The Rainbow

It's been a while since I've come back to write here, but maybe it hasn't been as long as it feels like. For a while I was thinking from time to time I should come back just to mention that the heartbreak is fading and although the challenge of trying to get by here on the budget I have available for it is a big one, I think I'm getting more of a handle on it.

A couple of weeks ago, I think on the day I last wrote, now that I think of it, I applied to Rev after looking through some articles on more unconventional ways to make money, as opposed to a regular hired job. Rev is a captioning and transcription service and work space; they hire freelancers who can use the online tools they provide to claim jobs as they come available and type captions to videos and audio from clients. I went through some testing and was approved to join.

It's been exciting to have something I could do with my hours from home to make money on my own terms, and although I'm not currently earning at a rate which is going to solve all my financial problems, it's work that I like and I think I can get better at it over time.

Yesterday just for example I wrote captions for a weird music video, and started work on an hour-long documentary I'll need to finish today. I get exposed to a lot of different media I probably would never have watched on my own, and the variety makes this job interesting. I'm glad to have something that takes advantage of my precision with words and good typing speed, although in this case, it's precision in listening to hear exactly what words someone else used, not choosing them myself.

As often happens, I've found solace in love from those around me by deepening my relationships into romance. There's a degree to which I feel uncomfortable about that, since it's happened so many times before it feels like I'm turning predictable or something, becoming a cliche. It's frustrating that that meta-awareness messes with my appreciation of the moment, because the thing itself is beautiful anyway.

So once again I've had a wonderful time talking endlessly to one of my friends and finding that there is potential for us to be closer, and it was all appropriately delicious. I've drawn a few pictures, hit by inspiration from the new relationship energy and finding with pleasure that the skill I've accumulated over the years makes it much easier for me to depict what I want to reasonably well, and I've been producing work I can be proud of in just a couple of hours.

The thought to see if I can try to market that as well does come to mind, alongside the long-standing intent to try to set up an online shop for my macrame bracelets. The way things are going so far, it'd make me an all-around crafter-freelancer, and you know what? That could be pretty cool.

Sunday night this week I pulled an all-nighter hanging out online with this relationship that's changing colours in my life, and so yesterday I had trouble staying awake in my classes. I gave up and went home to sleep after the first two. I slept again last night, although not ideally long, and walked to school today listening to a variety of renditions of "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond". There was one instrumental version in particular that I reflected would sound just about perfect if I could have added the sound of rain into it, for an atmospheric connection to the sky and fields as they are, I suppose.

Well here's where it gets a bit strange, because not five minutes later it started raining. I'd finished the song by then, but the timing was remarkable anyway. I had been admiring the many colours of silver in the clouds, as there often are in Ireland, and it's not as though it seemed unlikely for it to rain, but just that it happened right then, as opposed to fifteen minutes earlier, struck me as somewhat uncanny.

But what was moreso was when I looked up and almost jumped to see the change in the sky; where there hadn't been not five minutes before when I took a photo of the lovely silvers in the clouds over the green field I was passing, there was a rainbow, full across the sky and not the slight half-bow I'd sometimes seen in rain in Canada.

Over the next little while, the rainbow got brighter and brighter by the moment, not only a full arc across the sky now, but apparent right to the ground on both sides, even casting its colours in front of the distant hills on the horizon. It looked as though you could have guessed to within a dozen meters or so where exactly it seemed to touch down on one side. Looking on with awe, some of the old legends of searches for leprechauns' gold made a lot more sense all of a sudden.

For a period of not more than ten minutes or so, the rainbow brightened and brightened, clearer and more vibrant than I had ever seen a rainbow in my life, with a second, dimmer arc beginning to show outside the main on the sides, and then began to dim and fade away. I caught a few photos of the rainbow before it was gone, and the sky returned to gray as the rain continued lightly for a while longer and I went on my way toward the college. The whole of its appearance may have been contained in a quarter of an hour.

