I have a date tonight and it’s with Thomthulhu and we’re going to Twisted Tail and it’s going to be pretty much the best. My new hair is straight up ridiculmazing smokey lavender dreamboat city, and I’m wearing my favorite dress. We’re going to Twisted Tail and I am a pleased and happy girl who looks like this today:
Flawless!
I feel tired this morning, but slept better last night than I have in a few days with a little help from Molly Hooper. Chamomile and snow drop are pretty effective sedatives, let me tell you. I’ve been drinking (and sampling) more tea lately and I find it makes me happy. Plus, come on — Homestuck blends? Sold. Good job, Adagio. KANAYA AND FEFERI! I love them.
Work has been going well, though I’m giving more than I’m getting from it these days. Outside of work I am trying to commit some formula structures to memory and develop more facility with them. I have a budget to work out for my upcoming Rails Girls event in June, and need to come up with a plan to populate that event with awesome and varied and adventuresome women* and girls*. Some of that may involve buying a plane ticket for a certain beloved twelve-year-old I know to come stay with us for some of the summer. I have my first Girl Develop It event in a little over six weeks, and I’m excited to get a good foundation in Java. The internet’s not going anywhere, after all.
We have a few shows coming up in February, and I’m excited to perform (and make a few extra bucks, honestly). Beatrix and Bria have offered to help me with costumes (not my strong suit), and making room in our Library for a small sewing machine is probably a thing I should investigate.
Overall, things are grand. I’m hoping today just flies by. I’m quite looking forward to my date tonight. ❤ #fhtagn
It snows! Harsh ye naught my shine, haters. L’hiver for lyfe.
My commute in on the train was lovely this morning, though chilly. I should have thrown some of those pop-the-seal-warm-the-toes things in my Sorels before I left the still-unnamed Apartment. I love how darkness glows just a bit in the early morning when it is snowing. I also love excuses to wear my fuzzy snow boots with the red laces to work.
Yesterday was Thomthulhu’s final day of work, and I’ve struck a hard bargain with our former landlord regarding the eight days of rent he’s ‘requesting’ for February. You know, after we had vacated his now pretty dilapidated and poorly maintained building with a roof that leaked into our living room and a basement corner propped up by two by fours on the second of January. Writing the required communication for that bargain to be struck was challenging, but I did it.
A lot of my people are talking about Resolutions for the New Year, and I think it is pretty great. There’s not really enough long-term change required in my life for me to muck about with one, though I do have a pretty lengthy to-do and to-master list most of the time. I’m happy with my body, my food choices, my capacities, and my choices. The things I am working on are in pretty full swing, and have been for months; and “keep on with it, girl” isn’t much of a resolution. It’s more Just How I Roll, these days. I have a pretty substantial project to complete Wednesday after work so that I may submit it Friday, but I feel pretty confident I can make that happen. My project and learning experience with Hanif will start the following week, and will likely transition into a larger project (and a corresponding list of mastered skills).
I’d like to keep the orchid that T gave me alive? It would be nice if it would re-bloom. We’re going to try to grow herbs in the kitchen?
Career change will take the shape and timing that it takes, probably within the next three to six months, factually speaking.
Our new home is amazing. We have a bunch of projects to build and art to frame. We took some measurements for where shelves might fit in places like the kitchen, dining room, and bathroom yesterday evening when I got home from running a few errands. We have a bed to build. I have art to make. Managing our money seems to be going as well as it can go under our current constraints. I seem to be doing a good job of maintaining love, friendships, intellectual interests, and time for myself even though my commute is lengthy and begins early in the morning.
So, what would I be resolving to do, then? I’d like to maintain my ridiculous hair. My birthday month (March, for those of you following along at home) will likely involve a donation jar/paypal link dedicated to a pretty ambitious tattoo and I’d like to start the first session this spring, when my thirty-third birthday passes. So maybe I’ll do like, quarterly resolutions.
