the caged bird sings
omg hello friends.
hello.
So I've started a new job! As expected it has swallowed me whole, especially after a year of unemployment and a complete switch in industries besides.
Still getting used to this new life, the new norms and expectations. Here are some random facts:
1. There are dogs in the office! By far the best thing. Not all of them come in every day, as most people are working from home, but some are here regularly and it's so much fun. The prettiest and youngest dog here, a husky (!) who's 3 years old, is the focus of much of my attention.
She used to legit bark and howl whenever I would even come close to her, because I'm New And Scary, but now we're at the stage where she's wary of me but not actively scared. Like she'll allow me to pet her for a short time before drawing away. She won't be EXCITED about me petting her, but she'll allow it for brief periods.
Even this small amount of progress has been achieved through bribery, of course. I got permission from her human to give her some snacks here and there, and she went from actively scared to wary lol. Of course when I'm feeding her she'll allow pets as long as the meat keeps coming.
2. Still getting used to how work hours... work, here. Obviously it's different from how it was in the public sector, but I'm not fully sure... how, yet? I'm sure I'll figure this out slowly. So far, it's been a thing where some days I work 12 hours non-stop and some days I have maybe 2 hours of work to get done and in theory can faff off the rest of the time (I'm still too excited about this job to do that though).
3. There's a weird thing where I'm not sure what the scope of my actual responsibilities is supposed to be here? Like they hired me for a fairly senior position, but they don't actually NEED anyone to fill a senior position? At least right now? They'll need someone in December. They could have just told me "listen everything until December is us training you to do the job" and it would be fairly accurate, since the training period here is gonna be loooooong, but instead they made it this weird "well we're not giving you any real responsibility now but that may change in December" thing which... OK?
Like, if I was more career minded or whatever I would probably have been angrier about this, but the truth is I was unemployed for a year and job hunting during covid is hard and this job, even if we assume the absolute worst about what they'll actually want me to do, is still my dream job in terms of what will boost my CV, so like... I don't mind, really? I mean it sucks to "go back" professionally, even for 5 months, but bottom line would it make me regret taking this job? Or feel like I'm wasting my time? Hell no. It's still a very good deal for me by every parameter.
4. The food thing, omg. I mean this isn't the kind of start up where they cater breakfast lunch and dinner every day, but still the amount of food is just... unbelievable, compared to where I used to work, where a box of dry cookies in the cupboard was considered the height of luxury.
There's all kinds of milks and sodas in the fridge, there's buns and vegetables and spreads and cheeses and lunch meats and several kinds of cereal. There's eggs and a device to cook them. There's usually some kind of hot breakfast/brunch option whether it's freshly baked savory things or today, freshly grilled hot dogs with pickles and relish. Occasionally there's also special events, where they'll have performances up on the roof with actual full catering, but I think that happens only a few times a quarter.
Anyway, it's way more food than in some private companies, and much less than in certain others but it's mostly just such a huge mindset shift for me. To go from "oh yay there's food at work today - better take advantage of this special treat!" to "there is ALWAYS tons of food at work, the objective is not to eat junk and not just eat because you're stressed or tired".
Like, at my previous job I would have a light breakfast at home, a more substantial lunch at work, and then something small for dinner, unless I was going out. Now I know that I could easily skip breakfast and eat one at work instead (the only reason I don't is that it's easy for me to feel faint if I don't eat quickly enough after getting up, and if I get to work and get sucked into a crisis it won't end well), I aspire to eventually bring lunches from home some days but right now I don't have the time or energy to bother so I buy lunch at a cafe somewhere (we get a lunch budget that covers full lunches for about half of each month, which honestly works out to something similar as my last job, where food was just very cheap and subsidized), snack occasionally throughout the day on various things from the fridge and when I come home I'm... not even remotely hungry.
This is true even though most days I work out after work - pilates, swimming, whatever. I'm just... not hungry. Which is weird because when I had full days before, with work and then work outs or meeting friends, I always needed some kind of energy boost in the evening. But now there's so much food at work, I guess I just don't.
Which is so weird /o\ Eventually I'll figure out my new food schedule, but meanwhile it's like the habits I had for over a decade no longer apply.
5. The office itself is not as bad as I feared, going from the public sector where there were max 2 people per office, with giant desks and personal drawers and lots of privacy, to the private sector where the default is a giant open space where all screens face outwards and every drawer is communal.
