#The scheduled workload is only something I'm getting because I know the job and that's the normal schedule for the job

[thoughtvoid]

Manager, after my orientation: So, there’s only two days in the next two weeks for your training schedule, do you want me to... add you in for any more days or just take it easy?

Me, who has worked at this place a cumulative 4 years: I’m okay with being texted if like. The person who’s supposed to come in for the important shift calls out and you need someone quick, but otherwise, I think I’d like to ease back into things.

Manager: I don’t blame you for wanting to take it easy. Just thought I’d ask because I know some people want to start making money right away.

-the first official schedule two weeks out posts, with five 6 hour days of early morning shifts- Me: ...Well, so much for ‘easing into it’...

[griffonsgrove]

General Dating Headcanons | Dr. Flug

Dr. Flug X GN!Reader

fandom: Villainous/Villainos words: 1457 cw: none!! just cute tooth-rotting fluff!

a/n: aaa!! following the theme with villainous, I HAD to do our favorite scientist!! Also I'm open for requests!! I'd love to see what yall would send in!!

(Platonic): 

Dr. Flug was the one initially responsible for hiring a new employee for the organization after he had groveled at Black Hat’s feet, begging for an assistant to help lighten his workload.

Reluctantly, Black Hat agreed, but not without scaring the daylights out of the poor doctor first.

Flug thanked the high heavens.

And thus began the search for a new assistant, he sent out multiple ads and flyers, and in little to no time, there was a flood of applicants. Having to sift through each applicant only added even more stress to his ever-growing mountain of work. Most of them didn't really seem to stick out.

That was until he got to yours.

He wasn't quite sure what drew him to your application, maybe it was your astounding track record, accomplishments, and references, or maybe it was because he thought your appearance was pleasing to the eye, something about the gleam in your eyes told him that you were a reasonable, logical and pleasant person to be around.

Which is exactly how you ended up at the front gates of the manor, ready for an interview.

Of course, the first person you met was the doctor himself, he had to disable the alarm system to the manor before letting you in. It’s there that he gives a very brief, albeit awkward introduction.

He unfortunately doesn’t socialize much. 

Everything about his energy, to his stature just screamed nervous wreck. It's from there that he leads you to the Lord’s Office. Surprisingly the interview went well!! If getting demeaned and thrown insults was a norm. But! You got the job!

Now you’re in Flug’s hands, you follow alongside him as he leads you to his lab, listing off all the responsibilities he wanted you to be in charge of some of them being: Organizing files and client paperwork, taking calls from new clients and scheduling appointments, also taking customer reviews, and some minor tidying and organization.

And based on the state of his lab you had a LOT of work to do…

I know some people think Flug is an anxious mess 24/7 but that could not be further from the truth. He’s actually quite egotistical and snarky from time to time, and of course a know-it-all.

He's like the “erm actually ☝️ 🤓” guy in physical form.

IS NOT afraid to correct you over minor errors. He’s very particular about how his things are organized in his lab. He likes to call it his organized chaos. So, if anything gets misplaced, he will get snippy or irritable. 

SO..as long as you inform him of how you do things and WHERE you put them, then all is good!

Overtime as you work alongside him though, he genuinely does start to appreciate the work that you do, he's pleasantly surprised when he finds that all his files and blue prints have been organized alphabetically and by color, or that his tools had been rearranged neatly on his workbench by size and shape, and overall his lab was so much cleaner and tidy than he ever could imagine it to be.

No surprise here but, the doctor is AWFUL at taking care of himself.

Which is why you step in to do small little gestures to help him out.

Whether it be bringing him another cup of coffee or making up a small snack for him to eat throughout the day, he even noticed you had draped his lab coat over him when he fell asleep at his desk one night.

He had to admit he wasn't quite used such small acts of kindness; it was a foreign feeling to him.

Did I also mention he’s tired like 24/7. Let this poor man sleep!! 😭

Believe it or not, he’s grown to quite enjoy your company, maybe it was your relaxed nature, but he felt somewhat at ease whenever you were around.

You’ve both actually held some decent conversations from time to time, both sharing your interests that lead into a ramble about his favorite airplane models.

(Romantic):

His confession was actually quite a funny story, and he wasn't even the one to do it! It was 5.0.5 surprisingly. The sweet blue bear wasn't blind, he began to notice that his papa would longingly stare at you, that he would mumble to himself in his sleep, secret confessions he would never dare say consciously. So, the bear came up with a little plan.

5.0.5 loves to draw, Flug practically keeps every drawing he’s ever given him. He decided that he’d make a love note, from Flug to You. He spends a generous amount of time on it, putting such care into the cute little card, and when he’s deemed it perfect enough, he drops it off to you, happily growling.

You're taken by surprise at first, but then you open up the heart shaped card covered in glitter and are pleased to find an adorable childlike drawing of you and Flug, surrounded by a bunch of pink and red hearts. How sweet!

When you confront the doctor in his lab, showing him the card, he flushes, and at first denies such feelings, slightly embarrassed that his fuzzy son was the one to do it instead of him. It’s then that he decides there's no going back and spills out everything to you.

Which is why he’s shocked when you tell him you reciprocate his feelings. What?? Him?? Really????

Things start if really awkward btw, the doctor has been without physical contact for so long that WASNT being beaten down by his boss, that he honestly forgot what it was like to experience affection, aside from the crushing hugs that 5.0.5 would give him.

He’s very fidgety, doesn't quite know what to do with his hands, where to put them or how you’ll respond to his touch.

Please give him a hug :(

He’s also very respectful of your boundaries, as you are with him, he’s not quite comfortable taking the bag off his head, which you don't mind in the slightest.

Things seem to continue almost as normally, but the two of you spend more and more time with each other, taking your breaks together, having lunch and spending your evening time hanging out when neither one of you are slammed with work. He quite enjoyed having movie nights with you, the sci-fi films are always his favorite btw. He heavily critiques the machines and inventions.

You both try to keep your relationship on the down low, Black Hat would blow a gasket if he found out. Demencia on the other hand was a huge tease. She frequently mocked the two of you, mostly Flug, however. You’d stick up for him of course and tease her right back, much to the doctor's surprise.

Queue the heart eyes.

Dr. Flug expresses his affection through small, thoughtful gestures, like leaving little notes of encouragement or surprising you with inventions tailored to your interests.

Speaking of gift giving, he prefers to hand make your gifts. His ideology is that there's no point in getting you a meaningless gift that you’ll throw out in a couple of weeks, so why not make you a meaningful one that you can make your life easier???

Which btw he's VERY observant, it's actually quite endearing from time to time, and he takes note of all your special interests, favorite foods, etc.

Mans is touch-starved. Sorry I don't make the rules. 

PLEASE HOLD HIM. 

He’s pretty hesitant to touch at first, but the second he gets a feel for physical affection he's latching onto you like a koala-bear. He likes holding your hand, his hands are surprisingly soft underneath his gloves. 

When you’re both hidden away in the evening from prying eyes, is when you can finally cuddle and be more affectionate with each other. SPOIL HIM PLEASE.

You become one of his biggest supporters, encouraging him and giving him the long-deserved praise, he aches for. When he’s with you, he’ll admit that you have substantially helped boost his ego and confidence which really pays off in his work. Not that Black Hat would ever give him the satisfaction.

Overall, Dr. Flug really is a sweetheart on the inside, especially with those he's grown to love and care about and getting him to open up to you about his insecurities is one of your best accomplishments, he feels like he can be vulnerable with you and that really says a lot. The man has a lot of inner demons and has willingly put his life down the path of villainy, but he feels with you by his side, that things will be a little bit better...

[theweirdwideweb]

I reported my boss to HR for discrimination last week. Please tell me if I'm crazy.

My old boss got promoted so around October I got a new supervisor. We've been coworkers for about 5 years and had a friendly relationship. I'd been to her house, met her kids, we chit chatted a lot. When she started approving my time cards she noticed I was using about 3-5 hours of PTO per week at random times. I explained this was an informal arrangement I had with my previous supervisor due to my disability. I have C-PTSD and ADHD which honestly make it difficult to get through the day pretty much every day. Sometimes I need more breaks and if I'm using my PTO and being honest, who cares right? Well the new supervisor cared. She told me that if I couldn't be a full time employee they couldn't justify our headcount and my job was on the line unless I made this a formal arrangement. I was really hurt but I did it, I got all the doctors notes together and figured--while I'm formalizing it, I actually do need extra therapy so I'm gonna make my FMLA (family medical leave act) time include these sessions.

All this is approved obviously because one thing I'm not is self diagnosed. I've got medical records a mile high. So starting in January this official leave time goes into effect and I can use up to 7 hours of PTO per week. Before all this began my supervisor consistently praised me as a "rockstar" employee, saying I was the only person on the team who truly follows the rules. In general I was thought of as an excellent worker and had received a promotion. The team that I lead smashed our goals for 2023. But, strangely, once I start the FMLA my supervisor begins complaining about my lack of productivity. I kept a spreadsheet as a tool for my ADHD where I tracked how I was spending my time so I volunteered to let her see it so she could figure it out. Instead of sending the spreadsheet tracking my work in 5 minute increments once or twice, this woman has had me sending it every week for the past 7 months. Every Monday we have our 1:1 and she lets me know how poorly I'm doing. She also sends me an email on Mondays where she counts every email I have in my inbox, every claim I have across multiple programs, every minute of meetings I have scheduled and sends me the amount of time she expects it to take and if I don't make it then we have to talk about my "problems".

Now I'm practically never making it. I've appealed to her and to her boss so many times that there is something wrong with this formula they've come up with to calculate my workload--and they both just think I'm lying. Long story short in May I started measuring my time not on the spreadsheet but by the individual tasks in the email and not only am I keeping up, but there's a full 5-6 hours of work every week that she hasn't been counting (including 3 hours talking on the phone---with her!). I bring this up at our 1:1 in late May and say, See there really is something wrong with your measurement. I'm right on track productivity wise with these tasks. She doesn't acknowledge at all the flaw I've found in her formula but DOES say, "I do think there's been an improvement in your productivity and I expect it will continue to improve as you get more therapy." Full on MASK OFF. So my "productivity issues" are improved by therapy, meaning she's been ascribing those issues to my disability. Incredible.

I go to HR the next day to have this interaction on the record. First time I've gone to HR about anything ever. They are so concerned that they are going to launch an investigation and I tearfully plead with them not to because my boss's boss is out on medical leave and I don't want to cause huge problems while she's away and can't moderate. I didn't realize it would automatically cause an investigation to report this. The lady takes pity on me and says they won't investigate for now.

The VERY NEXT DAY my supervisor tells us in a team meeting (other people there to witness) that she's got a funny story about her son. It's some innocent story about how he's grounded and can't go to a party, but she continues on by talking about how she has to be extra strict with him because he has ADHD. If she doesn't enforce consequences, he'll never learn! And he has to learn because when he grows up his boss isn't going to take his ADHD as an excuse. "Policies are policies" she said, "Your boss isn't going to accept an answer like I know I was supposed to do four things but I only got to three because...." She even went further talking about how he's having trouble learning to drive because of his ADHD and just laughing about it. When he has to do something, she says, she has to remind him multiple times and set timers and double check with him otherwise he'll forget.