My resolution for this quarter is that I’ll have a really amazing birthday this year. My birthday is a Friday this year, so I might take off from work. Maybe I’ll go to the Barnes by myself (or bring Thomthulhu, if he is done classes early enough in the day!) Thirty-three belongs just to me, and I’m going to celebrate it with accomplishments, progress towards my goals, appreciating myself, and investing myself in projects that are just mine. I will also probably research, plan, execute, and eat a really beautiful meal for a very small group of friends. Catalyst Con is the following week, and I’m going to be attending for at least a portion of the weekend with a few of my dear friends. Depending on how the first quarter shakes out, I can set new goals for April-July!
This past weekend, two days after Christmas, we upended our material possessions, and (with a lot of help from friends quite dear) we moved to West Philadelphia. A lot has happened, though, so let me catch you up.
I made a contact at a company for future consulting work, and potentially, a future opportunity for a full time position. My contact is very sweet, super honest, and quite helpful. We talked a lot about my desire to land in either a Managed Services Lead position, or to end up as an accomplished Analyst in the field of business intelligence.
Hanif and I talked a lot about my training and tracking for [redacted], and we have a plan to get me up to speed sooner than I hoped, given my wont to eat a whale in one bite then chew for a year hoping to swallow it.
[Redacted] (!!!) emailed me on Christmas Day morning, responding to my application for a Junior Analyst position to which I’m terribly excited to respond. It’s essentially a pre-interview technical screening to show [redacted] my strengths and ability to leverage queries to yield meaningful data. I was elated upon reading the email, not only because [redacted] has a bit of a reputation for not responding to applicants, but also because I feel very capable of giving them full, meaningful responses to each use-case.
We visited families of blood and the heart this holiday. Thomthulhu replaced a tea pot our cats shattered, and also gave me an HP Lovecraft tee-shirt I like very much. We go to Lancaster for New Years, and I’m excited to see a small group of friends we don’t get to see too often during the winter months.
I received a very generous year end bonus from the law firm, and an equally generous and heartfelt gift from the attorney for whom I work.
The move went relatively smoothly, and the Sky Warren of R’yleh should be cleaned out and ready for new occupants by this time next week. I’m desperately hoping that our landlord will find an occupant in time for February 1, so that I don’t end up having to pay another full month of rent at the old place AND a full month at our new home, but HEY IT IS ONLY MONEY WHATEVER WE SHALL DEAL.
Thomthulhu gave his notice Monday last, and today is his third-to-final day of work. He begins classes at Temple University on the twelfth, and has a full load of courses in History (and Latin, naturally).
I’ve drafted solicitation letters for sponsorship for my Rails Girls event in June of the coming year. I’m picking up Ruby in my spare time, and have a proof of concept project to work on (and a domain name that will be its home). I really love the language, and hope to move on to Java and HTML/CSS when I’ve got a good handle on Ruby. Code Academy has been a great resource for me so far, and I’m hoping to make some Girl Develop It meet-ups in the near future.
It just goes to show how much can change in a year, I suppose. Inviting people who encourage, support, and advocate for me and my abilities and wonder and desire in a truly meaningful way has opened so many doors and cleared so many paths in my life. It makes such a significant difference to move from people who expend their energy talking about support to people who expend their energy actually just providing and reinforcing support. I’m surrounded by people who know that I’m a force of nature and that I make good decisions. My participation in these relationships is not contingent on getting things right all the time, or doing things the One True Right Way (read: their way). I don’t spend my time mired in Emotionally Intense Constant Exchange. My relationships are more fluid, reciprocal, cooperative, and trusting. They’re more mindful. I’m not expected to conform or assimilate. It’s like going from a cult to a culture. We spend time relating, rather than talking about relationships. We spend more time building and doing than we do processing and discussing. I went from deeply questioning my value and enoughness seven or eight months ago to rarely bothering to give it a second thought because of course I am valuable and enough! I ask for reassurance when I need it, invariably receive it, and believe its veracity because it is supported by consistent actions over time. The cognitive dissonance has almost completely evaporated. I have not been confronted with a moment of “You’re saying X, but your actions say Y,” since Galactic Collision 2014.
It’s… honestly pretty glorious. I feel like a pretty darn great version of myself and it’s a great way to begin 2015.
I’ve been drowning at work. It’s been going on for weeks. Most days, I’m at the office from six in the morning until at least five at night. I don’t take a lunch break much anymore. I’m deeply unhappy, here.
