Breaking the Silence
It's always awkward for me, making a new LJ post after not having done so for weeks. It feels like trying to pick up a novel you left off reading in the middle some months back; you lose the flow of the narrative after a very short period of time. Not that I'm pretentious enough to think the events of my daily life are worth even a paperback release, but the concept's the same. I get out of the habit of writing my thoughts down, and it gets harder and harder to do so.
There's been multiple reasons for my online hiatus. First off, I'm about to give my home computer the Indian name "Chief Crashes-Like-Crazy". Honestly, some days I can't even get five minutes on this thing without it rebooting on me for no clearly discernable reason. If I'm fool enough to dare to access the mighty Internets, the problem gets even worse. City of Heroes crashes within a minute of loading up, and Firefox blips out almost as quickly. knghtsky and I are still trying to narrow down the problem; the current leading theory is a power supply issue. But until I either 1) get whatever's defective replaced, or 2) throw the thing out my window in a fit of pique, my ability to go online and do anything at home is severely limited. I'm saving every few paragraphs as I go here, just so I don't lose any of my verbal meanderings; this is feeling to be the start of a long post, and if I have to try to reconstruct my stream of consciousness, I'll end up censoring myself, and this post will never be written or posted.
Also, a while back, the firm updated its spyware/firewall software, with the unfortunate result that I can't connect to any of my former creative outlets from work. No LJ, no Moirae chat or forums, no Yahoogroups, no private email, no Cam sites, nothing. Considering I spend a lot more time awake at work than I do at home, that significantly cuts down on my possible postage time.
Technical issues aside, I've also been trying to focus on what's right in front of me (that's not on a monitor screen, anyways). I've been working to be more in-person social things, and I've been gradually decreasing my online time during the past year as a result. It's one of the reasons I quit from being an ST on Moirae; it wasn't that I enjoyed it any less. Far from it; I loved being the Sidereal ST. But the truth was, I was finding less and less time to spend on it, and I didn't think it was fair to anyone to hold on to the position if I could direct anything less than 100% of the effort it required to do the job well.
For a period of time, the Cam was again taking away my time and energy, especially on weekends. However, that's over and done with, and has been for a few months now. I have no intention of ever going back. It's just not what I want to do anymore, for various and sundry reasons. I miss some of the people in it, but I don't miss the Cam experience itself. Just call me bitter and jaded, I guess. I thought it would be different this time, I truly did. But it wasn't, and I don't think it ever could be. Some of that was definitely my fault, and I accept this. I've become a better person about certain things, but I am still far from a saint. In the end, the truth is I seem to get along better with my friends when I'm not in the Cam with them. Whyever that is, I'd rather keep my friends than keep my PC.
I'm finding I miss a lot of my online friends. Guys, please forgive me for being away so long. I feel bad for what probably seemed like snubbing and ignoring. It wasn't deliberate; a lot of things simply got in the way. My life got in the way. I feel bad for the Wyld Hunt plotline especially; even though I physically could not get online to do the story, or email anyone about it, I still feel I let everyone down by dropping out when I did. Once my computer issues are resolved once and for all, I'm going to make an effort to come back to y'all, in some form or another. Don't know if I'm ready to be an ST again, but I want to be with you guys again, have some fun.
So, what is it that I've been doing while I've been electronically silent? Work mostly, lately. I arranged a deal where I could sub-contract out doing the transcript on recorded statements taken in the cases my firm handles. The upside is that transcription work pays $25 an hour, so while the work isn't anywhere near something I could do full time, it's a nice thing on the side financially. The downside is that since it's sub-contracting and not something formally affiliated with the firm, I have to do the work off the clock. This means coming in early or staying late after work in order to use the Dictaphone equipment. Which ends up with me working 10-11 hour days whenever I get a sub-contracting job.
This situation was made horrifically worse last week. The other typist, Danielle, was pretty much not in the office at all from Tuesday through Friday. The apartment below hers had a fire, caused by some moron maintenance guy sparking off the insulation in one of the walls while he was doing a plumbing repair. Asshole didn't bother to tell anyone about it, just tried to put it out himself and then walked out of the place. Of course, the insulation flared up again after he left. The building didn't burn down or anything, but her apartment is rather unlivable right now, so she's been crashing on various friends' couches here in town. I can't blame her for not coming into work under those circumstances, with all she's had to deal with as a result. Unfortunately, her absence meant my workload was effectively doubled, which wouldn't have been so bad if certain paralegals had decided to do their own damn work instead of giving it to me and then throwing a fit if it wasn't done immediately. By the time Friday rolled around, I thought that my head was going to literally explode if I was given any more work, I was under so much stress.