So I'm fucking flabbergasted at this point, right? This whole time I've been feeling like this time tracking is discriminatory and here she is just spelling it out for me in neon letters: YES, IT ACTUALLY IS. So I'm biding my time until her boss gets back from medical leave. But after 3 weeks of showing her that her method is flawed she tells me I don't have to do the spreadsheet anymore. Her boss is back but cancelled our first meeting, so I figure: If the bullshit stops, for the sake of my career and mental health I'm gonna let this go. My supervisor goes on vacation for 2 weeks. I'm doing my work exactly as I want to without the added pressure and everything is going great.

Once she gets back though we have our 1:1 and she asks me where my emails were on the 2 past Fridays telling her if I got all my work done. Which she never asked me to do, btw. Reader---I mcfreakin lost it. I belligerently asked why this was still necessary, that I felt picked on and bullied, that she isn't doing this to anyone else on the team, and that I'm sick and tired of constantly being demoralized by her leadership. I told her that I was going to talk to her boss directly about this situation. She was pissed. She actually unfriended me on facebook which for middle aged women is like throwing a grenade.

Next day I talk to her boss. I bring my evidence because of course I've been taking notes. The situation is serious. HR has become involved. And just because there are anti-retaliatory rules for reporting protected concerns doesn't actually protect me from getting fired. Suddenly I'm fearful about everything. I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job and my health insurance, bye bye therapy,, bye bye surgery I need. I've been at this job 6 years and the animosity is at an all time high. Christ almighty.

[filmbyjy]

BUSINESS PROPOSAL > seventeen! sunoo finds out!

synopsis > being the amazing friend you were, you had helped your friend who desperately did not want to go on the blind date so you went as her. however, you were dumbfounded to find out that the CEO was your friend’s blind date! hopefully, he doesn’t recognise you.

masterlist | previous | next

word count: 0.4K words

a/n: i’m just scarred of adding pictures into my written chapter bc of what happened to chapter 10 T_T

if becoming a CEO was an easy job, just anyone would be able to become one. sunghoon had always never understood why his parents had appointed him as the CEO of a big booming company.

until he was told that his grandmother was sick. she couldn’t continue with workload and heavy responsibility. it was too much for her. you see, sunghoon’s grandmother was a smart lady. she got her university’s degree went to some high end school, graduated with honours and started a company at 30. it was something huge for his grandmother and she wanted to leave it in good hands.

she could have left it with her son but when sunghoon was born. she knew he would be great. not only in life but with business too. you could say she was sort of a psychic because truly sunghoon did excel in leading the company at a young age.

so why was he suddenly rushed to get married to some girl?

well…

“sunghoon-ah, when are you going to get married? you’ve been travelling and doing work 24/7. why don’t you go out dating?” his grandmother asks.

“grandma, i’m only 20.”

that was only one of many times she’d ask that question. she knew he wouldn’t take action so she stepped in and set up blind dates for him.

“did you-”

“no.” sunghoon answers. his grandmother sighs.

but will sunghoon's grandmother ever give up? no! she's a stubborn lady and she lives by it. she won't stop until she sees her grandson smiling brightly (and also get out of the damn office)

and that same night he came back from the first blind date with the supposed 'ahn yujin'. she realises that her grandson didn't look too displeased. hence, she scheduled another date.

little did she know that...this 'ahn yujin' was not the real one. who could predict that sunghoon would ended up falling for you. someone who is hopelessly in love with an unavailable person.

"heeseung, what do i do?? sunghoon knows my name! what if he finds out i'm the one who fooled him? what if he fires me!"

"chill out." heeseung munches on the brownies. "it's not like he has seen your face yet. you hid your face like a coward you are when you saw him!" you snatched the brownies from heeseung, he whines.

"i am not a coward, i just don't want to lose my job because i decided to help my friend!"

"you what?"

you slowly turned your head to the side and spot sunoo. oh no.

"dear cousin...heh. hi!" you nervously laugh.

"you are going to tell me everything from start to end." sunoo folds his arms.

let's hope sunoo doesn't tell on you to sunghoon...

-

taglist[open]: @nyfwyeonjun @nicelicious @duolingofanaccount @viagumi @precioussoulofmine @loves0ft @jungwo-nnie @alpha-mommy69 @jnks6r @ilvsoup @abdiitcryy @deobitifull @yenqa @pshchives @jiawji @ckline35 @chaemmie @kwnshi @sunshine-skz @j4yluvr @nearly-brainless-rae @sd211 @captain-satan @love-4-keum @ce1ight @iwonlvr @jajjajas @shinsou-rii @greenmetalroof @byunappetit @yunji-n @oranshi @mynameisnotlaura @invusblog @msxflower @luvkait @uwudaizy @leeis @sstarrysshit @thathybesimp @outrochimy @adajoemaya @artstaeh @seeuuns @watermelon-sugars-things @ktttwwn @moasworld @sseastar-main @liliansun @stepout-09-15 @aishaishaisha @bwljules @indelicate-macalino @sparklingsjy

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[somethingusefulfromflorida]

In December I got a job as a "park ambassador," which the description made sound like a desk job, an event coordinator, but actually turned out to be a manual laborer/groundskeeper. I got overwhelmed by the workload on my first day and quit the morning that would have been my second.

This month I got a job as a front desk clerk at a hotel. Those of you who follow me probably know that I had this exact job at a motel down in the Keys for years, so it was a lateral move, something familiar to fall back on, much easier than the suprise manual labor the park sprung on me. Well, turns out this place lied too because they're cross training me to be a housekeeper, which is ABSOLUTELY NOT worth my time and effort. That wasn't in the job description, and that was never brought up in the interview. Today was my first full shift, and it was horrendous from start to finish because there was simultaneously too much to do and not enough. What I mean is that every single task they gave me had ten or fifteen steps and substeps to follow in sequence, so even the simplest one was needlessly overcomplicated. There's a ton of shit to do, followed by long stretches of absolutely nothing. At my old job, my boss did not give one half of two shits what I did to fill the time; I could go on my phone or my laptop, I could read a book, I could draw, I could space out or take a nap, she didn't care as long as I immediately dropped what I was doing whenever the phone rang or a customer came to the door. No such luck here. I'm not allowed to read, I'm supposed to either sit there in silence or find something to do to look busy for the cameras. That's all it is, just pointless busywork. There are not 8 hours worth of tasks, but they expect you to do 8 hours worth of work!

Oh, and if the woman who's training me was really passive agressive all day about the fact that I asked her to go over the steps slowly so I could take notes and create a checklist. She made a really fucking annoying comment about how I'm the only trainee who has trouble retaining information, like I'm some drooling moron when it's literally my first day. She's younger than I am but she's already been married, had a kid, gotten a divorce, bought and sold two houses, and landed a career as a middle manager, so to her I'm lower than dirt, an abject failure, an example of how not to live your life. She made me feel about three feet tall, and the only thing that prevented me from calling it quits again was that I desperately need the money. This is the way it is: every day I'm scheduled is $100 dropped into my bank account. $15 per hour, 8 hour shifts, that's $120 per day before tax, something like $102 to $105 take home pay. I was hired to be part time, only two or tree days a week, but it pays weekly instead of biweekly so every Friday I'll get $200 or $300. This week they gave me a full 40 hours for training, so that's $500 if I can make it to the end of it without having another panic attack. If I imagine my boss handing me a $100 bill every day at clock out, I think I can get through this.

If they lied about the content of the job, I'm going to give it a solid 75% effort. I'm not gonna stress about meeting quotas or finding ways to look busy. I'm gonna keep using my checklists. I'm gonna keep them with me and go down them one item at a time in front of the customers because that's what I need to do, and if corporate doesn't like it they can fire me. This is just a job, not a career. I'm not an essential worker. I don't give a shit if a customer has a substandard experience. I don't give a shit if the elevator has scuff marks that need to be mopped. I don't care if someone leaves their laundry hamper next to the coin-op machines while they run. I am going to half-ass it all!

I have a disability and it has only gotten worse in the last five years. When I was in college I had good insurance and good medication, but now my plans have next to no coverage; the only meds I can afford are the msot common ones that doctors give away like candy. They don't work for me, but the good shit is too expensive, so i'm wallowing. I was barely able to function in the Keys, but I was driven by my goals of buying a car and moving out of my parents place; now that I've achieved both of those things, I have nothing to look forward too and have lost all motivation to even try. I am not alone, I know plenty of people who are in the exact same boat as me, but apparently none of them live within 500 miles. All my would-be peers up here are successful and functional. it comes easy to them. I'm the only one who seems to struggle. Surely I can't be the only one, but I never see anyone else like me in real life, only ever online. Are they just good at hiding it? Why can't I do that too?

[subtextsays]

I forgot to tell the story of my dept head and the terrible horrible no-good very-bad Friday.

Preface: it's just 2 of us so department is a stretch, and we do a wide variety of things on an ever-changing schedule.

About a month ago he dropped a schedule on me that messed with my regular hours AND conflicted with a standing obligation AND failed to address ongoing problems that he'd assured me would be discussed before the fall. All without consulting me first and claiming it was set in stone.

To say that this irritated me is an understatement.

Friday we had the director mandated version of the Our-Get-Along T-Shirt meeting where we were supposed to hash out next month's schedule. Unfortunately for him, he is predictable and I went prepared.

Also unfortunately for him, I've spent several years watching him neglect major aspects of our job while also elevating time-wasting vanity projects to an art form. So in response to him pushing some of his workload onto me (since he's soooo busy doing Important Things Above My Pay Grade), I basically said, Because we are now all about budgeting time and managing priorities, these are the projects I'm going to kill to make that happen. 🙃

I think I scored a bingo on my time-sinks hit list.

He is weirdly particular about certain details, because public image is v. important. But only in the things-I-deem-unsightly-offend-my-OCD kind of way. So when he questioned the aesthetic impact of the method by which I intended to attach something to our shelves, I produced a printout of a glitched image he uploaded and basically said, Since public image is so important are you really going to die on the hill of little velcro tabs while mistakes like this are sitting live on our website for a month? 🙃

Verdict: he can live with the velcro after all.

Then, near the end of what had become a passive-aggressive endurance test, a serendipitous breakthrough. I'd been feinting, trying to feel out his logic behind changing the way a yearly event is staffed. It went something like:

I've handled this event alone enough times to know it doesn't require two people. Why did you decide to tag along this year?

something something about being visible and making a good impression

Yes, that is what we do. Are you saying I'm not good at my job and that you can contribute something I can't? 🥺

stumbling retraction

😤 Then I got this! You don't have to go after all! Isn't that great because you're soooo busy and could definitely put your time to better use!

weirdly defensive insistence that he's attending

☹️ I guess I can't go then since it's a one-person event and our time is precious. But I handled it the last couple years and it's fun and now I feel like you're kinda butting into my thing. ☹️

assurance that he isn't and I can still plan and execute everything

🤔 You're saying you want me to handle the event? So you aren't needed and can spend your valuable time elsewhere?

his presence is definitely happening

🤨 Then you are taking the event from me. Remember, only one of us gets to go.

....

This went on for like five minutes as he painted himself into a corner with increasing frustration, without for a valid explanation for why it is imperative he attend this event.

Sus af.

Then, he fumbled shutting down the argument and handed me the nuclear codes instead. He said "I'm going because I want to" in the same way an exasperated parent shouts Because I said so!