I want to skip the firm holiday party and our usual luncheon, but I know I should go.
It feels like nothing on my to-do list can ever wait long enough for me to finish whatever it is I’m working on. I’m trying really hard not to check out on the job emotionally, but it’s really difficult when you feel like basically all you’re doing is failing for eleven to twelve hours a day, five days a week.
The last three weeks have been insane and stressful with a real tough case of mixed bag. It’s early Monday morning, and I’m hoping to collect my thoughts and embark upon another stressful week coming from a place of gratitude and excellence.
Things for which I am grateful:
My training is coming along nicely. A few things developed outside of my control and so my certification date is likely the end of this month, but that is okay! It will give me more time to study, make pretty flash cards with crayola markers, and play with use-cases before I take the exam.
I’m in touch with two recruiters already, and one of them seems especially lovely.
A path exists such that once I’m a certified administrator, I can move on to be certified in implementation, then development. I like paths, and my capacity to pursue them independently. I also like milestones on my journey!
A weekend day at Celia’s happened this Saturday, and was a lovely reset for my brain. Looking forward to spending time with her and her family over Thanksgiving.
Tom is a wonderful, patient, and understanding man. He also calls me out when I’m letting things get to me without calling my stress responses unreasonable.
I have great friends.
I have a date with a hot bath, cup of tea, nice pens and some training materials tonight when I get home from work.
We go to see what will likely be our new home, tomorrow after work. In less than 8 weeks, we’ll be moving to West Philadelphia. This is me breathing through the “eight weeks” part. I’m so glad we own sensible furniture. By volume, the majority of our possessions are books, and those box up and move pretty easily.
Holiday bonus time is approaching rapidly, and will be warmly and enthusiastically welcomed.
Things inevitably trend towards being okay.
So. There’s all that. Hey there, Monday. Let’s dance.
I think goal-setting and accountability are important. I also think setting meaningful deadlines for myself is a) hard; and b) necessary. I have perfectionist tendencies that sometimes facilitates procrastination. I tend to put things off until the circumstances are perfectly as I envision them. I’ll wait to do a big task until I have a giant chunk of time where I feel energized, well-rested, enthusiastic, and so on, instead of just buckling the f*ck down and completing what I can in smaller chunks, even if the circumstances are imperfect.
In an effort to expedite the changes I’ve alluded to in previous posts, I want to head myself off at the pass, by publicly stating a goal, keeping myself accountable to it, and celebrating when I complete it.
My plan is to complete two sections of the [redacted] training program, quizzes included, every day from now until 10 November, and pass the final exam by 11:11 on 11/11. Some of the units are long and dense, and will require a lot of my brain power. I’m going to pick up a bottle of champagne tonight to keep in the fridge. When I complete my goal and I’m cleared to pick up my first part-time assignment, that bottle gets opened.
I admit there is a distant part of me that is giving my optimism the side-eye. Somewhere, a tiny voice is whispering that I will fail, that this opportunity is too good to be true, that I’m too late to the game, that somehow, that I’ll do all this training but not get assignments, I’ll end up stuck or otherwise screwed. I’m doing my best to drown out that voice, because I know it doesn’t serve me, anyone I love, or any of the people who are helping me make this change.
Right now, I have two full uninterrupted hours between 06:15 and 08:30 Monday through Friday. I also technically get a lunch hour (I just very rarely interrupt my day to take advantage of it). On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have my evenings entirely to myself after work, since Tomthulhu has standing games those evenings. That gives me an additional four hours each of those evenings before it is basically bedtime for me. I could also squeeze in an hour on Tuesday evenings before bed. I typically have Fridays free as well. Saturday and Sunday, training time will be 2 hours in the morning after I get up and have some coffee. That gives me close to forty hours between this moment and the evening of the tenth, and I’ve already completed one unit. The training itself is allegedly forty hours, so I’m ahead by a little bit.
I wish real life had progress bars. I’m planning to make myself a sticker chart, instead.
Picking up a ten hour weekly assignment shortly after the 11th would mean six or seven weeks of non-trivial additional income on top of my holiday bonus which usually arrives mid-December. Plus, I’d have a bit more sanity sooner and a little less of that voice yammering in my ear.