To make a migraine-inducing situation just that much more fun, I had one of the aforementioned contract assignments. Which would normally have been a good thing. However, this was given to me at 2:30 p.m. Thursday... to be completed by 2 p.m. Friday. Which meant I would have to work late Thursday night, then come in early Friday morning if I wanted any hope of finishing it in time. Why the short turnaround? It seems the particular adjuster on this case is just too damn stupid to comprehend that missing the exchange deadline for the hearing would be a bad thing, and kept ignoring the paralegal's requests to hand over the evidence in the case. Kiran had to go over the adjuster's head to her supervisor to get anything out of the carrier, and we didn't receive the file until... wait for it... 1:30 p.m. Thursday.
Now, normally, even all of this wouldn't have been too bad. When I accepted the sub-contract assignment, I knew it would be tough, but I felt I could pull it off. That's before I discovered that the person who took the recorded statements decided to argue with the injured worker for over an hour on the tape, so that I reached 34 pages on a single transcript by 2 p.m. Friday and I still wasn't anywhere near done. Fortunately I'd tackled the other, shorter, statement first, so we were able to exchange that one timely. On the other one, though, there wasn't anything we could do but exchange a copy of the actual audio tape, because between the fact I wasn't allowed to work on sub-contract jobs during normal work hours and the four full shelves of docket work I still had left to do, there was no way in Hades I was going to get it done that day. Kiran was very understanding about it, as it wasn't my fault we got the tape so late. I still felt like I'd failed, though, but there honestly wasn't anything I could do. I was working until 7:30 p.m. on Friday on my docket dictation as it was.
So, yeah, in short, work's been crazy lately. Through it all, though, I continue to love where I work. This is easily the best job I have ever had. After nearly three years of abject misery at CPL, I'm still amazed at the fact I can like going to work in the morning.
However, one thing my job does not do is pay an obscene amount. The benefits are great, don't get me wrong, but the actual wages themselves are ehh. It's become glaringly obvious to me that if I want to be able to afford my several-years-old-by-now resolution of finally getting a fraking car and being transportationally independent, I can't live on my own anymore. It's just too expensive to do so in Austin. Then there's the fact my firm is moving to another building somewhere in Austin around May, my lease here runs out at the end of February, and the month-to-month amount to stay here until May would be over a hundred dollars per month more than the chunk of cash I'm already shelling out in rent. So staying here is just unfeasable in general.
As a result, I'm going to be moving in with knghtsky in a month. He's already got a new place lined up on Wells Branch; adamanteus, athene1765, and I all helped him move the majority of his stuff this weekend. He's signed up for a six month lease, so by the time that runs out, I'll know where my firm's going to be and whether I have to move somewhere else in the city to be able to get to work in anything resembling a convenient fashion. Since knghtsky is my best friend and already puts up with what we could politely term my "issues" with the patience of a saint, I'm thinking this'll work out for the best. I don't claim to be an easy person to live with, but hey, he knows what he's getting into, right? :)
Fortunately, knghtsky was able to score an apartment at a complex that allows cats, which brings me to the next development in my life during my electronic limbo. I got a kitty! Well, technically, it's Kimmi's kitty, Kimmi being the daughter of my stepfather Alan (who I've finally accepted calling my stepfather as of late because "boyfriend" is really a juvenile term for his relationship with my mother, and "significant other" always sounds awkward coming off my tongue). See, Kimmi was previously living with her mother, but in the last year she chose to move in with Mom and Alan because Sandra's a bit... well... whacked. Unfortunately, Alan is terribly allergic to cats, which meant the poor thing was locked up in the spare bedroom 24-7. At Thanksgiving Alan asked if I'd be willing to take it in, and I said I'd love to, but the reason I didn't already have a cat of my own was because of the pet deposit required at my complex. So Alan, being a genuinely nice guy, agreed to pay my pet deposit for me!
So yay, I got a kitty! Finally! Her name is Pearls, and she's a two and a half year old grey tabby cat. She's a rather laid back feline, in between her brief bouts of what my mother termed "squirrelly" behavior. Every now and then, she just feels the need to be weird for no apparent reason. She's rather well-behaved and sweet though; I haven't had any problems with leaving her home alone during the day. She only acts up if I'm present in the house and she feels neglected, and she has very specific methods for said acting up. She's got her "issues", just like I do, so of course I've grown quite fond of her. :) She can be exceptionally affectionate too... she's got this thing about licking my fingers when I pet her, or licking my face if I make kissy noises. While she purrs rather quietly, she purrs an awful lot. She's also lately been jumping into my lap every chance she gets--often when I don't notice she's nearby, which has led to some startlement on my part.
