...or better yet, like trying to find a car during COVID???

I got told by five people last week that they had sold their machines to other people and that they had been swamped with DMs. one of those people was someone who hasn't even posted publicly, it was just me being referred by someone who had sold their machine and had a coworker looking to sell! @_@

It's been an actual nightmare trying to find something. I managed to find one, but jeez...

I also had a really good interview. we will see how that goes. I haven't been having any trouble getting interviews, but I've been picky about where I'm applying so I'm getting less and less. which actually is a good thing because it's been crazy overloading.

I'll just paste what I wrote to E about the interview:

interview went really well. we ran out of time because both of us were talking a lot, that kind of how it ends up when you build rapport haha. the person i interviewed with is from a small town in western michigan, about 30 minutes north of where we were born and raised so we had that in common.

they actually are open to me being in either position (the customer service or the back office position), but they wanted to meet with me and talk to me about the realities of both positions.

they seem really nice and the work seems easy. they said they might need to schedule more time with me because there was supposed to be a mock call, but we didn't get to it because we both were asking each other a lot of questions and speaking with each other a lot/connecting.

i think if they don't give me an offer, it's because they genuinely feel that my personality wouldn't be a fit. I was very, very honest about our personality, in that I am the first ones to talk when there's an awkward pause during meetings of 20 people and the facilitator says "any questions?" and I am the type that gives a lot of feedback when I am fully trained and have mastered everything.

The interviewer also was like "we don't mind occasional attendance issues as long as you're really honest, I can help you out more, I really appreciate honesty" so i put that in the back of my mind and when she asked how I stayed on task, I was like, "well, this might be too much information, but I used to be really bad with this because I had unmedicated ADHD. I'm medicated now, so it's a lot easier, but I still have XYZ process to help me stay on task." just showing her that I am very honest in general. I was like, for better or worse, I am honest.

she asked "what are some times that you being late has affected your job performance?" and I was like, I wish I could tell you, but this has genuinely never been an issue with me, aha.

it was a huge green flag that they seemed open about accepting feedback though, as I honestly told them that that was something that we struggled with at my last position, where i felt like my feedback was hitting a brick wall a lot of times. I also told them that I struggled with a position where I am alone a lot, so in all truth, the customer service oriented position might be better for me. it seems like their other team, the back office one, has a lot of people like at merit... super introverted people who don't really want to interact, they just clock in, do their work, and clock out. whereas the customer service position has a lot more team camaraderie, people talk a lot more. the customer service position seems to have a bit more oversight, but that's just because the manager is more extroverted so reaches out more.

the back office position seems also a lot more like merit because they have flexible hours, whereas the customer service one, you're pretty much clocked in and then clocked out at the same time every day. I told them that I always clock in and clock out at the same time, I wasn't really the type that utilized the flexibility of the position unless there was some sort of medical issue happening, and then I let my manager know. whereas I know some people will clock in and clock out at very different times at merit as long as they're still within the window. we pretty much always have worked 10-6 without any variation.

also I tried to dictate this entry and talk about actual nightmare. Google's Android keyboard is literally broken for voice dictation lol.

this journal

there's no way I'm ever going to get this journal completely done if i keep uncovering old blogs and journals. I don't really think i realized exactly how prolific I am. I'm all over the damn internet. i just found an old random alt deviantart account i had that has a bunch of journals still available on there. help...

the admin at pagecord, olly, was kind enough to help me import all the dreamwidth entries though at least (whew.) and then wrote a really nice blog entry about it :) thank you olly! customer for life right here.

i may or may not (definitely did) write a reddit post over on /r/digitaljournaling suggesting that people check out pagecord as well. I just randomly stumbled upon it; I believe that the admin of hey.com wrote an article about it...? I already forget. the search engine kagi is really good about unearthing more underground articles like that. i'm about to quit my job in a few weeks, and i told e that i refuse to stop paying for kagi haha. that's one of those necessary subscriptions for me. google is just such a shithole at this point for so many reasons.

i also started backing up my old videos which is a whoooleeeee different project. gonna use peertube.wtf - here is my account, the username is needingspace. tbh unless you're particularly interested in videos of my pets (who i definitely think are a lot cuter than everyone else thinks) or really old videos of me, isn't going to be particularly interesting. but yeah.