So I’m planning to take up an ultrabulky knitting project that I hope to complete once we move. It’s impractical to attempt a project of this size in our current apartment which is cozy, but also… mostly hallway.
The finished project will be a queen sized knit blanket, like the one featured here.
There are some excellent patterns and blogs about taking on a project of this size and gauge; and it’s clear, this will require a lot of space that can be catless, dry, and will require easy access to a washing machine. While I’m seeing a lot of people using superwash merino roving as their fiber, I’m tempted to use a Wensleydale or Targhee. That’s just a matter of preference. Merino is lovely, but I find it a bit delicate for items that see regular use.
To complete the project, I’d have to make my own needles out of PVC pipe, have a bunch of throw-away bedsheets, have access to a washing machine with a fill/drain/spin only cycle setting, and a room with some floor space that also has a door on it. I’d also need a needle felting kit, which, as T pointed out, is a silly name since one does not felt needles.
I like the idea of this being the first project I complete in our forthcoming new home, especially since we’re moving in January — prime knitting season. That’s also around the time that we’re going to venture to build our bed, (and probably a standing desk) so running those two projects concurrently is appealing.
I’ve never done a project of this gauge or magnitude before, and I feel like a giant marshmallow blanket is just something we deserve to have in our lives. Apart from the various stages that involve “waiting for the damn thing to dry” I honestly don’t foresee this project taking too terribly long, either.
I’m excited to give it a go. (:3
*Cross-posted from HNPolymath, where I will be focusing primarily on my professional life goals and adventures. I’ll be keeping the mushy stuff here, don’t worry*
I’m an archivist, at heart.
I keep email threads, text messages. I take a lot of screen shots. I like being able to look back (and forward, then back again, then forward) to track where I once was, where I thought I’d be, where I finally ended up, and how I got there. I make a lot of parenthetical statements, and one of my favorite things about reading someone else’s code is often what they have to say between the lines — the part of the code that doesn’t run is as interesting for me as the part that does.
Some of this is because I’m just a process sort of girl. I like looking at someone’s work, whether it is art, food, a blog, tweets, a kickstarter, some code, or basically anything else, and figuring out how it developed and blossomed out of this human person’s brain. It’s fascinating.
That said, I’m on the cusp of undertaking a journey my own self. Archivist that I am, I want to document how it goes. Here’s what’s going on:
I currently work in legal. I’ve been here for nearly four years, and entered the field upon getting my shiny masters degree in philosophy. I have begun to bump up against ceilings. Ceilings irk me. To progress in my current state, I would need to go to law school. The termination of that project would be practicing the law as an attorney. To be succinct: Don’t Wanna. More accurately: practicing the law as an attorney is not worth the costs of that journey, given that the end result is not something I want for myself.
Being an archivist has made me an excellent paralegal. Here’s the thing: I’m also a polymath. I have a lot of widely applicable, flexible, highly transferable talents and skills. Legal Lyfe will never bring me satisfaction because I’m too omnivorous a problem-solver. I like steep learning curves. I’d rather collaborate than argue. I prefer cooperation to conflict. I crave new domain experience. I want to learn languages (Ruby! German! CSS! Dutch!) and tackle novel problems with glorious, meaty data and delicious trial-and-error. I want to make things. I also want to break things and find new ways to fix them. I want to collaborate with other people who like breaking and making things. I want the people I work closely with to be team members, not opponents.
To that end, I hope to be making a well-considered transition out of legal lyfe and into the tech sector within the next six months. It will be gradual. A part-time database administration job, perhaps. And then another. Then full-time. By this time next year, I hope to be working a full week, remotely, from our new home in Philadelphia. I think I have the ability and connections to make that dream a concrete opportunity. It’s a little surreal. It’s a little exciting. It’s documentation-worthy. I don’t know, some women have MomBlogs? This is my story.
Here are some objectives:
Network. Fill in the gaps of database building and administration. Clean off the rust and add some polish. Acquire requisite bits and bobs.
Acquire. Self Determine. Timeline depending, gradually acquire a collection of DBA gigs. Build toward a 40-55 hour workweek. Transition fully out of current employment at the 40+ hour mark. Purchase health insurance independently. Stop driving to work. Start walking to coffee shops with a laptop. Make your own hours. Start work at 6 AM. Build and maintain a work space that makes you happy.