💡

It's a night event. He gets comp time for events beyond normal work hours. He's not about to let those sweet, sweet time and a half vacation hours slip away even if it means admitting he's been manipulating the schedule for entirely selfish reasons that are in fact inconsiderate to me and detrimental to our payroll budget.

The dogshit excuse for why we need to hang around to the very bitter end of some events despite our active participation being long over suddenly makes sense.

Welp.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

So a bit of personal behind-the-scenes blogging here about YouTube sponsorships, doing creative writing for a job, workloads and stress and burnout.

I am never taking this many sponsorships ever again.

I don't know if there was something in the water in September or if a bunch of marketing budgets just needed to get burned, but at the end of August I started getting a lot more emails than usual from agencies that wanted to purchase sponsorship integrations. I'm sure there's some structural industry-side reason for this that I'm simply not privy to, but from my perspective it was just a flood of emails.

There were the usual ones, of course, the RAID: Shadow Legends sponsorship that I am getting very tired of turning down over and over again, a bit of crypto-nonsense and Play2Earn games which can go get f*d, and then a smattering of things that just kinda don't fit my channel or my audience, like a Chinese-run site doing online coding classes for people who want to emigrate and work in the PRC, or one of those semi-fraudulent "purchase a square foot of land in Scotland and become a Lord, technically!" which are, like, usually just a harmless novelty, but not really fit for my audience.

The way influencer marketing on YouTube works (at least at my level of micro-celebrity) is that companies will contract marketing agencies to run campaigns for them. The agencies bid against each other for contracts, promising to deliver maximum engagement at minimal cost. The company picks an agency and gives them a pile of money to spend on ad-buys. Agencies reach out to influencers en masse (usually through mailing lists and directories of channels above a certain size, listing their general content and likely audience profiles), and ask us how much we charge for a 30-60 second integration.

The marketing agency's objective is to make their budget deliver as many trackable metrics for their client as possible, usually in the form of signups, clicks, website traffic and so on. Some agencies will focus on advertising only with huge names that have massive reach, some will pick out a hundred smaller creators hoping to cast a wider net. Most agencies will do some mix of the two.

So, they email me like "how much for an integration?" and I... have to invent an answer. See, there isn't really a standard rate for any of this. How much is a view on my channel worth? How much return on investment does an ad on my channel generate? I'm just a person, I don't have a market research department, I don't have any education or training in evaluating the effectiveness of advertising. I make video essays about game characters and occasional anime.

The best resource for YouTubers on this subject is... each other. We basically just have to talk to one another, figure out what everyone is charging and try and derive a reasonable rate from that. There isn't a union or a guild, there are no associations or central resources (or even community resources) that set the standards or allow us some form of collective bargaining.

My problem is that most of the peers I talk to don't really do influencer marketing. They stick with ad revenue and Patreon/Twitch subscriptions, or just aren't on the radar of advertisers yet, so I'm flying this one kinda by the seat of my pants.

Ayway, returning to the subject. In September I get a lot more inquiries about sponsorship than usual, which puts me in the very unusual position of turning sponsors down not because their product is a bad fit, or a crypto scam, or RAID: Shadow Legends, but because I simply can't make enough videos fast enough to fill the "order."

I book Squarespace and Skillshare, which are reputable companies whose products I've used myself, which basically fills out my schedule, and then the offers keep coming. I should not have accepted as many as I did.

---

I should say, I've never been poor. I come from a middle class family in a Scandinavian social democracy, there are safety nets under me that most people don't get to have, and I don't ever have to really be afraid of ending up on the street or starving. What I have been is broke. I used to make my living as a commission artist and cartoonist, and spent essentially a decade constantly, constantly dancing right on the very edge of being able to make rent each month. I was chasing a dream of building up a customer base to fund my independent comics work, and... it broke me a little bit. I came down with a very dark depression that I couldn't really deal with, and spent weeks and weeks pulling all-nighters chasing commissions and doing work trying to scratch money together.

YouTube happened entirely by accident, and for all that I've complained about the troubles that come with this work, might have genuinely saved my life a little bit.

I bring this up to say, ever since the YouTube gig started reliably paying my bills, I have had at least a couple of realizations per year of just how anxious and freaked out I still get about money. I still check my online bank obsessively, I still fret over keeping savings and paying bills, I still feel guilt over spending money on non-essentials.

And when I get too many sponsorship offers, I still feel like I should accept all of them, and pull whatever all-nighters it takes to fulfil them, even though I'm not 24 any more and when I tried to do it as a 24 year old it caused a depression that nearly made me suicidal.

Because what if these are the last sponsorships I'll ever get? What if the next sixth months are really bad months and I don't make as much in ad revenue? What if my videos lose steam and the audience moves on? What if everyone gets tired of me? What if someone copyright strikes my channel twelve times out of nowhere and kills it forever?

I haven't been broke in years now. I'm not a wealthy man, but I haven't been broke. I don't have a pension fund, but my bills are paid, and looking rationally at the statistics and analytics I have access to, there is literally no reason to believe it'll all go "poof!" and be gone overnight.

And yet, I feel so guilty about not taking every sponsorship I can ethically take. I feel so guilty about not hoarding money, building savings, protecting myself, "being responsible." And I feel so afraid of that unnamed catastrophe lurking just around the corner, where I'll be punished for my hubris to think that I was ever safe, and thrown right back into that fearful scramble. Right back into that depression.

It's a sticky fear. You scrub and scrub and scrub, and the stain of it just won't come out.

---

I took too many sponsorships in the latter half of this year. This is a champagne problem, there are creatives I know who would kill to get sponsorships at all, and I'm not trying to fish for too much sympathy here. "Oh no, too many people wanted to give you money to read 60 second ads, boo hoo YouTube man, how sad for you" is, like, a valid response to this. I'm not exactly being ground down by the Amazon Fulfilment Center over here. It's not a cry for help, or a plea for support, it's just a blog.

But I took too many sponsorships. I clogged my schedule, and committed myself to a lot of work, and... every other part of my life suffered. I found it harder and harder to spend time with my family, because the next deadline was always on my mind. That knowledge that taking time to do anything else inevitably means a harder rush to finish the work, it means more stress and less space to think, less space to do good work.

Because that's the other anxiety, of course. Having taken these sponsorships, I now feel pretty intensely that I need to make videos that are good enough that my audience doesn't feel taken advantage of, that they feel that the content I put behind the ad was worth the time they took to sit through it. Sponsored videos need to be better, they need to have higher production quality, better scripts, better editing.

So how do you justify taking time to do anything else?

I spent less time with my family, I became less and less able to keep the apartment clean, less and less able to cook, less and less able to even spend time socializing and doing enrichment for my pet rats, which they need for their mental health. And I started to feel the familiar sensation of burnout eating me up from the chest outwards.

I had started taking piano lessons at the local community center, something I've wanted to do for myself for a decade. And I had to cancel those lessons over and over again, and usually last minute, because work just got in the way. Last week I told my teacher that I simply wouldn't be able to make it to them anymore, to cancel the whole thing. And that knocked the wind out of me more than I thought, honestly. That was something I had been so excited to finally do for myself, and it just got bled out in front of me by the workload I couldn't get myself to say no to.

I've dealt with burnout many times before. I know what it is, I know how to recover from it. But I have never learned to stop inflicting it on myself. I am a workaholic, I am addicted to the stress of this sh**, not because I find it pleasurable, but because for ten years the satisfaction of finishing a piece of work and securing the paycheck was the only sense of real relief and catharsis I ever got to feel from my anxiety, and I don't know how to stop chasing that high. When I'm stressed, when I'm anxious, when I'm feeling unsure or unmoored, the only response I know is to drown myself in work. Energy drinks and junk food and too little sleep. I don't have any other real coping mechanisms.

It'll take... a while to fix those things, I think. It's not happening right now. But I am promising myself this, at least: I am never taking this many sponsorships ever again.

[mcrmadness]

I just realized something.

I have been editing videos for a school projects for a few months now. Every single time I mention the workload to people, I get mental pats on the head. I mean, people tell me they are sorry for the amount of work I have. People are worried for me and tell me that it's a lot of work and tell me to rest too.

And like, I understand where they're coming from, but I don't need patronising? I have noticed that this actually makes me annoyed. I know this is how people show support, but apparently I just don't like it when people do this with me. To every single one I have said that I don't MIND this workload, I wouldn't have not ACCEPTED this project if I wasn't capable of this. I'm actually enjoying this, these deadlines and being productive. I'm doing here what I really like doing and went to school for: editing videos! It's like dream come true, it's the closest to a real job event that I have ever had. The ONLY downside is that I'm working on this like it was a real job but I'm not getting ANY money for it, which I'm a bit salty about, but experience-wise this is an amazing opportunity and great project to work on.

This is a very fascinating thing to notice. I know many people would not be able to do this what I now do, but also: I'm not normal. I have my own ways of working. Just because you can't work on tight schedules and high workload does not mean that I can't either. It's the 40h regular work weeks that I can't work in without wearing out even when you can. Projects fit me better.

Also my rebellious nature is always almost offended when people suggest me that my work is too much or that I should take a pause or breaks. Like shut up, you don't know me, you don't know when I need pauses and how often. If my go is to work on a video for 12 hours in a row I days a week for 4 weeks, then it is. This is is still a passion of mine. I don't get exhausted from it the way I would do if I had to do a job I hate for 6h for 5 days a week for months.

The secret lies in the work. I'm studying media, because it's my passion and hobby. I know myself, I have had burnouts before and I know what to watch for, and I DO KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF MYSELF. I don't need people to tell me "don't wear yourself out". I know myself better than what anyone else does.

[thetreetopinn]

My ADD Medication Journey Begins

I got a physical back in early August this year. While I was there, I reminded my doctor "Hey, any chance you could maybe get me the contact details for that specialist you mentioned last year so I can get an evaluation to see if I'm ADHD or ASD?". He immediately remembered that I had asked about that last year and promised he would get me her card.

Well, it slipped is mind back then, and even though I called and emailed a few times, he just didn't seem to respond.

Oh hey, turns out HE has ADD and HE takes medication. Sometimes he just forgets because he deals with a lot of patients. It wasn't anything super hardcore pressing to me, so I just let it go after a while and decided to ask when I went in for my next physical.

When I brought it up this time, he stopped me mid-sentence, walked out of the room, and returned about two minutes later with the specialist's business card. He apologized for not getting it to me sooner, advised that I should call her as soon as I leave his office, try to schedule an appointment with her, and get an evaluation done. He said that if it turns out she thinks I am in fact ADD or ASD, that I should call his office just as soon as I get out with the diagnosis, and we would have a conversation about medication.

Well, we had a conversation about medication right then and there anyway, but it still was worth calling and talking about anyway.

I called the specialist and left a message--this was around 11am.

I got a call back from her receptionist about 30 minutes later--they have an opening that day! It's around 4 or so. I tell them "YES! I WOULD LIKE TO SCHEDULE TODAY IF THAT IS OKAY!"

They slot me in. It futz around that side of town because i live in a big city that is extremely car-centric (thank you good ole US of A... [sarcasm]) and show up at her office about 15 minutes early. I don't have anything better to do, so I show up that early. I also like being early to doctor appointments because you never know what the situation will be. They may have a patient cancel and you get seen earlier. It may be that the doctor is running behind so you have to wait anyway. You might have issues fighting traffic to get there (again, thanks... Uncle Sam). I just like being early for this kind of thing.