btw a few things that i've done to help give back to the archiving community for helping me find all my blogs: 1) started running warrior for archiveteam, and 2) installed the wayback machine plugin that will archive any new page i happen to stumble across. honestly the latter is kind of selfish to make sure that my pages don't get lost to time but the former is pretty selfless considering rn they're rush archiving goo.gl, and i don't have anything on there.

job

like i said, i'll be quitting my job in a few weeks (end of august.) i told lyn & a coworker (d) the second i clocked in today that if my manager "g" asked me to do XYZ task today that i'm cutting it short and quitting today. and of course at 4pm (she almost made it to the end of the day!) she came whining at me to do XYZ task.

there is a weekly rotation for XYZ task. d and i have wednesdays. we always do it. but of course there were things sitting there since monday because apparently the four tuesday people can't be bothered? yet manager is gonna come complain to me about it and ask me to clean it up last minute despite me working all morning on getting it cleared out (which is why there was barely anything in there!)

i told e "welp looks like i'm gonna have to quit today, a promise is a promise" and he was like "no, wait until friday afternoon because otherwise g is going to come to me freaking out because b (e and g's manager) is out of office this week" hahaha.

so i guess i didn't even make it a month. lyn said she was surprised that i made it this long, though.

mental health

we had therapy today and talked about the work situation. basically told the therapist that we are always feeling the need to be productive at 120%, so she told us to try and only be 70% productive, and then journal about how we feel about it. so i guess we are going to just keep making more and more journal entries without actually finishing the archives... i swear, i am transcribing them! (and i'm fast at it!) probably need to look into OCR though.

what i'm going to do for work?

well, i don't know, considering the job market is fuckin awful especially since the annoying orange got his second term. i'm getting turned down from very basic entry level shit. i think i'm too skilled for them to trust i'm going to stay at entry level jobs, and too "new" (as in haven't specialized enough in one field) for anyone else to want me... ugh.

e and i kind of agreed that i need to start working freelance/contract work anyway. whether that is through web dev/design or transcription or whatever. i've finally had a little bit of extra energy lately, so i listed a few of my idol CDs on discogs and also made a few websites for my portfolio. hey, it's better than nothing, i guess?

(i also want to learn stenography but the machines are so expensive, so maybe that can wait until if/when i can't find another job... ugh...)

i also made about $50 on prolific last week which honestly is pretty good for a week. and still have lots of surveys available, just haven't been able to dig into them because of working full time. they'll help bridge the gap so hopefully we don't have to dig into our savings while i'm unemployed.

last spending hurrah?

well, i finally got myself some IEM (in ear monitors). spent only $20 but they are surprisingly good. Linsoul 7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2 - affiliate link to help my soon to be broke ass or non-affiliate/vanilla link if you want - which is basically just what reddit suggested for inexpensive IEMs. i just grabbed them so i have a more portable solution when trying to play the steam deck instead of carrying around my big ass mixing headphones. and needed some wireless ones because i didn't want audio delay when playing rhythm games and wanted higher quality audio.

i pulled out my old ipod nano gen 2 and gen 3 (!) being like "wow these headphones don't work with my shitty phone because my phone only takes USB-C headphones even the dongle isn't supported" and then searched reddit and someone suggested to use an old phone and it's like, duh, of course that's the answer. i have a pixel 2 just sitting there begging to be used as a glorified mp3 player, it's even stripped down to the bare basics and has a custom ROM on it.

but yeah, just wanted some way to make myself not go crazy when being unemployed. i haven't been unemployed for over a decade, so i have no clue how long i'm going to be able to last without pulling my hair out... well, i'll do what i can, and keep working on my little projects to hopefully help make some more money.

steve

steve may or may not be getting a divorce... whew. whole different subject. maybe for next time.

anywho i gotta go as maru keeps walking all over the keyboard and trying to help me write this entry. i appreciate his gusto but no.

ttyl 😍 sorry for long post, if someone gives me the chance i just won't stfu. i can think of about 100 other things i want to talk about but... some other time.

(also btw i just went out and got rid of some wasp nests. went from have a wasp phobia to being the house designated wasp remover. how is that for a character arc)