Learn. Pick up Ruby/Groovy, with an eye on Rails/Grails. Facilitate and host a Rails Girls Workshop by June 2015.
Join. Find Local meetups for women in technology and development. There are awesome people out in the world, and they have good ideas. Find them. Learn what they know.
Build. Hack that sous vide machine. Make some furniture. Take good pictures, write good instructions. Program the iPhone application you’ve been half-joking about for 2+ years. Do an excellent job, and be proud of it.
Go to the Hacktory, regularly. Makers are everywhere, and they have meetings. Sometimes, they might need snacks. Trade them snacks for skills, time, and tutelage.
Write. Find the time. Make the time. It can be code, a blog, a journal, or work on an adventure path for your tabletop players. Do not let a day go by without writing something that was born in your brain.
Read. I mean, okay. No one could stop you if they tried. Still. Don’t give it up. Not for anything.
Climb. Acquire skills. Conquer domains. Complete projects. Track progress. Make better spreadsheets. Move up, move on. This is where you are at your finest, and you know it. Master a thing and find ways to make it work for you.
Collaborate. Share. You’ve been dreaming of running an informal supper club cooperative for years. Make it a reality. Sundays are for food, family, and friendship. Stock that chest freezer. Start trading the things you’re great at for things at which you would like to be great. Examine the community you build. How do you serve it? How can it serve you?
Listen. Always, and in all things. Also, Ask. Asking is important.
Pursue. Make the time to learn the things you want to learn. You will find a way to make them work for you. German, WordPress, circuitry… embrace your omnivorous nature. You’re going to be tired. Go be tired and interesting.
Celebrate. You’re going to be acting on your own design, on a timeline set by you, directed by your own self. That is huge and it is worthy. Keep a bottle of champagne chilled in the fridge at all times. You’re going to need it.
The present feels a lot like transitioning from the hot sand of the sun-baked beach to the receding tidal line. Man, that water looks cold. It looks a little choppy. But it’s a beautiful day for a swim. There’s a little trepidation, sure. But I’ve swum in colder waters, I’ll bet you. In just a short while, I’ll be up to my neck shrieking with delight. I was born for this.
Dudes, I am /tired/. I also look like this, now *gestures toward the cute girl in the right-hand margin*:
It took 8 hours to get my hair this color — TOTALLY WORTH IT.
I have a buncha stuff to do this week, including complete a character sheet and background for a new and exciting tabletop character, figure out what I need to do to get started programming in Ruby, talk to a friend about database administration, submit my resume and cover letter to [redacted] for an informational interview, meet up with Felicity because it’s been decades since we’ve hung out, and drive to New Hampshire for a LARP event this weekend whereupon I will likely perish of exhaustion and probably happiness from flopping on the staff there because oh how I adore them. Oh, and you know, work and stuff. (Plus there’s always the daily essentials like snuggle my Monster and play with our cats.) There’s also some Halloween costume crafting to get finished, but I’m not stressing that. Fionna the Human and Prince Gumball will be stylin’ this year. Adventure Time, C’mon Grab Your Friends!
I’m laying the groundwork for some big changes, and it feels daunting but exciting. I have some sponsor letters drafted to see if I can get a Rails Girls event going in the early months of 2015. A fair number of my ladyfriends, young and old, have expressed interest in participating, and our buddy Sam (graduate of the Flatiron School and former roommate of the inimitable Tomthulhu) has offered to coach the weekend-long workshop. I’m looking into communities in the Philadelphia area that encourage, teach, and support women in tech domains, and have reached out to the Hacktory to see how I can get involved there.