I end up waiting the full 15 minutes that I was early because the doctor was with another patient. When she's ready, she calls me back. I don't have to wait a silly amount of time, she's just ready to see me.

We have a conversation. She goes over her pre-written questionnaire. I answer the questions to the best of my ability. I try to be honest. I try to give as much accuracy as I can and confess my lack of answer when I don't have one but try to cobble something together to provide SOME kind of insight for the question.

About 15 minutes pass as we talk. She's very affable, friendly, funny, she actually laughs at my stupid dorky humor. She asks me what I do for a living, and what I've done in the past. I explain my last few jobs and how they have not gone well for me.

She looks me in the eye and says "those are all extremely detail oriented jobs... how are you able to do them?"

Half joking, half serious, I reply with "I'm not!"

The truth is, I find little hacks and tricks to try and keep myself on task, to minimize mistakes, maximize accuracy, try to maintain a calm demeanor... but that has always been a problem for me, especially when I'm under a heavy workload... or when I'm taking a hundred calls a day from people who are just looking for someone to scream at and make actionable threats against--despite the fact that I have no power over their case, I can only get them to the person who IS handling their case. I'm just a glorified receptionist in that specific role--a role I was fired from several years ago, and fuck did it knock the wind out of me.

She looks over her notes for a moment, then looks back at me and says "Yeah, I'd say you are DEFINITELY on the spectrum, and I think you might benefit from some medication. I think you should start on Adderall, low dose, see how it affects you. Have you talked to your PCP yet?"

(I had to have it explained to me to know what that means so I'm going to just go ahead and say for anyone else who might not know and is too afraid to as: PCP = Primary Care Physician... basically, the one doctor you see regularly, if you're lucky enough to be able to do so. I went YEARS without having a PCP because insurance is a fucking nightmare)

I explained to her what he had advised, that all I had to do was call him after I got out, explain that you confirmed I'm on the spectrum and that you think I should try Adderall, which is what he recommended too. We would discuss it, answer my questions and concerns, then he would put in a prescription at the pharmacy I had on file. I didn't need to go back to his office to do it. He would just forward it over.

This whole day kind of amazed me.

I had heard all manner of horror stories about how hard it is to get evaluated as an adult. Then how hard it was to get prescribed medication. THEN there's the fact that there is STILL an Adderall shortage going on. It's not as bad as it was, but it's still causing problems.

I call my doctor as soon as I'm out--he's already gone for the day but I leave a message explaining the situation. The specialist forwards confirmation of the diagnosis over to his office, it's all in order.

And then I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. After two weeks, I try to call his office to try and catch him for a conversation. Have to leave a message. I do this every couple of weeks until about the end of September when HE calls ME back while I'm working from home and while I pace around my bedroom chatting with him about the situation, he tells me everything I want to know, what to expect, what to do if I have trouble getting medication, it's all groovy. He says he wants to have a follow-up with me--if I recall correctly it can be just over the phone, I don't need to go into the office I don't think. I'm sure I'll find out later--once I've been on the medication and have enough experience with it to see how it's affecting me, then we can adjust dosage or try something else, or maybe I'm good with the 20mg twice daily situation. He wants to follow-up and see.

He says he's going to forward the prescription over that day. And so he does.

It's a pharmacy that's in a grocery store. I've gotten one or two prescriptions filled there before. It's fine. Nothing to write home about. This grocery store I will not openly name, but it rhymes with Dom Crumb... those of you who live in the southeast United States probably already know exactly which store I'm talking about... and how it shares a name with a character from English folklore about a very tiny lad about the size of one's... well... only opposable digit on their hand.

The pharmacy does not call. I figure, okay, they just don't have any medication in stock. There's a shortage after all... all us millennials are eating it all up because holy fuck do we need some help just being able to function HAHAHAHA LATE STAGE CAPITALISM ISN'T PURPOSEFULLY OVERLY COMPLEX AND TRAUMATIZING AT ALL!!

So I wait about a week, then I try to call, but their automated system doesn't give me the option to speak to a pharmacist, a tech, a live person at all. It doesn't even let me leave a message. Fun.

I decide to go in person after work. It's just around the corner, picked because of how close and convenient it is. I shop there all the time anyway. I wait patiently behind other folks, then politely explain my situation to the lady behind the counter and she--very helpfully--starts looking up information and goes into the back to see if they have any in stock.

Alas, they do not. She also advises me that there is a hold on my prescription BECAUSE they don't have any in stock, and that there are other prescriptions ahead of me, so depending on how much they get in their next delivery, I might not be filled at that time and have to wait longer.

Again, this is no big deal to me. I understand. Supply chain issues. Greedy pharmaceutical companies not producing enough because it probably increases demand--or maybe they just underestimated how absolutely and deeply FUCKED my generation is. I tell them I'll check back in a couple of weeks.

So I wait. A couple of weeks pass. I check. Still none in stock. This repeats SEVERAL TIMES until THE WEEK OF THANKSGIVING.

I remind you--I got an evaluation and diagnosis back in early August. It is now LATE NOVEMBER and they finally say they have some in stock. The lady asks if I can wait. I tell her I've got some shopping to do and I'll wander on back later.

I do my shopping. I wait patiently. I do my thing. I come back and the lady flags me down.

"We do have it in stock but... I'm afraid your prescription has expired. You'll need to get a new one from your doctor."

UGH... are you kidding me?!?

I comport myself well. I'm understanding and polite. It's been a long while, sure, and I'm hugely disappointed, but I understand. Out of curiosity, I ask when the prescription expired.

She says it ended back at the end of September.

***GIANT. FUCKING. EYE-TWITCH.***

Again, I comport myself well in public. Inside, I'm FUMING.

WHY WOULD THEY NOT TELL ME THAT MY PRESCRIPTION HAD EXPIRED DURING ANY OF MY LAST FIVE VISITS?

Whatever... whatever, they probably don't check the paperwork until the meds arrive. Fine.

I call my doctor's office, worried I'm going to have a hell of a time getting someone to help me out just like it took so long to have the convo with my doc in the first place.

I get a call back--I forget exactly when. It might have been same day. It might have been the next. It might have been a couple of days. Regardless, it's a lot sooner than I feared.

I had left a message explaining the situation and the medical assistant says "I see that you need a new prescription for Adderall. But I also see a note on the file that the doctor wants to follow-up with you before refilling, so we can schedule a time for you to get with him to have that follow-up."

"I mean... okay, if you need to have him sign off on it before you send it, I understand, but the follow-up was to check on me after I had started it and been taking it for a while to see how I was doing. I haven't even GOTTEN the medication yet. I haven't been able to START taking it yet. Is there any way you can send a new prescription to my pharmacy so I get this ball rolling?"

He realizes he misread the transcription of the message: "OOOH... you haven't even GOTTEN it yet?!? WOW... okay yeah, we'll go ahead and submit a new prescription for you."

Our communication mishap is resolved, we end the call in a jovial fashion, I'm feeling pretty mildly okay. Things have been super stressful elsewhere in life for the last several months, and have only just really gotten real bad all over again and so if this is one thing I can get settled... I'm down to clown.

I get a call from the pharmacy THAT. DAY. Not even three hours later.

Fucking baller. Love it.

The pharmacy says they can't fill my prescription.

...wat...

They cite some law about needing to be within 20 miles of the prescribing doctor's office because it's a controlled substance.

It's Texas. I 100% believe the asshat lawmakers in this state have ABSOLUTELY taken ridiculously egregious steps to limit access to legally prescribed medications for a wide variety of reasons. No doubt, the front-facing explanation is "We want to make sure no one is using it as precursor to making Meth" and sure... that's a legit concern... but it's 60 pills, 20 mg each, my first prescription. I have no history of getting this anywhere else. I'm literally new to this. It shouldn't raise any red flags.

I'm willing to bet that these same asshat lawmakers also have a pretty dim view of mental health care.

"You don't have ADD, you're just hyper and lazy and undisciplined. You just need Jesus and a boot in the ass. NOW GET TO WORK!!" or some shit like that. Not saying they all think this... but I'm willing to bet a disgustingly shocking number of them do. Don't have proof. Just have experience with how fucked up my state is, and how the dominant party has--as a matter of record--acquitted a man who is credibly accused of getting an underage girl drunk and taking advantage of her. I won't use the R word here because I know some folks are triggered by it, but yeah... that's what he did. That's the state I live in. And moving out of state is prohibitively expensive... also, I wouldn't know where the fuck to go. My job is here. I can't take it with me I'm pretty sure, despite working part of every week from home.

Anyway, getting into the weeds: shit's fucked, yo.

The pharmacy won't fill the prescription. I frantically start trying to find proof of this law. I can't find it. I go on google maps and measure. Straight line from the doctor's office to the grocery store is 16.5 miles. So that's absolute fucking bullshit--unless they're going but like... DRIVEN miles... HORRAY!! MORE LOVE FOR THE CAR-CENTRIC CITY!!!

I call up my doctor's office and leave another message. I explain that the pharmacy says they can't fill it because of some 20 mile law. It's Friday. I know the doctor isn't in the office. I'm not expecting a call back that day.

As a fact finding mission--not really expecting to get any movement or satisfying answer--after I get off work, I go over to a local Walgreens. It's literally a block from where I live, even closer than the grocery store. The pharmacy is open until 9pm. I go in, I wait in line, and then I ask the pharmacy if they have Adderall in stock, if they know anything about a 20 mile law, and explain that the Rom Bum just down the street is cock blocking me on getting my brain fixed.

He's very disappointed to hear this. He doesn't know anything about a ***20*** mile law, but he's heard of a ***50*** mile law. I try to look this up later but I can't find anything about it either. Maybe I'm not searching in the right places. Maybe it's not a law, maybe it's a store policy and the pharmacists just SAY it's a law? I don't know. The Walgreens pharmacist gives me all kinds of options to get around the Adderall shortage--because it's specifically the 20mg he's having trouble keeping in stock. He offers the suggestion of different dosages taken at different frequencies. I politely tell him "Well, this is what my doctor wants me to start on to see how it affects me. Maybe we can adjust later once we know more."

He accepts this, apologizes that I've had so much trouble at the other place, and says "Yeah, if we can get someone at your doctor's office on the phone to confirm--because it's a controlled substance--then we should be able to fill it no problem if we have it in stock."

I thank you for his help and go home. I go to bed, unbelievably livid over this whole situation. Like... all day since I got the call from Gom Rum... I'm just... infuriated. I want to scream. I actually do scream, into one of my pillows. I want to break things. So I grab my pillow and start slamming it on to my mattress as hard as I can until I wear myself out. This is the only thing I will allow myself to do because I'm not apt to break anything--and yeah... I have anger issues. I have a BREATHTAKING temper. From what I understand, emotional disregulation is another symptom of ADD or ASD so... hey, it's in my fucking wheelhouse.

I knock my glasses off in the wild swinging of my arms to get some sense of physical satisfaction in wanting to do harm. I step on them and knock a lens out. Thankfully, it pops back in, but I have bent the frame just EVER so slightly and so I'm going to have to figure out how to bend it back so my glasses are more level on my face.

This is why I need to get my shit handled. This is why I self-isolate. This is why I stay away from people. Because I do shit LIKE THIS and I just... cannot control my temper sometimes. It's frustrating and it leaves me absolutely hating myself for failing to keep it together, for breaking something, for losing my cool, for letting the mask slip and showing the monster underneath. I'm told that ADD medication can help with this.

