Getting the big thing out of the way first because that’s how I do, but for the first time in a long time I’m without a job. The long and short of it is I was managed out (I’ll go into more detail when I’ve put some distance between me and my firing), but that’s where I am. Which means I can now stop neglecting this thing–yes, I know, I’ve said that before and maybe I’ll stick with it this time.
The thing about working the job I did until this week is I spent 8 hours/day fixing, posting to, or commenting on WordPress sites. Which, I mean, I enjoy doing–it’s why I created this one. But as it happens, after staring at WordPress for 8 hours for money, I found I didn’t have as much motivation as I thought I would for staring at this site for an hour or less. So there were brain dumps that weren’t dumped, rants that weren’t ranted, snark that wasn’t snarked, politics that weren’t mocked and little curiosity projects that were never poked at. Because all of my curiosity was taken up with doing the same thing on the sites what paid me. They don’t pay me anymore, so–at least for the next 5 minutes–I’m back to what I did before, albeit fleetingly.
So what’s changed in my life? Not a whole lot. I learned a ton about how the internals of a company I had a lot of respect for worked, and in a lot of ways I got to see how the sausage was made. I found a couple of love interests but am very much still largely unattached. I’ve built more of the life I’ve wanted to build for myself–though that’s in a tiny bit of a holding pattern now while I fill the newly created income-sized hole in said life. I’m still back and forth to see the family as often as I can get away with. So in short, I’m still me. Still not much to look at. Still more comfortable beating a server into submission than conversing with people. And somehow, that still makes me stable.
The last time I was semi-active as far as this site is concerned, pandemic lockdowns were a fresh wound in society’s consciousness. I’d like to think things have returned to normal since then and for the most part they have, but some of the twists and turns that new normal has decided to take I could do without. I’m 20 minutes from where the freedom convoy set up shop in Ottawa for 3 weeks, so not only did I get to read about it (wish I had time to mock it) on a daily basis but it was basically all the conversation if the conversation was a local one. I’ve seen weird weather, weirder politics, and Canada’s economy has largely gone sideways since then. So all in all it’s been fun, for various definitions.
We’re about halfway through 2024 and I still don’t know where this year’s going for me. But if I can actually be consistent with posting to this thing again, maybe in 2025 I’ll be able to figure that out. In the meantime, let’s see how long it takes before I remember I wanted to do this again. Any bets on 4 years?