scale, higher up on the job ladder, less me to move, more money in the checks, and goals. I think I am doing pretty well.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Cigarettes
This evening I reached for a cigarette.
There weren't any, of course, I stopped smoking a few years back, but this evening I reached for one. It wasn't necessarily that I had a bad evening, although a SERIOUSLY bad run on Overwatch was the order of the day. I mean, the hero selection on mystery heroes was not in my favor, but I was playing for poop. No, it wasn't that, per se.
It wasn't necessarily that I read the news and I worry. My friends are at greater risk every day. Immigrants are in danger (remember, when they say "every crime" they mean every. It's a misdemeanor to cross the border illegally), refugees are in danger, our country has been declared a "flawed democracy", our president is a laughing stock around the world, he's posturing like mad, wants to build more nuclear weapons (because the Russians have 700 more than we do, you know. Why not be able to blow all life away a few more times!), relations on our own borders are rocky, they want to enforce federal drug laws on a nation that wants pot... No, it's not necessarily all that. But what?
Well, maybe this? About twelve years ago, I had a full time job at Real Networks. I got it without an interview and I was slightly out of my depth. I learned a lot, I tried a lot, but in the end I was let go with a tidy severance. The reviews while there consist of the only professional annual reviews I have ever had. I will have my third soon, but it's not necessarily that, either, it was something else.
It was instinct. I was relaxed, I had just quit out of Overwatch and I just... absently reached for what looked like a pack of cigarettes out of the corner of my eye. No thought, just 30 years of habit rearing its head. It's been a while since that's happened. I mean, I wasn't craving a cigarette and I didn't miss them when I realized what I was doing, but it was there. That habit. It got me to thinking.
We are creatures of habit. We know this, yet we allow ourselves to fall into patterns of self harm. We let them consume us over time, justifying them as just.. something to help me feel better. Some of the habits are small things. The ones that don't *really* matter until they really, really do. You know, like cigarettes or alcohol or pot. Then there are the really self harmful ones. The ones that we cant help, even though they damage our chances at success. The self sabotaging behaviors that lead us towards the failure we internally believe we deserve. The hard to face things. *Vincent Price voice* The monsters in the darkness.
OK, so that's a little melodramatic, but you get the point. I need to be vigilant. I am having great success, but I know me. I see some of the old habits creeping in as the stress of keeping all this together starts to grow. I see the avoidance of responsibilities or commitments, and the internal struggle to just keep going. I need to take that look into myself and find the way out. They are nothing more than habits, and I have already broken one habit from my youth. If I can beat cigarettes and have nothing more than an absent reaching for them as a reminder? I'll take my odds that I can beat these, too.
I need to.
There weren't any, of course, I stopped smoking a few years back, but this evening I reached for one. It wasn't necessarily that I had a bad evening, although a SERIOUSLY bad run on Overwatch was the order of the day. I mean, the hero selection on mystery heroes was not in my favor, but I was playing for poop. No, it wasn't that, per se.
It wasn't necessarily that I read the news and I worry. My friends are at greater risk every day. Immigrants are in danger (remember, when they say "every crime" they mean every. It's a misdemeanor to cross the border illegally), refugees are in danger, our country has been declared a "flawed democracy", our president is a laughing stock around the world, he's posturing like mad, wants to build more nuclear weapons (because the Russians have 700 more than we do, you know. Why not be able to blow all life away a few more times!), relations on our own borders are rocky, they want to enforce federal drug laws on a nation that wants pot... No, it's not necessarily all that. But what?
Well, maybe this? About twelve years ago, I had a full time job at Real Networks. I got it without an interview and I was slightly out of my depth. I learned a lot, I tried a lot, but in the end I was let go with a tidy severance. The reviews while there consist of the only professional annual reviews I have ever had. I will have my third soon, but it's not necessarily that, either, it was something else.
It was instinct. I was relaxed, I had just quit out of Overwatch and I just... absently reached for what looked like a pack of cigarettes out of the corner of my eye. No thought, just 30 years of habit rearing its head. It's been a while since that's happened. I mean, I wasn't craving a cigarette and I didn't miss them when I realized what I was doing, but it was there. That habit. It got me to thinking.
We are creatures of habit. We know this, yet we allow ourselves to fall into patterns of self harm. We let them consume us over time, justifying them as just.. something to help me feel better. Some of the habits are small things. The ones that don't *really* matter until they really, really do. You know, like cigarettes or alcohol or pot. Then there are the really self harmful ones. The ones that we cant help, even though they damage our chances at success. The self sabotaging behaviors that lead us towards the failure we internally believe we deserve. The hard to face things. *Vincent Price voice* The monsters in the darkness.
OK, so that's a little melodramatic, but you get the point. I need to be vigilant. I am having great success, but I know me. I see some of the old habits creeping in as the stress of keeping all this together starts to grow. I see the avoidance of responsibilities or commitments, and the internal struggle to just keep going. I need to take that look into myself and find the way out. They are nothing more than habits, and I have already broken one habit from my youth. If I can beat cigarettes and have nothing more than an absent reaching for them as a reminder? I'll take my odds that I can beat these, too.
I need to.
Noise
It's loud.
The cacophony in my head and about the world is a riot of noise and fury. It overwhelms the senses and forces attention be paid. I have no choice but to ride along and allow it to carry me through, but there are small things which allow me to corral the wild things in my mind and bring about a semblance of order. One of those is writing.
Primarily, I have been doing that writing on Facebook, and much of that writing has been political. Not surprising, given the circumstances surrounding a certain Cheeto in Chief, but it only fuels the rage. I don't get to release that rage. I get to either have militant agreement or disagreement in that hyper-polarized forum. It leads to rancor, it leads to hurt feelings and willful ignorance on the part of the reader or myself and it serves to do... not much. "The din in my head, it's too much and it's no good."
So I seek out another forum. One which will allow me to practice this catharsis for myself without the distraction. It will allow me to collect thoughts and share them in a long form, not restricted by the tl;dr lifestyle of social media. One which allows me to write essays and doesn't necessarily demand a persistent checking of alerts and responses adding to the demands of an already busy mind. Fewer beeps and whistles and buzzes letting me know that some friend or other has either agreed or some stranger has disagreed with something I said. It quiets the mind to not have those demands.
I guess I am seeking solitude in some ways. I don't expect many will find this blog, since I don't really plan on sharing it out too widely. It's mainly for me and my musings, after all. A way to think about things for myself and get them out of my head where I can look at them. I mean, sure, I'll probably get some readers, and those readers might even comment, but all in all this will not be the constant ping... ping... ping... like DNS attack on my brain. I want to be able to think again, and this will help.
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