i spent 2.5 days on what is, to date, the most stunning, remote feeling, pristine, and beautiful alpine climb of my life.

got weepy twice behind my glacier glasses from sheer feelings of awe and gratitude. never have i felt quite so small and insignificant, and yet so vast.

i am still very emotionally and mentally raw from that experience. this is a beautiful planet we have, treat it well.

So, turns out my employment woes were noticed by a few people within the organisation.

I'm now at the reference check stages for a job that had a timeline like this:

Day 1: I see an IT job posting on our internal network. It pays more and is more complicated than the role I interviewed, but didn't make the cut, for a few weeks back. I ignore it.

Day 3: I get a message from the University's recruitment team. "Hey did you see this role? I think you should apply for it". I explained my reticence, in that if I wasn't up to snuff for a lower paid job I can't see myself getting any further for something higher up. She replied "Please apply for it. It suits your skillset." I said I'd think about it. She replied "I've already told the panel."

Day 4: I apply

Day 5: The recruitment lady thanks me, and asks me to hold tight.

Day 14: The advert closes, I get a notification that it's closed. 5 minutes later, the recruitment lady calls me "Right interview time, when suits?"

Day 17: I have the interview. I think it goes well? I did some research, found the IT roadmap and talked about their past hurdles, plan for the future and what I would do to try and see that plan become a reality. Talked about soft skills, translating requirements and all that jazz. They seem to like me, but are a group of true-blue IT nerds, and I'm an extroverted hobbyist so I temper myself in the interview. They don't need 100% Foveaux. Nobody needs that.

Day 18: I put it out of my mind, certain that the recruitment lady was just doing me a favour because I was this close to getting the other role, but was pipped (out of 44 applicants) by someone who had the right degree. She calls me. "Reference check time! Who you got?" I offer up: The Dean, the head of IT for the Uni and my boss. I note that she specifically mentions I don't need to have my current boss as "we understand it might be detrimental". I offer my boss' details anyway. Don't want to rock that boat.

Currently, Day 19: My references are received, all glowing (even my boss). I get a call from the head of operations wanting me to do an exit interview. I said "I'm... I'm not leaving? Am I leaving?". She panics, because the organisation is going through a lengthy and draining voluntary redundancy process, which will be followed by involuntary redundancies. She follows with "No! No you're not. I heard you.. Might.. have an offer coming your way? Actually ignore me. Sorry. Lets revisit next week!"

So here I am wondering wtf is going on. I call my colleague, who explains it all.

Day -3: My colleague resigns very suddenly. Sudden for others, not for me. I helped her prep for her interviews and write her resignation letter to be juuuust diplomatically scathing enough, without burning bridges. Turns out, after HR received the resignation, they kicked into overdrive trying to keep her. With the redundancies and restructures, morale is at an all time low and good staff are running away. They need people like her. She's really, really good. She explains her reasoning for leaving (our narcissistic boss, the structure, no direction). They ask her to give them time to find a new role for her, elsewhere. She offers "Foveaux has one foot out the door too, by the way. He's the last of us, and the only one who was here before the restructure of 2018." and HR said "Leave it to us."

So it looks like our employers are pulling out all stops to keep us under their wings. My colleague just got offered a project management role after a coffee with the project lead, and I appear to have been politely strong-armed into applying for an IT role I thought I had no chance in, and they seem to be taking me very seriously. Surreal.

I guess I'll know by next Pubski?

Released some music.

Ran a bunch. I did ~11 miles the other morning and definitely hurt my foot. Tendons or something like that, but it hurt to stand up this morning. I should probably be a bit more mindful about running now that I'm doing some decent mileage. By the end of my two most recent runs you could tell my legs were done with it.

I had also gotten some shoes from Roadrunner which, after waiting in line forever and being passed through three different sales people and some foot scanning machine just to try on some shoes, walked away with a pair that just don't work for my feet, so there's that.

Got one job offer I declined because it lacked future potential and seemed too easy. Feels like a waste jumping through a thousand hoops to reject the offer. Nothing promising on the horizon right now - I didn't get a call back from my previous pre-interviews yet (but there is one I am very interested in. It's nice to know there are cool jobs out there I can at least get pre-interviewed for). So it's time to ramp up the CV-sending. Next week, I'm volunteering for a startup fest. for a day, which gives me access to it for the whole week of networking. I feel like I do better in person and it's more fun than CV sending. Maybe something will come of this! Being a generalist with a massive diversity of experiences gives me confidence in my abilities but also makes it hard to pass the HR filtering.

Successfully made it to the West Coast! Partner's mom who drove across the country with us over the course of a week tested positive for COVID on the last day :( so now quarantining. Partner and I healthy so far, and it's just about at day 5 so we think we're safe (knock on wood) just in time to fly back to the east coast tomorrow for a wedding this weekend.

