Posting? Bah.
I've just looked back into my archives, at the numbers, and I haven't really been posting all that much since I lost my job nearly two years ago. I suppose a certain part of me believes that I don't have much to tell, or that people aren't going to care, if I do tell.
But, I don't care if people don't care, if I dig around a bit. I want to be posting so that I can look back and see what I've done. I am finding things harder to remember. My past all seems to flow from one day to another without any notable changes, but that certainly isn't what it is.
Unemployment
I lost my job. That was in 2009, somewhere in June. I lost it by dint that my contract was up and I was unwilling to take another if it was going to involve software test engineering in Iowa. I was willing to be a software test engineer on the West coast. Or to be a developer in Iowa, but not both at once.
So, I moved in with the crib0 crew. Most of my stuff was in storage and I was sleeping on a futon in the basement, but I had friends around me and I had an opportunity to help with games. I was also in pretty good shape, exercise-wise, going into the unemployment arena.
Well, being around friends was good, but exercise was not kept up with and I wasn't able to get over my own walls and around my own monsters having to do with working on games, so I was mostly useless for six months. I did look for jobs, but I chose a poor time to get picky.
The Hiring
Around the end of December 2009, I got a couple of nibbles from a contracting company back in Cedar Rapids. Considering that I was running out of unemployment money and getting frustrated about not being free, I took the interviews offered. Out of two, both were willing to hire me.
I chose the group that had the more intriguing program. They were taking software that goes into airplane cockpits and getting it to run on what are essentially home computers. This may not sound too impressive, until you realize that all the hardware in an airplane, including screens, switches, computers, data concentrators, etc., are all fairly custom to that plane alone and the software that goes into that hardware is similarly custom.
My task, which I chose to accept, was to create a piece of software that would act as a test suite for their new graphics chip simulator. See, you don't just plop a graphics card into an airplane. It's just not robust enough. So, Rockwell Collins, who I contract for, uses custom hardware, called a Graphics Engine chip. This is integrated into other hardware to create a display system. The team I was working with were trying to simulate this hardware, and if you want to simulate something, you've got to test it against the original.
The task was fairly complex and much of my time was spent learning how things went together and how the best way to test the software was to be accomplished.
Simultaneously, I was exploring my attraction to fiber more, hanging out with the ladies at Fae Ridge Farm and influencing their hunger for spindles.
I was also sad to see Paul and Janis pack up and leave Iowa for the DC area. I had been visiting crib0, which they were members of, just about every other weekend for a couple years, if you didn't count when I actually stayed for months. When they left, it felt like my social group was crumbling. Visiting the crib just wasn't the same and wasn't as compelling.
Somewhere around the middle of summer. In June, I believe, I attended a spinners and weavers retreat in Des Moines with some of the Fae Ridge ladies, and I was surprised when I found my manager, Jeannie, sitting in the meeting room. Come to find out, she spun too and was along with her good friend, Jackie. This, though I didn't know it, was the start of a mini-adventure that hasn't really stopped yet.
Growing
The job continued along, and while I had ups and down with my interaction with it, I seemed to be satisfying my team.
Somewhere in the late summer? I took the first level of HAI, "Love is a Miracle". It was intense. I confronted a few major defining elements of myself. At this point, I had already been reading quite a bit of stuff about monsters and getting through stucknesses through The Fluent Self, and this was along the same lines, but with a different twist. And just about any workshop that is in-person seems to be more intense than if you're just working on something by yourself.
I started to feel better about myself, especially my self image. And look at what things I assumed were true, because sometimes they just aren't. I dug up quite a bit of old pain that had shaped me. This was very good, but also very hard, and, honestly, I didn't have a full enough toolset to deal with it on my own.
A few weeks later, I met with my sisters and mother in Amish country in northern Indiana for a girls weekend. I was worried about what was going to happen. I used to feel bad about how fat I was, and I'd often hear about my weight from my mother. But now my perspective was starting to change, and I was worried that a careless remark from any one of my female relatives might send me spinning. I didn't need to worry so much, though. It was a fun weekend and I felt more confident than I had in quite awhile, even around my family.
Further on, in the fall, I went to Yarn School and took the extended dye lab session. It was a blast. My roomies were great and I got to play with tons of color. I can't say that I did much else or really socialized all that much. I was really starting to get into the hibernation groove that I seemed to be in, and was feeling too self-conscious, even after the HAI workshop, which had helped me come out of my shell, some. I also slept for about half of time there. But, I got lots of time on the drum carder that I wanted to get on and I got lots of dyeing done. My hankering for a drum carder only increased after this, though.