That bit doesn't click until much, much later. At any rate, I'm absolutely exhausted, angry, depressed, and thinking I should just give up on this whole endeavor because I've got too much other shit to put up with to deal with this nonsense as well.

I hold off on making any decision on that for the moment, because decisions made while emotional are frequently regretted. Ask me how I know.

The weekend passes and I just kind of sit in a funk the whole time. Nothing seems fun or enjoyable. Nothing holds my interest. I just coast through the weekend watching Youtube mainly.

When Monday comes... there's no return call from the doctor's office all day. Tuesday, I call and leave a message again. No call back the rest of the day. That's not unexpected, but it's still disappointing and it's getting me pissed off all over again. The decision to give up is gaining popularity in my brain.

Wednesday morning, at about 8:45 am, I've only just gotten into the office, I'm setting up, my phone is set to vibrate--but stupidly, I didn't learn my lesson from the lengthy game of phone tag back in September--the doctor's office calls.

I miss the call. ...FUCK...

I see the notification pop up on the screen after the fact, saying I have a voicemail. I lock my computer and hurry off to some quiet place where I can have a phone call without disturbing everyone else on the floor. I call, expecting to have to leave another message.

They pick up.

They actually pick up. Holy shit, red letter day, I've got a live person on the phone.

They say they got my message, they ask me a few questions like "Are they just saying they need to delay? They need more time?"

I tell them, "No... they are straight up refusing to fill the prescription because of some 20 mile law I can't find on the books, and the pharmacy is 16.5 miles from your office. I don't get it. I don't understand why I'm having so much trouble. Can we move it to a different pharmacy? I'm kind of done with this place."

The lady on the phone is disappointed and disturbed by this information, so she happily lets me pick a new pharmacy. It just so happens that because of my little fact-finding mission Friday night, I have one already picked out. I give her the details, she confirms, it's all good, she says she'll send it over that day.

At least I've got the doctor's office side of this taken care of. Now we just wait to see how Walgreens decides to dick me over.

Sports-fans, you will never guess what happens next.

I have another missed call at 3pm that same day.

It's Walgreens.

I have an email from them too.

MY PRESCRIPTION IS READY TO PICK UP.

THEY FILLED IT WITHIN 6 HOURS OF RECEIVING IT. IT'S READY. I CAN GO PICK IT UP TONIGHT!!! HOLY SHIT!! OH MY GOD IT'S A MOTHER FUCKING MIRACLE!!!

Unfortunately, I have another errand to run and I don't know how long it will take to get that sorted out. I have to drop my car off to get some maintenance done on it. Something about the CV boots leaking grease on the engine... the place actually showed me photos of my car doing this when I got the oil changed a month back. I didn't have the money at the moment to take it on so I decided "Let me save up a couple of paychecks and we'll tackle it... possibly December, no later than January. I don't drive that much. My commute to work is 10 minutes on the side roads. I can wait a bit longer than most."

Well, the situation happened to yield good results, I was able to get the money I need in my bank account to pay for the maintenance. I just needed to drop the car off overnight. They'd get it fixed over the course of half a day, call me when it's ready, and I can come pick it up. They even set me up with a loaner car in the interim... and fuck did I stress the hell out about my complex possibly towing it because I didn't get back home until after the front office was closed (it wouldn't have made any difference to call ahead of time, I wouldn't have the loaner car's details to give them).

I get the loaner, I head back up towards where I work, pass it, and go the other direction towards home... fun stuff needing to go in the opposite direction of home to do something right after work. Makes everything take so much longer to get done, but whatever. I've got the loaner, my car is gonna get worked on, I'll get it back tomorrow unless there's something that throws a monkey wrench into the plan.

I head up to Walgreens, I get my prescription. I go to a bookstore to buy a physical copy of "Project Hail Mary" because the audiobook I've got is damn good and I want a physical version I can hold... just in case... you know... Audible/Amazon decides to be a colossal dick. Then I pick up dinner. Tacos, from a really good taco place. I'm celebrating the fact that this whole Adderall thing has actually finally paid off. Now I just need to start taking it to see how it affects me.

That will come in the morning.

For now, tacos and tatter tots. Oh and youtube, lots of youtube. I watch lots of stuff on youtube. And the whole Somerton situation has shaken loose a lot of videos from a lot of people talking about it. And happily, it's not just rehashing the same details. They're all looking at it from different angles. Like "Why did we fall for this?" "How do we move forward?" "What should we as leftists do to try and keep this from happening again?" "What changes can and should we make?" stuff like that. It's great. I love seeing people try to problem solve rather than just try to dog-pile on. It's real NASA level shit and I'm a space nerd so NASA is my jam--as is their approach to so much of what they do. Just ask me about how I help my mom plan to cook large meals for holidays... I call it a flight plan... and it's one, giant recipe, planning out what needs to be done in what order, starting with prep and ending with service. Love me a good flight plan.

Just almost never have the will, interest, or focus to build flight plans for other aspects of my life, so I just end up winging it a lot. It works okay, but not always.

That's one reason why I wanna try the Adderall I've got sitting on my desk staring at me while I've got a mouth full of taco.

Among other reasons. I hear it's a mild appetite suppressant, and if it helps keep me from snacking between meals, hey, I might just lose a little weight, make my pants fit a little better, get some flexibility back. But... tomorrow. Not now. Now, I need to be able to sleep.

And sleep I do, grateful that at least one major issue has finally FINALLY been dealt with and I can actually FINALLY START this journey properly.

From early August to early December. Roughly four whole months, and I am less than 12 hours away from starting a medication that may help me get my brain to act a bit better, help me focus, help me even my temper out, help me lose weight--I honestly don't know what all it might do... hell, it might not do anything. I could have no reaction. Or an allergic reaction. No way to tell. That last one is super rare, but... with my luck and my allergies... I don't rule it out and keep in mind that I might need to call for rescue if I have a problem.

That was last night.

Today was my first day on the meds.

I've started a log of what I notice while I'm on the pill.

I'm going to collect data, review it, share it with my doctor, and we can make whatever decision best addresses what I find.

So far though, I'm encouraged. I'm very encouraged. It didn't have any shocking, intensely powerful effect... it's just been one day. I'm told it takes a week or two for the dosage to build up and start showing signs.

But what I've experienced so far... I'm encouraged.

It's hard to tell if it was because of the medicine, or if it was just because I had a really good day at work, but I'm energized, I'm enthusiastic, I have energy again... and I... may have... forgotten to eat my lunch (I did a lot of training today, people learning how to do workflows that I have information on, so I didn't have much time to stop and eat). The appetite suppressant aspect kept me from feeling hungry, so I wasn't distracted by that. That was nice.

We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Let me know if you'd like to read what I've got in my log. I feel like this might be info that other folks could find helpful or useful... or maybe more experienced ADD folks on the same medication can offer advice for how I can maximize what benefits I get from this... or share things to watch out for.

I'm new to this, and I'd love feed back.

Let me know if you wanna read the log. I don't really care about being too insanely private about it--though I don't have anything too revealing in it, nor plan on putting anything too revealing in it.

Anyway... yeah... long post is long.

This is probably the longest thing I've written since... fuck... February? March? And I felt good writing it.

Again, not sure if it was just how the day went, or if it's the meds.

But I'm hopeful about finding out more.

[60b3r]

Job seeking is (dehumanizing): the interview.

Ahh, searching for jobs... one of the most tedious and ridiculous experiences in human existence. At first, I was enthusiastic and applying for teaching jobs I was truly interested in. I scoured for "biology teacher" and "science teacher" jobs from prominent national and international school network. Now, weeks later, I have realized how low my standards have gotten. At this point, I would be excited to get a call from a shady, small schools in the middle of nowhere. I'm pretty sure that's the goal of many employers... hopelessly shuffling the cards until your standards get so low that you'll take their low-paying, high-workload, crappy job. If this sounds grudged or too cynical, it's because I am. The job-hunting process is emotionally draining and the institutions know this. They took advantage of unsuspecting teachers and researchers in it.

After supplying personal information for internet-based loan-sharks to tinker with, then we get to the interview stage. If only the recruiter had an especially convenient commuting experience to office this morning or maybe if their significant other serviced them an exceptionally great spank-bang session last night, they might be in a good enough mood to schedule me for an interview. Or, like most occasions, my application will go forever unnoticed, and the job listing will stay up for weeks/months on end because apparently most of employers are resume hoarders. Employers can make you spend two and half an hour filling out an application online (and on paper). They will look at it for 2 seconds at most before moving on, or maybe a mere 5 seconds if they decide to call you in.

Now, we're scheduled for an interview. I was told to arrive early (but also not too early, since they may start late). Interviews was described like a matching process similar to dating, where two parties mutually decide if they're right for one another—but the steep power imbalance suggests otherwise. They pose the questions and may ask anything, which I can't do anything about (for instance if they, and surely they will, ask something discriminatory against my beliefs and ethnicity). My answers are scrutinized—an honest self-assessment is a beginning to more deprecating questions, while narcissistic promotion and extraordinary bullshit is rewarded. Insincere eagerness is too evident, so instead I had to continually hype myself up for each new possibility of reprobative travail and suffer the resulting agony for each rejection letter (that is, if any).

There's little to no expectation that employers will have rational reasons for deciding for or against one particular applicant—they may even be racist, engage in blatant nepotism, or go with their bias, and we have no recourse whatsoever. Even where there is a legal recourse written in law, the evidentiary standards are such that you could never possibly prove a claim. There was also this one school that—written at the end of the pre-interview form I filled and almost sent—claimed that they did not engage in discriminatory practices against different races, skin, colour, and nationality; but the form explicitly required me to fill in my ethnicity and my church denomination I belonged to. Just before I signed over it and sent it, I spotted it and requested a cancellation to continue my application to the next process. Such a shameful practice.

I am not going to lie, there were a few promising interviews where it seemed to go really well (including one where I rode over to where I am relocating, sat down with like 5 people over 2 hours and talked about the curriculum and it’s teaching philosophy and whatever working culture they wanted me to believe) and when I sent a follow up to them—the people that I spent hours preparing for interviews with and clearing my schedule for—don’t even have the decency to tell me they decided to go with another candidate. Like, you spent hours interviewing me, it takes less than a few seconds to replace the placeholder in an email template with my name and press send. After someone has went through several interviews, taking a moment to notify them whether they got the job (or not) is nothing compared to the amount of time and gas money the candidate has wasted. It's a basic human courtesy. If you can't complete such a menial task as that, then anyone who applied and got rejected probably dodged a bullet.

If bullshit was being written down, all possible bullshit in job interviews would be an entire library of Nalanda and Alexandria combined. Jargons like "I am very passionate about this dead-end position and very enthusiastic about making a fucking career out of this minimum wage job. My hobbies include providing phenomenal typing of a 50-page lesson plan you won't even read, participating in organizing religious event on school weekends, and memorizing the School Values and the names of the Foundation caretakers". Once the interview is over, you have to give them the firmest handshake (because apparently that is a great indicator of how well you will perform on the job) and thank them for their time (which they were actually paid for). Then, you are to be scheduled for another interview with Julius from Head of Curriculum... then another interview with Sarah the Vice Executive Principal... then you are to hear back from them by the end of the week, then... nothing.