Still unemployed, haven't applied to jobs in a few weeks but going to really ramp it up again soon. Bank account rapidly shrinking, and with both living expenses and medical bills rolling in, I'm really looking forward to working at a grocery store to scrape by enough to contribute to household expenses while I look for a job that actually uses my degree and areas of interest. It really hurts spending and spending with no income at all. It's an awful time. Don't recommend the unemployment life.

still unemployed but getting processed for a govt. job (through contractor middlemen) that pays shockingly well for shockingly little work, so i'm looking forward to seeing how much the catch (inconsistent work schedule and limited hours) will take me. signups for this year's JLPT haven't opened yet but i plan to sign up when they do later this month. next year i might be translating for money and not just for friends

yesterday i hosted a fourth of july party for some friends and it was a great time - somebody i met thru the trans group (whence discord server, whence reddit, whence desperate google search), her fiance, and somebody i met on a dating app. we potlucked and feasted and drank and i was thinking in the middle of it how crazy it was that i used to be alone, and how acclimated to it i was

i want to marry my boyfriend someday. i feel stupid talking about it but lately i've been questioning why that is, and finding no good answers. we've survived 4 years of monogamy and 4 months of "do you care if i have sex with so-and-so" so i guess we can keep hammering away at the ties that bind for another 4 years and see how sturdy they end up. maybe we'll be the youngest swingers at the sex club. under the cynicism i love him more than i can put into words so if i end up being wrong then i can be honest in saying that i couldn't see it coming

i wrote 3 chapters of a YA-type book and it feels good to write something real. i put what i've finished so far up on the only other place on the internet i post on so give it a read if you have time to spare and you like that sort of thing. my buddy that i brainstorm ideas with ("i want to write a story about pirates" - "what if it was a city that lived on the water") said that i should try to publish if i ever get it finished, but the only thing i know about being an author is that it's the worst job in the world on purpose so i think beyond vanity there's no reason to do that

i've been having awful nightmares all year, and beyond that for a long time, but before this year i never remembered my dreams unless they were particularly heinous. i have dreams where i get raped. i have dreams where i get into terrible arguments with people i love. i have dreams where my teeth turn liquid or wiggle and fall out, or where my toes get torn up and cut off. the last couple days it's been every night, and every time i nap during the day, too, and i'm tired as shit. i'm gonna try getting a sleep test because i've been suspicious for years i have sleep apnea. my boyfriend says i talk and cry in my sleep, and get startled badly

i don't know what's going on when every store i go into is understaffed and yet it takes 4 months to get hired. i could be shooting for too high a wage or too prestigeous a position, but when the mcdonalds has a 400 dollar signing bonus and 15 bucks an hour i don't know how much anything matters anymore. i'll get under any big-gut small-business satan for 15 bucks an hour at this point

- Turns out landlord has been ripping us off on rent an NNN for years to the tune of about $27k; need to figure out how to make that stop and make him leave in such a way that I can buy the building without him selling it to a REIT

- Spent 3 days in Canada which I love; didn't shoot the fireworks again because I don't like being messy and stinky but forgot again that cleaning up the fireworks makes you messy and stinky so I should probably just shoot them

- Weeder broke (boo). It's a cheap part (yay). It's also easy to design and print (yay). But it's tricky (boo). Needed to be iterated seven times to get it to fit (boo). Discovered why I keep insisting that materials science matters; ABS is bullshit and laminated-the-wrong-way ABS is more bullshit (b00). Knuckled down to buy a new weeder for $40 (boo), discovered the old one has a lifetime warranty (yay). Send in my claim, there's a 4-6 week wait (boo). So I may end up with one, two or three weeders depending on how this plays out because I can't wait 4-6 weeks. YOU MIGHT BE AN ENGINEER IF you spend a week off and on iterating a cheap plastic part for a tool with a lifetime warranty

- Been reading Bamford's latest. It has much discussion about NUMEC. My father has many opinions about super-shady super-shit enrichment plants and i hadn't talked to him in a while so I called and asked if he knew anything about it. Not only did he not, he decided to say loudly into the phone "I worked for the supreme organization on the planet where nothing ever went wrong" and got off the phone as quickly as he could because clearly he's figured out the phone's tapped and clearly he thinks I ratted him out to the FBI.

-----let's just pause there and acknowledge the exotic strangeness of that paragraph----

-----because there are other things in Bamford's latest that made me reconsider certain other events of the past seven years that put things in such an absolutely bonkers, absolutely bugshit light that there is

no

fucking

way

even I, the Internet's original over-sharer, will commit to writing------

So I've been dealing with that. I'll probably be dealing with that for the rest of my fucking life. I can't and won't talk about it and it's really fucking tough because my wife is compassionate, empathetic, sensitive and kind but the bugshittery is so bugshit that it doesn't even register with her and it took two fucking days of contemplation just to figure out my obligation to society. I think my past actions have me in the clear, all obligations fulfilled?

But I'm going to have to do a lot of drinking before I'm entirely okay.

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