Somewhere in here, I also found a local game store, started to go to the board game night, and then got into a gaming group. It felt good to be gaming again.
Pains
Through all of the late summer and early fall, my thoughts and feelings were pinging all over the place. I didn't have a support network. I felt like I wasn't doing enough at my job. I was struggling with my self view. I was lonely. I was anxious. I decided to get Help.
So, I started to go to a therapist, even though my internal voice that comes from a poor, tough, rural family upbringing was arguing that it was stupid. There wasn't any reason I should waste money on talking to someone. It wouldn't work anyways, and if you had to go, there was obviously Something Wrong with you, the voice said. I went anyways.
I started to work on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with my therapist and got on generic Prozac. Within a week of being on the Prozac, I felt like I had woken up. Like I had been struggling through a fog of my own emotions, but now I could start to think again.
ACT is about being mindful, similar to buddhism, but without the religion and with some extra therapy bits put on. I'd been getting more and more interested in buddhism, especially the mindful bit, for awhile, so this was a pretty good fit. I intended to go to a local zen temple to learn zazen, but haven't yet gotten around to it.
Through the interest in the therapy that I was going through and the suggestion of my therapist, I was introduced to Jon Kabat-Zinn. I'm starting to go through his stuff and try to use his techniques for mindfulness and dealing with stress. It is slow going.
Getting There
My contract was up at the end of 2010 for the test suite, but again, I got two new contract offers. I took the one that sounded more up my alley and now I am helping to develop avionics software. I also got a significant raise.
I'm starting to get more social. Gaming is taking me out of my apartment, along with spinning. In no particular order, I purchased a loom, helped with shearing sheep, helped skirt some sheep fleeces, will be teaching someone spinning, and am committed to buying 86 pounds of Romney seconds (seconds being the bits of fleece which are still good, but not good enough to be sold to a handspinner). I am starting to come out of my cocoon, peeling back layers, slowly moving in a direction that I want to continue. It's frightening. It's encouraging.
One of the things that I'm hoping to bring about, going forward, is to start writing regular journal posts. They are unlikely to be here, though. This will be kept for more personal-update type stuff. Most entries will start happening over at Tastefully Twisted, but I'll probably post a link here, just in case anyone might be interested.
But, I don't care if people don't care, if I dig around a bit. I want to be posting so that I can look back and see what I've done. I am finding things harder to remember. My past all seems to flow from one day to another without any notable changes, but that certainly isn't what it is.
Unemployment
I lost my job. That was in 2009, somewhere in June. I lost it by dint that my contract was up and I was unwilling to take another if it was going to involve software test engineering in Iowa. I was willing to be a software test engineer on the West coast. Or to be a developer in Iowa, but not both at once.
So, I moved in with the crib0 crew. Most of my stuff was in storage and I was sleeping on a futon in the basement, but I had friends around me and I had an opportunity to help with games. I was also in pretty good shape, exercise-wise, going into the unemployment arena.
Well, being around friends was good, but exercise was not kept up with and I wasn't able to get over my own walls and around my own monsters having to do with working on games, so I was mostly useless for six months. I did look for jobs, but I chose a poor time to get picky.
The Hiring
Around the end of December 2009, I got a couple of nibbles from a contracting company back in Cedar Rapids. Considering that I was running out of unemployment money and getting frustrated about not being free, I took the interviews offered. Out of two, both were willing to hire me.
I chose the group that had the more intriguing program. They were taking software that goes into airplane cockpits and getting it to run on what are essentially home computers. This may not sound too impressive, until you realize that all the hardware in an airplane, including screens, switches, computers, data concentrators, etc., are all fairly custom to that plane alone and the software that goes into that hardware is similarly custom.
My task, which I chose to accept, was to create a piece of software that would act as a test suite for their new graphics chip simulator. See, you don't just plop a graphics card into an airplane. It's just not robust enough. So, Rockwell Collins, who I contract for, uses custom hardware, called a Graphics Engine chip. This is integrated into other hardware to create a display system. The team I was working with were trying to simulate this hardware, and if you want to simulate something, you've got to test it against the original.
The task was fairly complex and much of my time was spent learning how things went together and how the best way to test the software was to be accomplished.
Simultaneously, I was exploring my attraction to fiber more, hanging out with the ladies at Fae Ridge Farm and influencing their hunger for spindles.