That's most of what's been important to me as of late, I think. At least that I'm up for discussing in public. I'll likely post something more maudlin and even more incoherent later. I'm in one of those moods.
There's been multiple reasons for my online hiatus. First off, I'm about to give my home computer the Indian name "Chief Crashes-Like-Crazy". Honestly, some days I can't even get five minutes on this thing without it rebooting on me for no clearly discernable reason. If I'm fool enough to dare to access the mighty Internets, the problem gets even worse. City of Heroes crashes within a minute of loading up, and Firefox blips out almost as quickly. knghtsky and I are still trying to narrow down the problem; the current leading theory is a power supply issue. But until I either 1) get whatever's defective replaced, or 2) throw the thing out my window in a fit of pique, my ability to go online and do anything at home is severely limited. I'm saving every few paragraphs as I go here, just so I don't lose any of my verbal meanderings; this is feeling to be the start of a long post, and if I have to try to reconstruct my stream of consciousness, I'll end up censoring myself, and this post will never be written or posted.
Also, a while back, the firm updated its spyware/firewall software, with the unfortunate result that I can't connect to any of my former creative outlets from work. No LJ, no Moirae chat or forums, no Yahoogroups, no private email, no Cam sites, nothing. Considering I spend a lot more time awake at work than I do at home, that significantly cuts down on my possible postage time.
Technical issues aside, I've also been trying to focus on what's right in front of me (that's not on a monitor screen, anyways). I've been working to be more in-person social things, and I've been gradually decreasing my online time during the past year as a result. It's one of the reasons I quit from being an ST on Moirae; it wasn't that I enjoyed it any less. Far from it; I loved being the Sidereal ST. But the truth was, I was finding less and less time to spend on it, and I didn't think it was fair to anyone to hold on to the position if I could direct anything less than 100% of the effort it required to do the job well.
For a period of time, the Cam was again taking away my time and energy, especially on weekends. However, that's over and done with, and has been for a few months now. I have no intention of ever going back. It's just not what I want to do anymore, for various and sundry reasons. I miss some of the people in it, but I don't miss the Cam experience itself. Just call me bitter and jaded, I guess. I thought it would be different this time, I truly did. But it wasn't, and I don't think it ever could be. Some of that was definitely my fault, and I accept this. I've become a better person about certain things, but I am still far from a saint. In the end, the truth is I seem to get along better with my friends when I'm not in the Cam with them. Whyever that is, I'd rather keep my friends than keep my PC.
I'm finding I miss a lot of my online friends. Guys, please forgive me for being away so long. I feel bad for what probably seemed like snubbing and ignoring. It wasn't deliberate; a lot of things simply got in the way. My life got in the way. I feel bad for the Wyld Hunt plotline especially; even though I physically could not get online to do the story, or email anyone about it, I still feel I let everyone down by dropping out when I did. Once my computer issues are resolved once and for all, I'm going to make an effort to come back to y'all, in some form or another. Don't know if I'm ready to be an ST again, but I want to be with you guys again, have some fun.
So, what is it that I've been doing while I've been electronically silent? Work mostly, lately. I arranged a deal where I could sub-contract out doing the transcript on recorded statements taken in the cases my firm handles. The upside is that transcription work pays $25 an hour, so while the work isn't anywhere near something I could do full time, it's a nice thing on the side financially. The downside is that since it's sub-contracting and not something formally affiliated with the firm, I have to do the work off the clock. This means coming in early or staying late after work in order to use the Dictaphone equipment. Which ends up with me working 10-11 hour days whenever I get a sub-contracting job.
This situation was made horrifically worse last week. The other typist, Danielle, was pretty much not in the office at all from Tuesday through Friday. The apartment below hers had a fire, caused by some moron maintenance guy sparking off the insulation in one of the walls while he was doing a plumbing repair. Asshole didn't bother to tell anyone about it, just tried to put it out himself and then walked out of the place. Of course, the insulation flared up again after he left. The building didn't burn down or anything, but her apartment is rather unlivable right now, so she's been crashing on various friends' couches here in town. I can't blame her for not coming into work under those circumstances, with all she's had to deal with as a result. Unfortunately, her absence meant my workload was effectively doubled, which wouldn't have been so bad if certain paralegals had decided to do their own damn work instead of giving it to me and then throwing a fit if it wasn't done immediately. By the time Friday rolled around, I thought that my head was going to literally explode if I was given any more work, I was under so much stress.
