#(because we are queer thankyouverymuch. If you don't like the title for yourself

[getinthehandbasket]

Personal stuff

It's been a long time since I've written anything here about myself. There's.. a lot going on.

I recently got laid off from my job of nearly 8 years. I have a decent amount in the bank thanks to YNAB, but because of childhood trauma it feels like I am deadass broke. I mean, it keeps me from buying things I don't need to buy, but it causes me stress, too.

My partner has, until very recently, been unemployed since April 2020 - laid off from her WebDev job at [insert nationally recognized company here] because of the pandemic. Now, this was her first job out of coding bootcamp. She'd only worked there for 3 or 4 months before the layoff. And NO ONE was hiring junior engineers until just a couple of months ago at the end of 2021. So that means she's got nearly a 2 year gap in her employment history, 4 months of professional coding experience, no formal degree, and a hunger to work in her field and get more experience and on-the-job learning. Right now she's in the middle of the interview process with another globally recognized company who is notorious for taking months to complete the interview process. In the mean time, she's taken a retail job to help keep us going. She's hoping for a promotion but it's not guaranteed. (I'm not naming companies because that's how you jinx it.)

Me? I don't really know what I'm doing. Since my partner isn't making engineer money (yet), I really should be looking for a new job. Problem is.. I've been severely burnt out for at LEAST the last 2 years if not longer. Because my former manager wouldn't fucking take me seriously when I told him I and the other person in our department doing a certain task were so overwhelmed it was affecting our mental health. Luckily, the manager after him did, but it was - by then - too little, too late. So now I'm unemployed and doing my best to try to relax and live a little off of my savings and my upcoming unemployment insurance $. So, that's what's going on money- and employment-wise in my household.

In personal news... SURPRISE! Both of us are trans! Well.. technically I fall under the trans umbrella because I'm nonbinary, but I feel weird using the label for myself. My partner, though, is a trans woman. She's about a year into her transition and she is BEAUTIFUL. She's happier than I've ever seen her. She's gentler than she was. She's calmer than she ever was with testosterone in her. She's more caring, more emotional, more everything that is good. I can't wait to marry her and call her my wife. (But, yknow, that also takes money - even if we just go down to the courthouse it still costs several hundred dollars.)

Me, I'm.. existing. I'm dealing with mild depression symptoms, but the worst of it is held off by the three (3) antidepressants I'm taking for various reasons: 1 is also a sleep aid and 2 are for my ADHD. Which I was diagnosed with in mid-2020. So yay? I spend my time either cleaning, playing World of Warcraft (we are SO CLOSE to killing Heroic Sylvanas!), or hand-sewing a queen-sized La Passacaglia quilt. I can't quite bring myself to think about job hunting right now. Like, the idea makes me want to cry. I'm also learning to zentangle. zendoodle. Whatever it's called.

I've paid off all of my debt but two student loans. Technically I could pull 2/3 of my bank account and completely pay them off, but that would leave my partner and I very little to live on and vastly increase the pressure to find a job. So I'm not going to do that. I still consider having paid off as much as I have a massive life win. Including my car (which I now own outright), I had $80k of debt - and none of it consumer debt, just student loans and my car, which was one of the cheapest brand new cars I could find at the time I bought it. So I'm in a fairly good position.

I don't know where I'm going with any of this. I'm mostly just rambling.

But... yeah. That's my life right now.