I thought back to King of Dragon Pass where the appearance of a rainbow was considered to be among the best of omens, and to other similar things, and felt rather a lot as though the sky had smiled at me, 'like forgiveness' in a way, I remember thinking. There's a certain cheshire-cat-ness to it now, looking back, that leaves me feeling curious and portentous. Perhaps it smiles on the progress of my new relationship, or to reassure me that my efforts are good enough, for now; or that I may be soon rewarded for not giving up on my time here. Who knows, but there is that in me that wonders, even while its being silly and seeming misguided is also felt in my thoughts.

So there, anyway, is the rainbow which greeted me this morning, and the trend of my activities these past few weeks. Health and fortune to the ones I love and to all those who love me, if I may spread it out to them, for their fortune is also mine after all.

And good day.

Scattered Rambles: September Update

I've been feeling like it's been a while since I've written. I've been feeling often very busy though, and use that as an excuse to do other things.

The fall sale happened at the store recently and was only slightly less successful than the last sale, which was record-breaking. I had a nine hour shift, and that was now... four days ago? I am planning a vacation soon, to combat an increasing sense of burn out. Robby and I are being transferred onto the same Ontario Works account. I am increasingly interested in cooking. The other day I bought $78 of Forgotten Realms fiction from Goodwill; 35 paperbacks and two hardcover books. Hopefully I will get around to reading a fair bit of it.

I am ever more anxious to see our roommate leave and the new one arrive. I have considered to myself whether I might still feel like the house is not my own, but if there is anything about the new roommate coming that should ease my fears it is that he is a naturally very gentle person, not inclined to be hostile over small matters at all.

I had a plan to design some Hallowe'en adoptable critters for a trick or treating community game on Chicken Smoothie, and drew up five line arts for it. I had already digitized one of them and made at least two dozen variations of the creature on it, when I dropped my laptop. No damage was immediately obvious; it had not powered down immediately and ran as usual for a couple more hours, but when it froze and I shut it down, I was unable to start it up again. It would not boot, even from a USB recovery OS my friends advised me how to set up (using Robby's computer).

Since then, I've been using my old, slow desktop again. It is frustrating; I cannot both run a game and play a video at once without disruptive lag. I plan to call the retailer's warranty line after work today (I have been unable to for the past week due to their Mon-Fry 9-6 hours conflicting with my work hours, but today I have an early shift). I have been entertaining myself by watching YouTube videos, but I download them first with clipconverter.cc; otherwise, they would be very choppy. I have also been playing Pretend You're Xyzzy more often with the guys, and I've been building cardcast decks to use in the games, based on my fandoms or on nothing in particular. I have three public decks that I have been working on: Grimith, Dwarf Fortress, and Serpent's Standard, which is where I put anything I think of that I don't mind sharing publicly and doesn't belong in the other two.

A Season of Carols

Time is passing, passing along...

Work has become more and more habitual and easy. I go about my duties with unhurried calm most of the time, and feel competent and a little as though I am in a trance. The snow drifting outside the windows on snowy days, and serene or gently moody Christmas carols can be hypnotizing. It seems like we always have far more to do than we can realistically get done, but I am coming to understand that this is the way the store is meant to be run. Perfection is not expected, just a continuing effort to improve the worst problems, tidy the worst messes, and keep things running.

Customers ask me if I am working hard, and sometimes I am so relaxed I wonder if they are perhaps being sarcastic, but I am careful not to fall idle, and always be doing something useful to the store.

About a week ago, I decided to take up a piece of digital artwork I had promised a friend a year or so before, and ended up surprising myself by working for seven hours, and finishing it. I opened up artwork commissions on ChickenSmoothie again, which is basically an art trading site, but most of that art trading is in the form of official site collectable pets. It's not "professional", since it's not actually money, but it is reassuring to know that there are people who will trade me something that has value to them, and to the community we are participating in, in exchange for the quality of artwork I produce.

Doing art seems to make me happier, and the commissions help me focus and finish.

Unfortunately, my computer at home has encountered a somewhat serious problem, and is now not starting up Windows at all, not even in Safe Mode. It seems to be getting stuck on a file called SPTD.sys. I've had a lot of problems with corrupt files and cyclical reduncancy checks recently, and I knew my computer was deteriorating, so I'm not surprised. I've been wanting to replace it for a while now, but I have been spending my money on other things: repaying an old debt to a friend, housewares and winter garments, games, Christmas presents... I'll have to get a cheap replacement as soon as is reasonably convenient. Hopefully within the month. I'm not sure what I'll spend my time doing at home without one. For now, I'm staying with  my boyfriend again. Being alone without computer and internet access is lonely and boring. Being with my boyfriend is neither, and thus greatly preferable.