So on the one hand, it's not bad? Because of my specific role I get to sit in a fairly small room, with only 4 other people (and usually 1-3 max, because we all have different hours/some people work from home), and sometimes I even have brief times of working completely alone.
I don't really mind having my screen visible, and the temperature - which I really worried about, especially because I'm always cold and 90% of the company are cis men - is pretty OK? Like I haven't really been cold, and the dudes in my room are pretty reasonable and considerate. We also have our own balcony, which is really nice.
Anyway, all the annoyance of things like the office being noisy when I'm trying to have a meeting, or the screen set up not being my ideal thing, or whatever, is not that big of a deal to me because my agreement when I was hired was that I'd work from the office for a few months while I was learning the job, and then I'd be able to work from home as needed. I mean the person teaching me spent the last 6 months working from home 100% of the time.
So basically, whatever isn't ideal about the office, I'm like - this is temporary, and I'd rather do it when the weather is nice than when the weather is gross and cold. When it's rainy and gross outside I'll hopefully have enough experience to peace out and stay home whenever I want.
(the other day I asked my boss if it was OK to do an 8pm meeting (which was then canceled) from home, and then to also do a 9am meeting the next day from home, because coming into the office, and he looked at me like I was asking him to approve the timing of my pee breaks LOL)
5. My coworkers are... it's a long story, but the bottom line is that everyone is nice, and welcoming, and only one person (which has a god complex we will not go into) made one kind of rude comment to me (not of any kind of personal nature, just generally didn't want to be bothered to have a meeting with me) one time, and other than that everyone's been eager to work with me and generally pleasant.
It's not like I've made tons of friends or anything, but people are nice and friendly and considering it took me like 5 years to get to that point at my previous job, it's a definite improvement lolol
6. Working downtown in Tel Aviv is nice. My last workplace was also pretty spectacular, but it was more like a country getaway, with grass and quiet little secret corners, and a place to swim, and all kinds of stuff like that. During certain times of the year I could go on long walks around the place and barely see any people. It had gardens and a museum and a gallery.
This place is like the opposite of that. It's right in the middle of the action, surrounded by everything that's hippie and trendy, walk 10 minutes in any direction and you'll see at least 3 things you didn't know existed in this country and that don't exist anywhere else outside of central Tel Aviv. There are so many gorgeous historical buildings, so many bars and restaurants, it's so close to every cool place.
So, it's very different, but also really nice.
7. I think that's it? I'm writing this on the last work day of my first two weeks, when on Sunday (our work week is Sun-Thur) the person who is actually supposed to train me and oversee my work will be returning after a long vacation (I swear half this company was on vacation when I started, because August), so it's very possible that once my ~real~ training starts everything in terms of schedule and responsibility will change? IDK. It's all been a bit weird so far but I'm not complaining! It's been mostly nice and lovely. And it's so amazing to have even this amount of flexibility over my schedule and assignments when at my previous work, especially in the last few years, things were a lot more rigid.
That's it. Someday I hope to return with an update that's not just RL things, lol.
*
In completely random news, I'm still enjoying all the really messed up Breaking Bad fanfics on AO3 featuring Jesse Pinkman, AKA the Will Graham of Breaking Bad. I don't have a ton to say about this, but the difference between Hannibal/Will and Walter/Jesse is really striking, in how extremely similar those dynamics/relationships are, but also in how one of them is a story of abuse-but-it's-actually-love and one is actually just a story of abuse.
And to me that 100% ties into how Hannibal was created by a gay dude who among other things made that relationship a metaphor for queerness and played with a lot of "gayness = death" tropes, and so ultimately Will Graham the victim is sexualized at every turn. His suffering is not just aesthetically pleasing it's EXTREMELY aesthetically pleasing, very deliberately so. He's never more of an object of desire for the show than when he's falling apart because of the things Hannibal is doing/has caused.
But "Breaking Bad" is was made a straight dude. And so a very similar dynamic isn't twisted into "this is abuse but it's actually a twisted kind of love" but is just... straight up abuse. Jesse's suffering is still fetishized, but it's not eroticized. Jesse himself, his body is not an object of desire, certainly not in his darkest moments.
Anyway, I have still seen very little of "Breaking Bad" overall, although I guess that makes sense since I also only watched the "non scary" parts of Hannibal lolol which are not that many parts.
Anyway, if you have a fav Jesse Pinkman fic (or a general Breaking Bad fic) do rec it to me.
comments on Dreamwidth
hello.