Sometimes, if they do send a rejection letter, they are kind enough just to tell that my application is denied because there were no vacancy left open for such position. The worst letters are the ones that tell you how they think while my CV is superb and how I am a good fit for such position, but there were just all these other better applicants that best matched their needs—by that I am sure they offered these poor souls less than my previously requested pay—and then complain about how hard it was to choose between them. One could generously interpret that "being overqualified" as "letting you down easily" and to make me not lose hope in another job-seeking endeavor, but to which I suspect is more about assuaging the guilty conscience of whichever person wrote the formal letter. They also seem to have no obligation to ever communicate with me again—employers ghost would-be employees with regularity. They never seem to catch up, even when they said they would hold on to my CV, in case in the future, they have an open position to fill.

I suspect the job search everywhere bears the marks of the basic reality of our society: capital rules over humanity and is not ruled by it. Every worker is expendable and replaceable. The reserve army of the unemployed academics is real, and keeps down wages to reward meaningful research. With over hundreds of applicants for every position, of course the process is dehumanizing. Even in the present alleged "education technology boom," this remains the case. While some people suggest it, starting your own education institution is not an option—you must persuade the bank to lend capital or god-knows-how-many philanthropists to donate, and the vast majority of small schools like some preparatory courses program convened in a garage fail within a few years. In any case, small institutions are far more likely to engage in the most petty and disgusting conduct towards workers: wage-theft, unpaid overtime, arbitrary management. I once worked for this type of institution, and I survived it saying never again. The students paid the office 80 bucks for 90 minutes of my tutoring, while I only got paid 20 bucks for it, not even a gas subsidy!

[amynchan]

God I wish, I wish, but the way I see the free schedule happening is one of two ways:

We get more teachers on more shifts, so teaching becomes a 24 hour profession OR teaching ends up with a day shift, where we get the morning kids; the afternoon shift, where we get the late risers; and the night shift, where we teach the insomniacs. Obviously, you'd need teachers who have the same natural sleeping rhythms to teach these classes, but that can kinda be done. In the college sphere, we have morning, afternoon, and evening classes, but you'd run into the same problem we get over here. The classes themselves would most likely have the same workload as the classes that are taught during the current time frame, but the main trouble is that we wouldn't ever be sure if those teachers have full classes that will pay them out until basically a few days beforehand. Classes get cancelled due to low enrollment all the time, so these teachers would be lesson planning and building classes that may not be used (which, yeah, that's a reality. It's happened to me a couple times now. Not enough students enroll in a class, and it gets cut, and the teachers don't get paid for the work we do before class even starts). We also have students who don't pay attention and sign up for the 8:00AM classes and just... show up as zombies even though they signed up for it. They're not engaged, they're not ready, and it's somehow my job to fix that.

The other one is move instruction to completely online courses so that way we can allow all students to take classes at entirely their own pace. This is the one we're closer to, and it's the one that's easier to see the practical problems of it (so hopefully we can fix the damn things!). Online learning, as we all know from our good ol' friend Covid, puts a great deal of responsibility on the student that—half the time—they weren't aware that the teacher had provided for them all along. A place and time separate from other responsibilities with which to do the work, materials to do the work, steady socialization, near instantaneous feedback and guidance when you get off-task. The classroom itself does a lot. Online learning can give you so much freedom, but as an instructor, I've seen so many students use that freedom to say "fuck all" to education. And I teach college in America. The USA doesn't make you go to college. I'm not sure how it works elsewhere, but that's how it works here. You won't get in trouble for not going or even applying. You should be in college because you've got some kind of goal for it. Therefore, you should only be enrolled in the class in the first place because you want to do something with it and should already have some kind of internal motivation to follow through. But students just don't. Not because of their sleep schedules, but because online learning requires a level of discipline and internal motivation that just isn't expected of them anymore. If a student doesn't wanna do the work, they just won't. And it's relatively fine for a college instructor, who isn't paid by how many students pass the class. Honest. I could fail the entire class and get by relatively okay as long as I'm able to defend my decision and point out the numerous amount of times I reached out to help them.

But high school and below??? They are paid and penalized by how many or how few students pass their course. Again, covid taught us this; if all of those students just choose to sit on their asses, they could get their way at the expense of people's jobs and livelihoods (for the longest time, my dad was the only worker in our house. As a high school instructor, he shoved all six of us—yes, including himself to get his master's degree so he could earn more money to support us!—through higher education by working his ass off. He was a stern teacher, too, so if the students did that to him, they would have fucked over my entire family. It's scary to think of how many other teachers' families are going through that right now because of the shift in cultural attitude about learning and going to school). And to the students, this threat to lives and livelihoods is usually not their concern, because they'll be gone after a year and why should they care? Easy A! Sit on your ass! Accuse the teacher of some shady shit! Works for me!

(Seriously. A student didn't like their grade in my dad's class, went home, ripped out their own stitches, and tried to cry to admin about my dad abusing them. I was in the room when the 'confrontation' happened, and the audacity shook me to my core. And this was years before Covid. This is only one example of some of the shit my dad has been through. The shift in attitude has been going on for years.)

Like, I get the original argument that "everyone in the world has different needs, and the world needs to adjust and accommodate to take care of it." I want that. I want a world where my sister didn't have to feel like an idiot because she's not a morning person and I am. I want a world where my sibling has the time to pursue both passion and education. I want that. However, on this side, I can only see this broken system that punishes us for trying to educate kids who don't see what, exactly, we are trying to offer them and can only see "you fuck with me and I fuck with you and no I don't give a damn about how it'll hurt you as long as I get my way." It's never enough. It's never, ever, ever enough. Even if we try to help them within the parameters we're given, it will never be enough.

Try to hire more teachers to teach in shifts to accommodate for the different and very natural sleeping patterns of students? First, find a teacher who has that same sleeping pattern and then have them on standby, only to cut their job if not enough students sign up for their class and stick to it. Hope that teacher has got a backup plan, buddy. Try to do online courses where students can learn at their own pace? In addition to all the work that goes into making a class that is both engaging and effective (I overworked myself to mental exhaustion for one online course this semester. The students who stuck it out loved it, and while that's worth it, I just hope that all the prep I did this semester will save me next semester when I gotta do it all over again), good luck making sure that the students themselves have the internal motivation to finish AND good luck also trying to be available to them so they can ask questions while also maintaining whatever little sanity you have left. That student who's up at 2AM, as is natural and good for them, may not be able to meet up with the teacher who sleeps from 12AM-5AM every night (if they like to push to the brink of their sanity).

I teach English, but I teach more than that, too. We all do. Time management, respect for others, critical thinking, problem solving and troubleshooting, and more. And I'm a college instructor. I have freedoms that not many others in the industry have. I can create my lessons liberally, I can choose OERs to use so I don't have to force my students to buy anything, I can create content that they don't have to shell extra money out for. As long as I follow the standards and guidelines, I can alter what I need when I need to for the betterment of my students. I feel so bad for the rest of my family, all of whom teach high school and are trapped within the same bureaucracy that everyone bitches about, but they, as teachers themselves, can't do anything without getting hit with a huge hammer for it by admin, by students, or by parents (and that is a WHOLE other thing). The shifts don't work entirely, and the online classes don't work entirely either (yet, yet, hopefully yet!).

If the sleeping schedule was literally the only thing, those options might be viable. Because then we'd probably have students consistently signing up for time slots so we could make them more consistently available, and we'd have students consistently doing the work without the sleeping schedule as a natural impediment because they'd be motivated to get it done. But as much of a good student, or even mediocre student who just showed up and didn't make too many waves, as you were, these are currently luxuries that we can't afford because we're trying to get everyone on the same page teaching-wise.

There's the sleeping schedule thing, yes. There are possible fixes for it, yes. However, as much as a lot of people want this, there's always going to be some bureaucracy and some people who just say "what if I hit the big red destruct button?" that it fucks it up for everyone else.

And, yeah, I'm mad about it.

In the future the way we treat different sleep schedules is going to be thought of as just as weird and barbaric as beating kids for being left-handed. People will read about how we thought certain circadian rhythms were bad and made people take melatonin and use special lights to make their circadian rhythms different, and they will think, "So sad and ignorant...everybody is just afraid of difference."

[xsilverspringsx]

Don't Say Goodnight | a one shot story by yd (finished)

The breeze is especially cold tonight because of the heavy rain. I leaned into the window of my seat on the bus and watched the raindrops tracing all the way down. It was another exhausting day at school. These days, especially, finals week - exams and requirements are piling here and there. It looks like I haven't slept in days because I haven't, well barely.

In the city, the days go by so fast. School is fast-paced, everyone is following a routine. There's always schedules and alarms and everything feels so mundane. It's a job to catch up to the haste. I only had two exams today but I stayed in a cafe to study and finish a paper. I had to do a lot of revisions because one of my group mates got hospitalized last week. I didn’t mind doing his part, but it made everything more overwhelming on top of my own workload. Although it would've been easier to message the rest of them for help, even interacting with people felt so exhausting, so I ended up doing everything myself.

Commuting is the final nail to the coffin. Living an hour away from school takes so much of your energy and time. I couldn't care less about time because I'm an early riser, but my energy everyday I wake up is charged less than a hundred percent, not even fifty. Well at least my phone is. I was so done for the day that when I got home, I dropped to the floor immediately. I didn't even make it to bed. This has happened a lot these past few weeks. I go home exhausted but I still manage to wash up and get ready for bed. On days I am too drained, I only wash my face and sleep on the floor with my outside clothes when changing is too tiring to do.

But today, I am especially dead bat. I couldn't bring myself to get up and wash my face. Perhaps it's the weather. It hasn't rained in the city for months. It's a cold night, probably why my eyes are so heavy. My body is equally as heavy, so is my mind. Everything is so weighted and my anxiety is on the roof. I still have a lot of submissions to complete, exams to review for, plus I'm working part time over the weekend. The day I die is the day I get full sleep, an eternal rest. God, a girl can only wish.

I looked up at the snapping fingers in front of my face. The guy looks familiar. I know his face so well. He's waving at me now as if catching my attention, as if he hasn't gotten it already. But as if someone had hit the play button, I started hearing a familiar melody. A Plug in Stereo song is playing mid duration.

~With your hand in mine, we can touch the satellites

Two stars on the run, don't say goodnight~

I realized it's coming from my wired earphones and I have been listening to my playlist for hours. I always disassociate whenever the world is muted from me that I tend to forget my physical being is still on earth. The guy is mouthing words at me now. I finally removed my earphones though I could still hear the music coming from it. It must've been on full volume. The guy is still talking but I couldn't make out the words he's saying. It's like I've woken from a deep sleep and still disoriented. I looked around and the sky is in hues of purple and pink, the sunset in its finale. The guy is still talking, something about a parasitology case study. He's my classmate, I figured. But why don't I know his name? I'm not entirely extroverted but I know everyone in my class even the least I interacted with. We are outside 7/11 just outside the campus. We're still in school uniforms but we are the only people here, kinda unusual for this time of the day.

He's talking about the final exams now. As he gestured the word "a looot" with his arms stretching out, he accidentally knocked over the coffee cup at the table, spilling some of its content on my resting arm. I can't even remember if it's mine or his. Smoke is visible from the black liquid, now realizing it's his because I don't drink black coffee, but it isn't burning on my arm. Sure I flinched, because I thought it would be hot.