I was also sad to see Paul and Janis pack up and leave Iowa for the DC area. I had been visiting crib0, which they were members of, just about every other weekend for a couple years, if you didn't count when I actually stayed for months. When they left, it felt like my social group was crumbling. Visiting the crib just wasn't the same and wasn't as compelling.
Somewhere around the middle of summer. In June, I believe, I attended a spinners and weavers retreat in Des Moines with some of the Fae Ridge ladies, and I was surprised when I found my manager, Jeannie, sitting in the meeting room. Come to find out, she spun too and was along with her good friend, Jackie. This, though I didn't know it, was the start of a mini-adventure that hasn't really stopped yet.
Growing
The job continued along, and while I had ups and down with my interaction with it, I seemed to be satisfying my team.
Somewhere in the late summer? I took the first level of HAI, "Love is a Miracle". It was intense. I confronted a few major defining elements of myself. At this point, I had already been reading quite a bit of stuff about monsters and getting through stucknesses through The Fluent Self, and this was along the same lines, but with a different twist. And just about any workshop that is in-person seems to be more intense than if you're just working on something by yourself.
I started to feel better about myself, especially my self image. And look at what things I assumed were true, because sometimes they just aren't. I dug up quite a bit of old pain that had shaped me. This was very good, but also very hard, and, honestly, I didn't have a full enough toolset to deal with it on my own.
A few weeks later, I met with my sisters and mother in Amish country in northern Indiana for a girls weekend. I was worried about what was going to happen. I used to feel bad about how fat I was, and I'd often hear about my weight from my mother. But now my perspective was starting to change, and I was worried that a careless remark from any one of my female relatives might send me spinning. I didn't need to worry so much, though. It was a fun weekend and I felt more confident than I had in quite awhile, even around my family.
Further on, in the fall, I went to Yarn School and took the extended dye lab session. It was a blast. My roomies were great and I got to play with tons of color. I can't say that I did much else or really socialized all that much. I was really starting to get into the hibernation groove that I seemed to be in, and was feeling too self-conscious, even after the HAI workshop, which had helped me come out of my shell, some. I also slept for about half of time there. But, I got lots of time on the drum carder that I wanted to get on and I got lots of dyeing done. My hankering for a drum carder only increased after this, though.
Somewhere in here, I also found a local game store, started to go to the board game night, and then got into a gaming group. It felt good to be gaming again.
Pains
Through all of the late summer and early fall, my thoughts and feelings were pinging all over the place. I didn't have a support network. I felt like I wasn't doing enough at my job. I was struggling with my self view. I was lonely. I was anxious. I decided to get Help.
So, I started to go to a therapist, even though my internal voice that comes from a poor, tough, rural family upbringing was arguing that it was stupid. There wasn't any reason I should waste money on talking to someone. It wouldn't work anyways, and if you had to go, there was obviously Something Wrong with you, the voice said. I went anyways.
I started to work on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with my therapist and got on generic Prozac. Within a week of being on the Prozac, I felt like I had woken up. Like I had been struggling through a fog of my own emotions, but now I could start to think again.
ACT is about being mindful, similar to buddhism, but without the religion and with some extra therapy bits put on. I'd been getting more and more interested in buddhism, especially the mindful bit, for awhile, so this was a pretty good fit. I intended to go to a local zen temple to learn zazen, but haven't yet gotten around to it.
Through the interest in the therapy that I was going through and the suggestion of my therapist, I was introduced to Jon Kabat-Zinn. I'm starting to go through his stuff and try to use his techniques for mindfulness and dealing with stress. It is slow going.
Getting There
My contract was up at the end of 2010 for the test suite, but again, I got two new contract offers. I took the one that sounded more up my alley and now I am helping to develop avionics software. I also got a significant raise.
I'm starting to get more social. Gaming is taking me out of my apartment, along with spinning. In no particular order, I purchased a loom, helped with shearing sheep, helped skirt some sheep fleeces, will be teaching someone spinning, and am committed to buying 86 pounds of Romney seconds (seconds being the bits of fleece which are still good, but not good enough to be sold to a handspinner). I am starting to come out of my cocoon, peeling back layers, slowly moving in a direction that I want to continue. It's frightening. It's encouraging.
One of the things that I'm hoping to bring about, going forward, is to start writing regular journal posts. They are unlikely to be here, though. This will be kept for more personal-update type stuff. Most entries will start happening over at Tastefully Twisted, but I'll probably post a link here, just in case anyone might be interested.