So I've started a new job! As expected it has swallowed me whole, especially after a year of unemployment and a complete switch in industries besides.
Still getting used to this new life, the new norms and expectations. Here are some random facts:
1. There are dogs in the office! By far the best thing. Not all of them come in every day, as most people are working from home, but some are here regularly and it's so much fun. The prettiest and youngest dog here, a husky (!) who's 3 years old, is the focus of much of my attention.
She used to legit bark and howl whenever I would even come close to her, because I'm New And Scary, but now we're at the stage where she's wary of me but not actively scared. Like she'll allow me to pet her for a short time before drawing away. She won't be EXCITED about me petting her, but she'll allow it for brief periods.
Even this small amount of progress has been achieved through bribery, of course. I got permission from her human to give her some snacks here and there, and she went from actively scared to wary lol. Of course when I'm feeding her she'll allow pets as long as the meat keeps coming.
2. Still getting used to how work hours... work, here. Obviously it's different from how it was in the public sector, but I'm not fully sure... how, yet? I'm sure I'll figure this out slowly. So far, it's been a thing where some days I work 12 hours non-stop and some days I have maybe 2 hours of work to get done and in theory can faff off the rest of the time (I'm still too excited about this job to do that though).
3. There's a weird thing where I'm not sure what the scope of my actual responsibilities is supposed to be here? Like they hired me for a fairly senior position, but they don't actually NEED anyone to fill a senior position? At least right now? They'll need someone in December. They could have just told me "listen everything until December is us training you to do the job" and it would be fairly accurate, since the training period here is gonna be loooooong, but instead they made it this weird "well we're not giving you any real responsibility now but that may change in December" thing which... OK?
Like, if I was more career minded or whatever I would probably have been angrier about this, but the truth is I was unemployed for a year and job hunting during covid is hard and this job, even if we assume the absolute worst about what they'll actually want me to do, is still my dream job in terms of what will boost my CV, so like... I don't mind, really? I mean it sucks to "go back" professionally, even for 5 months, but bottom line would it make me regret taking this job? Or feel like I'm wasting my time? Hell no. It's still a very good deal for me by every parameter.
4. The food thing, omg. I mean this isn't the kind of start up where they cater breakfast lunch and dinner every day, but still the amount of food is just... unbelievable, compared to where I used to work, where a box of dry cookies in the cupboard was considered the height of luxury.
There's all kinds of milks and sodas in the fridge, there's buns and vegetables and spreads and cheeses and lunch meats and several kinds of cereal. There's eggs and a device to cook them. There's usually some kind of hot breakfast/brunch option whether it's freshly baked savory things or today, freshly grilled hot dogs with pickles and relish. Occasionally there's also special events, where they'll have performances up on the roof with actual full catering, but I think that happens only a few times a quarter.
Anyway, it's way more food than in some private companies, and much less than in certain others but it's mostly just such a huge mindset shift for me. To go from "oh yay there's food at work today - better take advantage of this special treat!" to "there is ALWAYS tons of food at work, the objective is not to eat junk and not just eat because you're stressed or tired".
Like, at my previous job I would have a light breakfast at home, a more substantial lunch at work, and then something small for dinner, unless I was going out. Now I know that I could easily skip breakfast and eat one at work instead (the only reason I don't is that it's easy for me to feel faint if I don't eat quickly enough after getting up, and if I get to work and get sucked into a crisis it won't end well), I aspire to eventually bring lunches from home some days but right now I don't have the time or energy to bother so I buy lunch at a cafe somewhere (we get a lunch budget that covers full lunches for about half of each month, which honestly works out to something similar as my last job, where food was just very cheap and subsidized), snack occasionally throughout the day on various things from the fridge and when I come home I'm... not even remotely hungry.
This is true even though most days I work out after work - pilates, swimming, whatever. I'm just... not hungry. Which is weird because when I had full days before, with work and then work outs or meeting friends, I always needed some kind of energy boost in the evening. But now there's so much food at work, I guess I just don't.
Which is so weird /o\ Eventually I'll figure out my new food schedule, but meanwhile it's like the habits I had for over a decade no longer apply.
5. The office itself is not as bad as I feared, going from the public sector where there were max 2 people per office, with giant desks and personal drawers and lots of privacy, to the private sector where the default is a giant open space where all screens face outwards and every drawer is communal.
