(no subject)
Fifteen years ago today, I made my first entry in this journal (at LiveJournal at the time). It was my 35th birthday (which makes today my 50th). Some changes:
I was living with Cute-poet-chick and doing my best to be happy in that difficult situation. We split a couple of years later.
The Munchkins (my sister's kids) were 9 and 11. They're now, obviously, 24 and 26. I adopted one of them several years back. My sister is now in jail, and I have no contact with her.
I sort of knew
stonebender in the periphery of alt.polyamory (which is now very low-traffic, but I miss it and may go back), but we hadn't interacted much at that point. I hadn't met
james_huber yet. In January, I'll celebrate 14 years with each of them. I hadn't met sogwife and
loracs and
wild_irises, who are now family.
9/11 had just happened. Most of my friendslist (that's what LJ called it at the time) were from a listserv I was on with other bi and bi-friendly women. That list now lives on Facebook, where I am not, but I'm still friends with a number of those women. And speaking of Facebook, I became unable to stay there in good conscience, because their real-names policy does actual harm, and they do other skeevy things that creep me out. I do miss it, but not enough to add my endorsement to them by being there.
In 2001, I was working as a temp, and had been for around twenty years. My assignment at the time was to copyedit tech manuals for Logicon, which had recently been bought by Northrop Grumman. I liked having a job in editing, but I didn't like being a cog in the military-industrial machine. A little later, I got a "permanent" job at a Northrop Grumman shipyard, which presented the same feelings to me about my role in war.
In 2004, I decided to just quit the shipyard, and James and I moved to the Bay Area to be closer to
stonebender and sogwife. I temped some more, at FedEx and other places, but when the kid moved in with us, I started looking for a job with benefits. I worked at FedEx as a plane loader, at Ikea as a store clerk, and as a temp at UC Berkeley (that one started as a one-day assignment). Eventually, I got a permanent job at UC Berkeley, and worked there 9 years. For about 8 years, I loved it. That last year was a bear, to be honest, no pun intended. In 2011, at 44 years old, I decided to go back and get my BA in Creative Writing. I did it (yay!) in 2013, at 46.
In 2014, I quit my job and James and I moved back to the San Diego area to be near my mom, who is old and ill. We really enjoy each other's company, and the life disruption was worth being close enough to her to be of some help and also to just be near her. This also brought me nearer to my dad, with whom I've started a website project and roughly weekly robot-geek and/or karaoke dates. After four long months of unemployment, during which we racked up our first-ever credit-card debt (ouch), I found a job at the local community college, where I got my AA in 2000. I've been there going on two years now, and I like it fine.
My life right now is hard in different ways from before, but it's also joyful in the same ways, and peaceful in about equal measure. I like who I am. I like the people I surround myself with for the most part. Onward!
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth (DW). I welcome comments here or at the original post, where there are currently
comments. If you don't have a DW account, you can post using your LJ name as an OpenID account, or feel free to comment anonymously and I'll unscreen.
I was living with Cute-poet-chick and doing my best to be happy in that difficult situation. We split a couple of years later.
The Munchkins (my sister's kids) were 9 and 11. They're now, obviously, 24 and 26. I adopted one of them several years back. My sister is now in jail, and I have no contact with her.
I sort of knew
stonebender in the periphery of alt.polyamory (which is now very low-traffic, but I miss it and may go back), but we hadn't interacted much at that point. I hadn't met
james_huber yet. In January, I'll celebrate 14 years with each of them. I hadn't met sogwife and
loracs and
wild_irises, who are now family.
9/11 had just happened. Most of my friendslist (that's what LJ called it at the time) were from a listserv I was on with other bi and bi-friendly women. That list now lives on Facebook, where I am not, but I'm still friends with a number of those women. And speaking of Facebook, I became unable to stay there in good conscience, because their real-names policy does actual harm, and they do other skeevy things that creep me out. I do miss it, but not enough to add my endorsement to them by being there.
In 2001, I was working as a temp, and had been for around twenty years. My assignment at the time was to copyedit tech manuals for Logicon, which had recently been bought by Northrop Grumman. I liked having a job in editing, but I didn't like being a cog in the military-industrial machine. A little later, I got a "permanent" job at a Northrop Grumman shipyard, which presented the same feelings to me about my role in war.
In 2004, I decided to just quit the shipyard, and James and I moved to the Bay Area to be closer to
stonebender and sogwife. I temped some more, at FedEx and other places, but when the kid moved in with us, I started looking for a job with benefits. I worked at FedEx as a plane loader, at Ikea as a store clerk, and as a temp at UC Berkeley (that one started as a one-day assignment). Eventually, I got a permanent job at UC Berkeley, and worked there 9 years. For about 8 years, I loved it. That last year was a bear, to be honest, no pun intended. In 2011, at 44 years old, I decided to go back and get my BA in Creative Writing. I did it (yay!) in 2013, at 46.
In 2014, I quit my job and James and I moved back to the San Diego area to be near my mom, who is old and ill. We really enjoy each other's company, and the life disruption was worth being close enough to her to be of some help and also to just be near her. This also brought me nearer to my dad, with whom I've started a website project and roughly weekly robot-geek and/or karaoke dates. After four long months of unemployment, during which we racked up our first-ever credit-card debt (ouch), I found a job at the local community college, where I got my AA in 2000. I've been there going on two years now, and I like it fine.
My life right now is hard in different ways from before, but it's also joyful in the same ways, and peaceful in about equal measure. I like who I am. I like the people I surround myself with for the most part. Onward!
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth (DW). I welcome comments here or at the original post, where there are currently
comments. If you don't have a DW account, you can post using your LJ name as an OpenID account, or feel free to comment anonymously and I'll unscreen.