"I'm so sorry," the guy immediately picked up the cup and tried to clean the mess, but my mind is still in haywire. Could this be, could I be…?

"God, I really should control my caffeine intake now and actually get some sleep." I still couldn't make out his familiar face even though I know for sure who he is. He's panicking now, and I'm lightheaded. There are no other people. It doesn't make sense because this is always packed with students after dismissals, literally everyday. The only lights that are on are the ones coming from the convenience store and the nearby streetlight. But it's dark now, the hues are gone and it's pitch black, the darkness stretched out to the horizons. The only person here with me is someone familiar but nameless.

"I'm sorry about your notebo–”

"This is a dream," I said out loud to myself but the guy was caught off guard, immediately looking around. When I looked at him, he was staring seriously deep into my eyes which made me even more confused.

"This is a dream," I said once again, now talking to him.

"You aren't supposed to say that. Not out loud, at least.”

"It feels so real. It's like I'm conscious."

"That's because you're lucid dreaming. State of consciousness.”

"That's weird, I haven't done this before. How- Why-”

"Hey, it's okay. It's really weird the first time.”

"So you're a real person too? How is this even possible? What's your name? How did you know the first time?”

"Well for one, I do have a physical body. I don't know how it's possible but then again this is a dream so anything could be possible, and that's how you know you're dreaming.”

"I don't understand."

He leaned a bit closer and gestured to my right. There I saw our reflection on the 7/11 glass wall. He started explaining again.

"Think of anything you would've worn instead of a boring school uniform. Go ahead, anything. Then visualize yourself wearing that."

For some reason, I was just following his instructions and imagined myself wearing my favorite corduroy jeans and Rosita Espinosa t-shirt. Somehow, gone are the plain white uniforms. My face lit up in excitement. This is so cool!

"We- You can do anything you want from here. But remember, try not to talk to the others especially when you know you're in a dream. And that we don't have names, we just don't.”

"How did you know these rules?"

"It's kind of a universal thing. Anyway, what do you want to do? you're not gonna be studying even in your dreams, are you? You can be anything here, you can do anything."

As if I'm being provoked, I started visualizing places I wanted to be at. At the rooftop of the highest building in the city, in the middle of an empty highway, at the Dean's office out of curiosity, at the top of a ferris wheel of an empty fun fair.

"As much as I'm benefitting from your level of excitement, this is an incredibly high spot to be in right now." he says, chuckling nervously beside me. I suddenly remember the guy is still with me in a two-seater ferris wheel ride. The ferris wheel creaks as it carries us higher, the entire fairground shrinking below us. We are basically on the highest ground now.

I glance over at him, about to tease him for sounding scared, but something catches my eye. As he grips the edge of the seat, I notice something odd—a thin white band peeking out from under his sweater, like a hospital bracelet. I blink, and it’s gone, replaced by a watch. Must be a weird glitch, I think, shaking it off.

"This is so fun! We're the only ones here!"

As the ferris wheel turned, I stared out at the dreamscape below. The lights twinkled, distant but close enough to feel like I could touch them if I tried. Each place we had been to, every wild jump from one setting to another, had been so seamless, like the dream was effortlessly bending to my will.

The guy beside me was silent for a while. I couldn't even tell if he was still amazed by all this, like I was. The weightlessness of this world, the freedom. It was intoxicating.

“I could stay here forever,” I muttered, not really meaning for him to hear me. I was staring at the horizon, where the stars seemed to meet the edge of the earth. It was beautiful, serene, and endless. A place where time didn't exist, where pressure didn’t exist.

The guy looked at me, his smile fading a little. “Yeah… you could. But would you?”

I let his words hang in the air. Would I? I thought about the real world, about the exhaustion that clung to me every day like a second skin. The anxiety, the pressure, the constant feeling that I was falling behind. Here, it was different. There were no exams, no deadlines, no commute. No people expecting anything from me.

I didn’t answer him. I didn’t need to. The thought lingered, heavier than it should’ve been.

The ferris wheel continued its slow ascent, higher and higher, the ground below becoming a blur of colors. I glanced at him, noticing for the first time that his expression was... distant. His eyes weren't watching the view or me; they seemed fixed on something far off. Something unreachable.

Earth is getting smaller as we speak.

“Have you ever... stayed too long in a dream?” I asked, more curious than worried. But even as I said it, something about the question felt odd, like I was admitting to something I wasn’t ready to admit to myself.

His gaze flicked toward me, and for the first time, I noticed the weariness in his eyes. It was subtle, almost hidden beneath his easygoing demeanor. "I’ve been here for a while now,” he said softly, so softly I almost missed it. “Longer than I thought.”

I blinked. “What do you mean? You exist too, right? You can just… wake up whenever you want.”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he looked up at the sky. The stars didn’t twinkle like they should. They were frozen in place, like everything else here. “At first, yeah. But sometimes, the dream pulls you in. It becomes more real than what’s outside. And if you’re not careful… you might not want to wake up.”

I felt a strange chill, despite the warm air. “But you’re still here,” I said, my voice quieter now. “Why don’t you wake up?”

He finally met my gaze, and his eyes were full of something I couldn’t name. “I don’t think I can anymore. Not really. I’ve forgotten how to.”

My stomach dropped, but I forced myself to stay calm. This was just a dream, after all. I could wake up anytime. Right? I pressed my fingers together, trying to feel the texture of the seat beneath me. But it was soft, almost too soft, like the sensation was fading.

He gave me a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. You still can. But the longer you stay, the harder it gets.”

I looked down at my clothes, my Rosita Espinosa t-shirt, the one I had conjured just moments ago. It felt real, but it isn't. Nothing here is real. And yet, the thought of leaving felt… wrong. Why would I go back? Back to the exhaustion, the anxiety, the weight of it all?

“I don’t think I want to,” I said, barely above a whisper. “It’s better here.”

He nodded, not surprised. “That’s what I thought too.”

The ferris wheel stopped at the top. The world below us was empty now, still. I knew, deep down, that I could wake up. I just had to make the decision. I just had to want to wake up.

But I didn’t.

“I think I’ll stay for a while,” I whispered, more to myself than to him.

He didn’t say anything. The silence stretched on, and slowly, the details of the real world—my exams, the papers, the people—began to fade. Everything outside this place felt distant, like a forgotten memory.

As the ferris wheel descended, I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. There was no rush. There was nothing pulling me back anymore. And when I opened them again, the world around me was brighter, clearer than before. I looked down and there are people now. Families were walking around, friend groups laughing as they waited in line for the next ride. The air was filled with the smell of popcorn and cotton candy, mixed with the cheerful sounds of chatter. Kids ran towards the colorful carnival games, their faces lit up with excitement. Nearby, the merry-go-round spun happily while a cheerful tune played, blending perfectly with the joyful laughter echoing the overall setting. Suddenly, it's so full of life.

The guy was still beside me, his expression calm, observing how I visualized the place to my liking. But something in his eyes told me he understood. He’d seen it happen before.

Two stars on the run.

I wasn’t going to wake up.

Not this time..

---------

i already know how the story ends but i'm still figuring out how to write it. this isn't even the final script but i have a feeling that i'm going to abandon this just like my every other unfinished one shots. i'm posting this here in case it'll be deleted somewhere. i really like the plot of this one.

this is (btw) inspired from a looot of my media consumption mainly the short anime series Insomniacs after School (by far the !best! romance anime i've watched. very interesting and unique plot), the book Something Spectacular by april_avery on wattpad (i read that book in highschool; changed the trajectory of my life), the movie Your name (dare I say my favorite movie of all) and the songs Don't say Goodnight (hence the title) by Plug in Stereo, Bituin by Sugarcane, Walking back home by Vira Talisa, and Sparkle by radwimps.

final note: this is finished.

[thezoeydiaries]

ENTRY #7

Hey people,

It's 12:53AM, and I have been working for the past hour like a lunatic. I was in a very stressful situation, earning a phone call to my work bestie - Jade just to rant and blow off some steam.

I love the people I work with in production, but it's not always cupcakes and rainbows, if anything it's more coffee and the feeling of impending doom waiting to be unleashed at any given time. (Okay fine, that was exaggerated) But in reality, my line of work puts much pressure on employees like me and my colleagues.

There's a lot to unpack here, but the best example I could give you of my work dynamic is the plot of The Devil Wears Prada. Except it's with less fashionable people (but equally fabulous nonetheless). Instead of getting Miranda Priestly — I work with people who are closer to my age and have a different view on work relationships than the old-fashioned "I'm your boss and I'm going to ruin your life" narrative (Oh thank God it's 2024, and a good year for some character development).

I love the people I work with in production, they're actually one of the reasons why I could even stand this job. I don't want to sound like any other 20-something-year-old, ranting about how she hates her job and wishes she could quit but can't for reasons a, b, and c. But the thing is, as glamorous as it does sound working for TV Production, it's just as hectic and stressful as any other corporate job (maybe even more tbh). I hear my peers who work outside of my industry say that my workload is insane and that it's definitely not for everyone. And I agree with that, so many newbies in the company just come and go (not even staying for 3 months) because it gets too much too soon, especially on bad days. And as for my batch, we're already considered the seniors in the program since we've lasted for more than a year (which comes as a surprise to others, because on the regular —most employees last between a few weeks to only 3 months).

I get it, working in TV is not like your typical job and requires so much more out of you than the regular employee. We don't get to clock out, and we don't have the privilege to enjoy holidays or weekends. We only get free time when all our deliverables are done, but we can only do so much in so little time that before we even know it —we're already starting another production week for the next airing. So now that I've painted that picture, let me take you back to the present time.

I was ranting on the phone with Jade about a very common issue in our job and that's the hassle of scheduling the shoots. Just because one has a shoot, doesn't exempt him/her from her other duties to attend like weekly meetings for pitching and post morts (especially for other programs). You have to find a way to make things work for you because each show is like an independent company — they have no business with each other, therefore, they act like the other doesn't exist. So when you're in the middle of scheduling tasks, meetings, and shoots, they will not coddle you just to accommodate the other show. It's either you find a way to be there and fulfill your obligations, or you're not doing your job right. (Even if they schedule meetings at the same time, it doesn't mean it's okay for you to present in one and absent in the other). So whatever it takes, even if you need to split yourself in half, you do it.

And right as I finished my task for the night, there was a sudden shift in my mood. I felt like I was in a higher vibration all of a sudden. It was so noticeably different how I was ranting and in a bad mood one minute, and I was grateful and content the next. It was so unusual that it prompted me to write this blog right now. I don't know what it is, but I have a very good feeling that better days are coming. I can really feel like a good change is on its way, and I feel like I will be receiving blessings upon blessings.

I am just in a good mood despite the heaping amount of work I know I have to get into really early in the morning. I don't know if this is like a preview or a sign that things are finally going to go my way, but I just can't shake off the sense of relief, the overwhelming joy, and the hope that things are finally going to turn for the better.

So I guess the only goal of this blog is to remind you that even if things are not going in your favor, in a split-second God can change it all around and you will be grateful.

Till next time my loves!

Love and light,

Zoey na randomly optimistic

[blue-mood]

26.11.2022

I haven't updated since June!

I ended up graduating in July with a first class in Mathematics! I am pretty happy about it 👏🏻 I was hoping it would be a first the whole time, but then I kept trying to convince myself it was going to be a 2:1 so that I could avoid disappointment.