To make a migraine-inducing situation just that much more fun, I had one of the aforementioned contract assignments. Which would normally have been a good thing. However, this was given to me at 2:30 p.m. Thursday... to be completed by 2 p.m. Friday. Which meant I would have to work late Thursday night, then come in early Friday morning if I wanted any hope of finishing it in time. Why the short turnaround? It seems the particular adjuster on this case is just too damn stupid to comprehend that missing the exchange deadline for the hearing would be a bad thing, and kept ignoring the paralegal's requests to hand over the evidence in the case. Kiran had to go over the adjuster's head to her supervisor to get anything out of the carrier, and we didn't receive the file until... wait for it... 1:30 p.m. Thursday.
Now, normally, even all of this wouldn't have been too bad. When I accepted the sub-contract assignment, I knew it would be tough, but I felt I could pull it off. That's before I discovered that the person who took the recorded statements decided to argue with the injured worker for over an hour on the tape, so that I reached 34 pages on a single transcript by 2 p.m. Friday and I still wasn't anywhere near done. Fortunately I'd tackled the other, shorter, statement first, so we were able to exchange that one timely. On the other one, though, there wasn't anything we could do but exchange a copy of the actual audio tape, because between the fact I wasn't allowed to work on sub-contract jobs during normal work hours and the four full shelves of docket work I still had left to do, there was no way in Hades I was going to get it done that day. Kiran was very understanding about it, as it wasn't my fault we got the tape so late. I still felt like I'd failed, though, but there honestly wasn't anything I could do. I was working until 7:30 p.m. on Friday on my docket dictation as it was.
So, yeah, in short, work's been crazy lately. Through it all, though, I continue to love where I work. This is easily the best job I have ever had. After nearly three years of abject misery at CPL, I'm still amazed at the fact I can like going to work in the morning.
However, one thing my job does not do is pay an obscene amount. The benefits are great, don't get me wrong, but the actual wages themselves are ehh. It's become glaringly obvious to me that if I want to be able to afford my several-years-old-by-now resolution of finally getting a fraking car and being transportationally independent, I can't live on my own anymore. It's just too expensive to do so in Austin. Then there's the fact my firm is moving to another building somewhere in Austin around May, my lease here runs out at the end of February, and the month-to-month amount to stay here until May would be over a hundred dollars per month more than the chunk of cash I'm already shelling out in rent. So staying here is just unfeasable in general.
As a result, I'm going to be moving in with knghtsky in a month. He's already got a new place lined up on Wells Branch; adamanteus, athene1765, and I all helped him move the majority of his stuff this weekend. He's signed up for a six month lease, so by the time that runs out, I'll know where my firm's going to be and whether I have to move somewhere else in the city to be able to get to work in anything resembling a convenient fashion. Since knghtsky is my best friend and already puts up with what we could politely term my "issues" with the patience of a saint, I'm thinking this'll work out for the best. I don't claim to be an easy person to live with, but hey, he knows what he's getting into, right? :)
Fortunately, knghtsky was able to score an apartment at a complex that allows cats, which brings me to the next development in my life during my electronic limbo. I got a kitty! Well, technically, it's Kimmi's kitty, Kimmi being the daughter of my stepfather Alan (who I've finally accepted calling my stepfather as of late because "boyfriend" is really a juvenile term for his relationship with my mother, and "significant other" always sounds awkward coming off my tongue). See, Kimmi was previously living with her mother, but in the last year she chose to move in with Mom and Alan because Sandra's a bit... well... whacked. Unfortunately, Alan is terribly allergic to cats, which meant the poor thing was locked up in the spare bedroom 24-7. At Thanksgiving Alan asked if I'd be willing to take it in, and I said I'd love to, but the reason I didn't already have a cat of my own was because of the pet deposit required at my complex. So Alan, being a genuinely nice guy, agreed to pay my pet deposit for me!
So yay, I got a kitty! Finally! Her name is Pearls, and she's a two and a half year old grey tabby cat. She's a rather laid back feline, in between her brief bouts of what my mother termed "squirrelly" behavior. Every now and then, she just feels the need to be weird for no apparent reason. She's rather well-behaved and sweet though; I haven't had any problems with leaving her home alone during the day. She only acts up if I'm present in the house and she feels neglected, and she has very specific methods for said acting up. She's got her "issues", just like I do, so of course I've grown quite fond of her. :) She can be exceptionally affectionate too... she's got this thing about licking my fingers when I pet her, or licking my face if I make kissy noises. While she purrs rather quietly, she purrs an awful lot. She's also lately been jumping into my lap every chance she gets--often when I don't notice she's nearby, which has led to some startlement on my part.
That's most of what's been important to me as of late, I think. At least that I'm up for discussing in public. I'll likely post something more maudlin and even more incoherent later. I'm in one of those moods.