So on the one hand, it's not bad? Because of my specific role I get to sit in a fairly small room, with only 4 other people (and usually 1-3 max, because we all have different hours/some people work from home), and sometimes I even have brief times of working completely alone.
I don't really mind having my screen visible, and the temperature - which I really worried about, especially because I'm always cold and 90% of the company are cis men - is pretty OK? Like I haven't really been cold, and the dudes in my room are pretty reasonable and considerate. We also have our own balcony, which is really nice.
Anyway, all the annoyance of things like the office being noisy when I'm trying to have a meeting, or the screen set up not being my ideal thing, or whatever, is not that big of a deal to me because my agreement when I was hired was that I'd work from the office for a few months while I was learning the job, and then I'd be able to work from home as needed. I mean the person teaching me spent the last 6 months working from home 100% of the time.
So basically, whatever isn't ideal about the office, I'm like - this is temporary, and I'd rather do it when the weather is nice than when the weather is gross and cold. When it's rainy and gross outside I'll hopefully have enough experience to peace out and stay home whenever I want.
(the other day I asked my boss if it was OK to do an 8pm meeting (which was then canceled) from home, and then to also do a 9am meeting the next day from home, because coming into the office, and he looked at me like I was asking him to approve the timing of my pee breaks LOL)
5. My coworkers are... it's a long story, but the bottom line is that everyone is nice, and welcoming, and only one person (which has a god complex we will not go into) made one kind of rude comment to me (not of any kind of personal nature, just generally didn't want to be bothered to have a meeting with me) one time, and other than that everyone's been eager to work with me and generally pleasant.
It's not like I've made tons of friends or anything, but people are nice and friendly and considering it took me like 5 years to get to that point at my previous job, it's a definite improvement lolol
6. Working downtown in Tel Aviv is nice. My last workplace was also pretty spectacular, but it was more like a country getaway, with grass and quiet little secret corners, and a place to swim, and all kinds of stuff like that. During certain times of the year I could go on long walks around the place and barely see any people. It had gardens and a museum and a gallery.
This place is like the opposite of that. It's right in the middle of the action, surrounded by everything that's hippie and trendy, walk 10 minutes in any direction and you'll see at least 3 things you didn't know existed in this country and that don't exist anywhere else outside of central Tel Aviv. There are so many gorgeous historical buildings, so many bars and restaurants, it's so close to every cool place.
So, it's very different, but also really nice.
7. I think that's it? I'm writing this on the last work day of my first two weeks, when on Sunday (our work week is Sun-Thur) the person who is actually supposed to train me and oversee my work will be returning after a long vacation (I swear half this company was on vacation when I started, because August), so it's very possible that once my ~real~ training starts everything in terms of schedule and responsibility will change? IDK. It's all been a bit weird so far but I'm not complaining! It's been mostly nice and lovely. And it's so amazing to have even this amount of flexibility over my schedule and assignments when at my previous work, especially in the last few years, things were a lot more rigid.
That's it. Someday I hope to return with an update that's not just RL things, lol.
*
In completely random news, I'm still enjoying all the really messed up Breaking Bad fanfics on AO3 featuring Jesse Pinkman, AKA the Will Graham of Breaking Bad. I don't have a ton to say about this, but the difference between Hannibal/Will and Walter/Jesse is really striking, in how extremely similar those dynamics/relationships are, but also in how one of them is a story of abuse-but-it's-actually-love and one is actually just a story of abuse.
And to me that 100% ties into how Hannibal was created by a gay dude who among other things made that relationship a metaphor for queerness and played with a lot of "gayness = death" tropes, and so ultimately Will Graham the victim is sexualized at every turn. His suffering is not just aesthetically pleasing it's EXTREMELY aesthetically pleasing, very deliberately so. He's never more of an object of desire for the show than when he's falling apart because of the things Hannibal is doing/has caused.
But "Breaking Bad" is was made a straight dude. And so a very similar dynamic isn't twisted into "this is abuse but it's actually a twisted kind of love" but is just... straight up abuse. Jesse's suffering is still fetishized, but it's not eroticized. Jesse himself, his body is not an object of desire, certainly not in his darkest moments.
Anyway, I have still seen very little of "Breaking Bad" overall, although I guess that makes sense since I also only watched the "non scary" parts of Hannibal lolol which are not that many parts.
Anyway, if you have a fav Jesse Pinkman fic (or a general Breaking Bad fic) do rec it to me.
comments on Dreamwidth