Now I'm pursuing a Master's degree and my first term is ending in two weeks. I am pretty terrified. The amount of taught material is actually not that much, and there is also a very large gap in workload compared to my UG. For some reason, I think I worked 10 times harder during my UG than right now. I am not saying that it's easy in any way, but it definitely feels more manageable. However, I believe that the precision and maturity required for the few assignments you get are much higher. This term I literally only have 5 assignments, but they're all like small projects. So it's not too easy and not too hard. At the same time, I have to work on my MSc project (i.e. dissertation and presentation). That is the main thing about my Master's degree. I still have a week or so to pick out my topic, but I really dislike the list of topics that we've been given. I realised that there are no project that I would actually enjoy doing, or even have a slight understanding of. They're the typical topics that you would find in articles on Google when you look for answers to your homework. Compared to my BSc project, this one seems twice as hard. Well, my BSc project was on number theory and statistics mainly, so that was fun to me. Also, if you study Mathematics at SU, the BSc project is optional. I chose the module as an elective. So yeah, that's what has been going on lately. I am studying Data Science now and luckily for me I am like an intermediate programmer already, since I studied CS in high school and I kept programming throughout my UG. However, there are some modules where having taken an actual programming module is advantageous compared to self-taught programmers. For example, I have an artificial intelligence class which is still pretty comprehensible to me, but I feel like I need to work twice as hard compared to some of the other students with a CS/AI/ML background. It's not entirely unfair because, well, I chose the module myself. But it still feels like some students know more than people like me, who don't really have a solid programming background. But enough complaints. Overall, I think it's fine. I can still deal with what I'm studying and it's not too difficult. I feel like my UG was way harder to comprehend sometimes and required a lot more studying and practice than my PGT. But it's still hard because during your PGT, you're even more independent. You need to have solid scheduling and time management skills. You might have one week or one month to finish an assignment that they might assign to you randomly.

Some things that I've been struggling with are my social life (but this has always been an issue) and visions of the future. I am so uncertain of my future career. I have no idea what I want to do or which work sector/field interests me. I have no problem in prioritising money over enjoyment when it comes to working (obviously, with reasonable balance). However, I am just so insecure of my knowledge and capabilities that I feel like I will never get a job. You know, one of my only goals in life is financial independence. Right now, I am still bound financially to my parents. I live in an Asian household and I still do whatever they tell me to do. My whole has been like this. But I really want to move on and earn my own money. I feel like I am so inadequate for any job position. I don't want to just work any job. I want a job that is related to what I graduated in, whether it is research or practical/applied. Especially something related to my current degree. But I have never done any internships or extracurricular activities, I don't have a pretty CV full of interesting experiences. There are people who are way more qualified than me for any position. I know that there will always be someone more qualified and that it doesn't really matter, but I can't seem to convince myself with that. By the end of next semester, I might need to start looking for jobs and I just hope everything goes well. Well, hopefully I can graduate with distinction, but I don't know... I don't even know how I'm doing academically because we don't really have a lot of assignments, so I can't test my knowledge really.

Regarding my social life, I just feel lonely I guess. I don't know what kind of loneliness it is. I have some people who I talk to (online), but I don't have anyone to interact with in real life. This year I have moved from Brighton to London. I have never lived in a proper city. It is so loud, chaotic and fast-paced. People just seem even more inapproachable. I wonder if I'll ever make a friend here in the UK. I have literally not made a new friend since high school. During my UG, I was "forced" to interact with some other students during the lockdown because we had to do a group project in Statistics. I stayed in contact with one of my coursemates throughout the rest of my UG journey. We never got the chance to meet up so our acquaintance never really developed or anything. So I haven't made a single friend during the 3 years of my UG. Now the same thing is happening. It's been 2 months since I've been in London, and I just cannot seem to make a friend. Except for the fact that people in London scare me because the chances of meeting weirdos and potentially dangerous people is higher, I just don't even know how to meet people. I am not really attending tutorials or practicals, because they're optional. I know it's not really an excuse or anything, but firstly there's my "social anxiety", and secondly, they don't really add much to what the lectures cover (which are pre-recorded videos). So all of this is basically accommodating my anxious behaviours and letting me study from home. The only times I get out are for grocery shopping or travelling to the airport to go home. That's pretty much it. I know that these are all excuses and that I am just trying to justify my unwillingness to actually do something about it. But I guess this is what is conflicting about social anxiety. I always have plans to go out, and at least take a walk along the river, but then I'm taken aback or I always have some excuse ready for myself: "I am too tired", "I have to study", "I don't have time, I have to cook and clean", "The sun is already setting" (which honestly, it's not entirely an excuse. The sun sets at like 4PM now, which is absurd). So I end up never going. The only time I explored London was when my friend (from HS) was here. She helped me move in, like when I first moved to Brighton. So yeah, I have been stuck at home for the past two months and I am getting so tired and sick of it. But at the same time, it's hard to push past my anxiety.

That's all I have to write for tonight (it's literally 4AM, what am I doing). If you read up to this point, I appreciate it a lot! I usually write these expecting nobody to really read them. It's just a way for me to vent and let my thoughts out. And also a way to relieve my urge to vent to my friends about all of it because some don't understand and some just don't like it when I talk for too long. In the end, I feel like I can comfort myself best.

I hope you all have a wonderful day and I will be back... I think. Maybe the next time I update you all, I will already have a job 💁🏻‍♂️

[princesscolumbia]

I am convinced that a lot of management are addicted to crisis mode.

So, bear with me on a little background; there's studies (because I'm not the kind who bookmarks this stuff when I find it because I never think I'll need it until suddenly I do, I don't have the links, sorry. I welcome someone who has them to comment and correct me if necessary) that show that people can get addicted to crisis mode, that is, the mode your brain chemistry is in when you have something that could be life or death and obviously you wanna choose life.

There is nothing inherently wrong with crisis mode in humans. It can, in fact, be one of the most beneficial things you do in a situation where a crisis actually exists. Rent is due and someone stole your money, sideswiped in traffic and having to deal with all that, let alone the fallout. Anything that warrants a trip to the ER, etc. Crisis mode is your friend in any of those situations. It shoves aside all the mental and emotional clutter, often gives your energy a boost, juices your metabolism, etc.

Problem is, humans aren't meant to stay in crisis mode. It literally becomes too much of a good thing; sleep deprivation sets in, anxiety rules your life, you need calories because your system is burning them at a frantic rate. This is how you burn yourself out.

During the pandemic the company I work for had a record number of service requests come in from our clientele. Without giving too much out in the way of detail, the vast majority of the work was simply stuff that people were noticing needed done because they were now home 24/7 when they used to be gone from home 50+ hours per week. Some of it was legitimate emergencies that were going to cause damage to people or property, but a lot of it was just , "Hey, I noticed this, fix it."

My job was to go through the list of the service requests and get them scheduled or otherwise off the list. We had to go through all of them before the end of the day every day. Which is nearly impossible when you have 600 of them and 300 are being created every day.

The litany was familiar:

"We need to buckle down and just cram through this"

"All hands on deck"

"Mandatory overtime until it's done"

etc.

Now in that instance it made sense; record numbers, no increase in staffing, a hard limit on being able to add new people, hell, they couldn't even fire people because there was no way to know when they'd be replaced.

But then time dragged on, we started to get a handle on it, I got so good at my job I was not only handling the 600-900 service requests I was taking on some of the manager's tasks that happened to dovetail into my job duties as well.

But we kept getting demands from the VP suite to have everyone "buckle down" and "all hands on deck" and "five markets are behind again" and...

My team (I wasn't the leader, but we got really good at our jobs and so we wound up being a team) kept getting called in to troubleshoot other markets. We'd knock the workload down to a normal, manageable level (and I had numbers to prove they were manageable, so everyone knew I knew what I was talking about)...but within a couple weeks it was "all hands on deck because there's more work than xyz team can handle."

Finally I started asking, "What's the plan to stop being in crisis mode?"

I got the blankest of confused stares you have ever seen.

"We do things the way we do because we're in crisis mode, right?"

"...yeah?"

"So what's the plan to not be in crisis mode?"

"...I don't...understand?!"

So I stopped listening when the panicking and the screams for all hands on deck went out.

Sure, I did my job, but when people tried to push for me to work faster than I was (I was one of the consistently fastest workers in the company) or do x more work than I was supposed to do, I just asked what this was an emergency for. Is someone going to be injured or someone's property damaged if we don't do this thing right now? No? Okay, I'm going to do this over here, which is going to result in damage or injury if we don't take care of it.

Eventually, people learned to not act like everything was a crisis around me...because it wasn't. I just didn't put up with it.

To this day people will slip into crisis mode when they think something is an emergency. When I'm able to produce hard numbers to show that no, this isn't an emergency, we deal with this all the time, you're just perceiving an emergency because you're addicted to the rush of crisis mode, they have to step back and re-evaluate what they're doing. They usually don't like it, because they realize I'm right, and people hate when someone else is right about them being wrong.

please please please remember that no matter what your manager says, it is never that serious. unless you are literally performing surgery or defusing a bomb, it simply is not that serious

[anovel70]

October 2022

This year is going by fast. I've been busy with work, which is the reason for the lack of updates. I've been hit with a reality that I'm no longer young and girls see me as a creep. I might not get married at this point while all my friends around me are getting married.

I finally started an actuarial role on top of my engineering job. Now I'm working two jobs, and on top of that, I plan on taking IFM as well. These are all things to distract me from the reality that I might not get married.

I found that being an actuary is very difference than being an engineer. They get more time off and the workload is very light. I can get away with doing my engineering job while on the job, which is exactly what I do to keep busy.

All these years, I've wasted time trying to make friends when all I should've done was work two jobs. Back when I was a student 10 years ago, I should've been studying harder to get better grades so my GPA would be 3.8 instead of 3.5. I would have an easier time job searching, I would be making more money, and I would've gotten my PE by now.

I have no friends except for my high school friend from Alabama, and he won't even hang out with me unless something was in it for him. I have my Pokemon Unite friends, but they can't do anything for me.

I never got to take Exam 8 because of a lack of preparation, which would be useless for Exam 9 preparation. The point was to learn what types of tricks the upper level exams use in order to ask questions, but if I don't know the material, I won't be learning the tricks. Instead, my new study schedule will be IFM in November, Exam 9 in May, PE exam in July, and Exam 8 in October.

I don't recall saying this in my last update, but the "I think I will end the year with no friends. No one is around for me anymore." is becoming more true. Maybe I don't need friends. I find them all boring anyways and I don't know why I keep trying. I can't even join in on a conversation. I've tried so hard but I couldn't fit in. This is more justification that I should stick with what I'm good at doing: making money from remote jobs.

I'd still like to play volleyball at the end of the year. I like the exercise, but no one I can keep in touch with is still playing.

I ended up getting an apartment for a year. I just needed a break from home life. Looking back, it's nice to have some privacy about my second job, but at the same time, I wish I was travelling and seeing the country. I have the money to work from a hotel from time to time, but I don't know how to make friends in these new places.

I still need to get laid by a prostitute. I'll do it as a reward for passing IFM in two weeks.

The only reason why I'm online right now is because my work laptop's security is down right now, allowing me to update Tumblr for the first time since May.