A dear friend works for [redacted tech company], and has offered to teach me the basics of database administration — a skill that could allow me to work entirely from home or mostly-remotely within the next year. It would likely mean a 55 hour work-week, BUT, given that to keep my current gig, I’d be commuting an hour each way, would be paying $200/month just to park my car (AUGH) and would not have the freedom to make my own hours, DBAdmin looks like a net gain for me in terms of time, flexibility, and satisfaction. Health insurance would be a bit of a thing; but isn’t it always? Database administration chops and experience would make me pretty recruit-able, and would give me the time and materials to pick up Ruby, my first programming language, organize and attend maker-type meetings and events, and would open a ton of doors in analysis and business intelligence — a place I would love to land, because data makes me drool on myself. You know, contemplative drool. It’s dignified. Somewhere in there, I’d also like to pick up German, Norsk, or Dutch, because why the h*ll not. (Ginny, let’s speak German and work from coffee shops!) *Edited to add: it appears that the cost of health insurance through the ACA Marketplace would be equivalent to what I’d be paying to park my car at my current job, so those expenses would cancel one another. Combine that with not spending what I’d be spending to drive back and forth, and that a 55 hour work-week would give me $150 more per paycheck, I’d be netting well in the black, even after paying for health insurance.*
As all of this starts to look less like me daydreaming and more like How I Will Actually Spend 2015, I am periodically struck by how much happier and more myself I am for having culled negative, obsessive, and predatory people out of my life so completely. Good Riddance, y’all. If I had kept on in those friendships and relationships, there’s no way my life would be as full of wonder, promise, and love as it is now. T and I had a talk of medium-length last night about how tough (but necessary) it is for us to balance the things we must do with all the awesome things we want to be doing, and I muttered into his neck “Our life is so awesome.” He agreed with as much enthusiasm as an exhausted man running a fever could do. He also took a moment to remind me that weekends with me remain a top priority for him, that he’s looking forward to our move to the city, and that he hopes fervently that I can leave my job shortly after New Years. What a dreamboat, tha’. (:3
I occasionally catch word of goings-on in a life I intentionally left behind and feel a cascade of relief, gratitude, and good fortune for having been given such good cause to exit with a quickness. Like, hey! Thanks for being /so terrible/ dudes. You did me a solid. As awful, invasive, petty, and f*cking insane as it felt at the time, it was maybe just what I needed to be reminded that co-dependence, martyr complexes, perpetual trauma-reenactment, and arrogance are the Blob to my Downingtown Diner. Those traits can fill every crack and crevice of even a well-constructed and curated life, choking out the life, the fun, the romance, and the room for growth and change.
Now, as I look to the future, I’m filled with energy, hope, and optimism. And lists of three things, because I just like them, okay? I do. More later on what transpires. Now, on to the work day.
After an awful eventful morning at the Delaware Department of Motor Vehicles, wherein I wept but did still manage to get permanent tags on Kimber (my 97 Subaru Legacy), and a yesterday evening wherein I also wept finding out that the shop that was working on my Saab put it in storage and wants to charge me per day (still hyperventilating), I just got really hopeful, excellent news and I am here to share it with all y’all:
Yesterday, as I mentioned, I pitched an article series to xoJane about my experiences as a suicide intervention counselor. Today, as I left the DMV, I received this email:
Hi, and thank you for submitting to xoJane!
We like you! And we would like to publish your story. Let’s start with one overarching IHTM on the topic of being a suicide intervention counselor and see how the response is. If people seem interested and want more, we can discuss the other, more in depth topics.
Can you send (or re-send) us the piece, some original art to run with it, a bio picture, and a bio for your author page? You can download our submission guidelines [redacted]. Please try to adhere to these guidelines and please read the photography guidelines carefully.
If you would like to remain anonymous please do not send a bio or bio image and try to make sure there are no defining characteristics in any of the images you send us. When can you have this all to me? We can pay you $50 for your article. I will send you a contract as soon as you confirm your due date.
Thanks!
[Redacted]
This feels like a big deal. No one has ever really offered to pay me money for my thoughts or words before now, and it happened on my first pitch, on a pretty heavy and serious topic — that feels really encouraging! An ongoing engagement writing for xoJane.com (and a few other publications I won’t name here because I’d like to remain anonymous for personal reasons) would already make a big difference in my digital footprint (because career change!), and the financial impact is non-trivial, especially with the other changes I’m trying to implement. Also, I love writing and it feels really amazing that someone wants me to do a thing I really love and treats it like it matters!
I’m really excited, and I promise to keep you all up to date on my publication dates. (: ❤
I could hide my own Easter eggs. 
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