03-23-24: Woes & Wishes
Good evening and Happy March!
It's been a long month full of a lot of stuffffff happening. You may recall my struggles with employment after being laid off last October- and unfortunately, worst has come to worst and I've had to call it quits on living in Austin. Sad sad sad. But, while staying with my parents for a few months feels like I'm suddenly 16 again, I will say that the job I accepted at the PBS station in my hometown is just as amazing as I knew it would be, if not better. Already I've worked on several projects. I forgot just how fun it is to create for a living. I never wanted to do art as a job because I didn't want to monetize my favorite hobby, but I do think that having some sort of a creative job is a great way to stay sane. Then again, I'm saying this now, two weeks in. We'll see if I'm burnt out and fresh out of ideas come the sixth month mark.
Either way, I love video editing, and this is a great opportunity to get some more credits on big name shows. Already we're in talks about helping with a segment for PBS News Hour. That's national news, baby! My name on screens all across the US. Wow. It's probably not a huge deal, realistically speaking, but it's a big step from local programs. I'm very excited for what this job has in store for me, even if I don't love the city I live in now.
Being in a new city is good for one thing, and that's feeling like you get a "fresh start". I am mourning my friends and life in Austin, but dreaming of all the new habits and lifestyle changes I want to implement here. I've always been pretty introverted, so it's nice to at least brainstorm ways of making friends. Unfortunately, this city is very conservative compared to Austin- but hey, I'm from here, so there's gotta be other sane people in the mix. It seems like allllll of my friends are dating now- online and in real life. And not just silly dating, either. Move in together dating. Marriage on the brain dating. Have a baby type of shit. And, naturally, none of them will shut up about it.
It's got me thinking about love. I haven't been in a serious relationship since a really bad experience almost- fuck, like, 2021? 2020 maybe? I'm not the type of person to really feel like I need to be in a relationship all the time, which I suppose is a good thing- but it gets lonely once everyone else is. It's like I've fallen behind in life, and I'm not really sure how to catch up anymore. I was never bursting with rizz. All of my relationships have been with good friends, so it seems like making more good friends is step one to finding someone to spend life with. I've tried dating apps and that's just a travesty. A nightmare. There is this preminent vibe on dating apps- a lonely, desperate, horny one. It really saturates every interaction to the point of killing any interest I might have in any of these people otherwise. I think everyone who uses dating apps and have found success is amazing, but those things are... Not for me.
That's fine. I think for now I will just keep on keeping on, and if something happens, then something happens. But, for the record, it is hard to find love if you aren't looking for it. Either that or I am just not the type of person for whom amazing things fall in their lap.
I have so many plans for this site but they all require a little more energy than I presently have. I've mentioned before working on a site for a nonprofit organization, and that is. Still. Happening. I don't think I realized how long that project would take when I first cigned on to it. Part of the problem is their stupid board- every decision gets funneled into an awful email chain in which everyone in the company can make any change to any part of the website. That's stupid. Their old website was straight out of the 90s- So, to be clear, no one gave a single shit about what this website looked like for the past thirty years, so why in the world does everyone want to put their two cents in now? And it's never towards the beginning of any given process- it's always when we're about done. Then they wanna make sweeping changes to every aspect of the design. So cool.
It's honestly fine. I'm getting pretty good money for it, and it's not an unmanageable amount of work. It has taught me not to go into business with dear friends, lest you want to strangle them, but all is well and the site is almost done (and about to go through the hellish email chain. Again.). The unfortunate part is that working on that project has all but sapped most of my Web Dev Energy and leaves my personal sites getting crumbs. Poor Wax & Wane, I swear I'll come update you soon.
New city sucks, but new job great. Lonely in a new place and looking for love in all the nowhere places. Too wrapped up in website work to do website hobby.
Thanks everyone for reading! I think, even if no one makes it to the end of these, I find value in writing them. I'm not much of a journal-er, so this is a really good way to look back at my life over the past year or so. Sorry they've gotten a bit more bleak, but I'm confident they'll take a turn for the cheerier soon. Big things are happening!