I still wonder where I'm going and how I will progress. I am feeling more and more confident in my present role. I even managed to get some resolution and a greater feeling of respect and appreciation after a mild confrontation with a co-worker with whom I was having some conflict.

I wonder sometimes if I am getting too comfortable, and a bit lax. Perhaps I should ask my co-workers and managers what they think. I wonder sometimes if I am becoming more sheltered and recluse, or complacent about the world and my ideals... I'm not sure who to talk to or what to do about that. It doesn't concern me all that much, though. I have time to bide and wait, and find something.

Oh. Also, I noticed something. Both at work and in my life surrounding it, I notice that I tend to get bored and despondent if things get too easy. The first big snowfall of the season, I walked to work and then to my boyfriend's house along the side of the road because the unshoveled sidewalks were knee-deep in snow... And I was elated by the challenge, the opportunity to get there anyway, do something -interesting-. I notice that I need a certain amount of adversity in my life, or I get bored and start to feel worthless and uninterested. My boyfriend thinks that is probably a sign of adaptation to a life that has been too hard. Perhaps. It is a useful revelation, though. Perhaps I can remember to make use of it, if I start to feel that boredom.

Status Update

Yeah, there's been some stuff to talk about, but I just haven't been wanting to sit down and write to you guys. Almost a month ago, I broke up with Pup on Valentine's Day. I didn't even realize the timing. We talked a lot, I decided on the terms of One Last Chance, and consented to stay. But he still annoys me almost every day. Over the past two weeks, he's been breaking down after listening in on a conversation between me and a friend of his apparently taught him that despite his pretenses to morality, to logic, to rationality, he doesn't know a goddamn thing. Now for the last two days, something seems to have broken, and his answer to everything is saying "I don't know"; blaming everything on his Aspergers, on overexposure to mercury, on the stimuli he's responding to... including me... and lashing out.

For about a week, I've picked up Fitocracy again; I've been planking, but not really anything else. It's too early to say whether I'll stay with it. I do manage to do it for a while even when I'm really not very into it, though... I just tend to collapse after a minute if my spirit isn't in it or I'm otherwise worn out.

I returned to Writing.com and wrote a few contest entries, the first of which won an on-site prize. The contests I'm entering have a 300 or 100 max word count, and make great practice for cutting stories down to the vital core, making them succinct. I did fall into a jealous habit of comparing my work to the other entries, though, when I didn't win. Or worse, calling into question the taste and legitimacy of the judges. I might post my work here, some of it. I might not.

I've also been doing a little bit of sketching and artwork. For a while, while things were going well with Pup, I sketched him in anime style, something I've never really managed to work in before, and it seemed to go really well. I think of, or say, something funny, and I do a quick sketch of it, sometimes.

This week, I finally got my First Aid/CPR certification, Level C. I felt noble learning the material, and it was a bit of work, mostly because Pup kept me up very late so I was doing the 8-hour courses on four and three hour nights of sleep. The course itself was fun and seems very useful. If I'm ever in an emergency situation, I think I will feel much more confident dealing with it now. There was some confusion with my certificate card, though. The course instructor accidentally filled out the expiry date and the issue date as the same, so that I would be certified for 24 hours, rather than three years. I brought up the mistake to Goodwill, and my card was redone properly. I was told the other staff members laughed at her for the mistake, though that bit didn't make me feel any better.

Yesterday I had a mild, prolonged anxiety attack, apparently prompted by a bunch of people trying to help me with my questions at Goodwill, and someone answering other questions a bit shortly, since he had a lot of different things to do. The attack lasted over two hours and I felt hostile and feeble throughout it. Then came home to Pup and fought for a long time about him failing to aplogize to me or take my feelings into account even when I make them clear, and me being irrational and unstable to a point that he feels he has to be afraid of my leaving him any time he does anything at all.

Today, from the time I woke up, despite doing my planking and having a shower, and despite close to twelve hours of sleep, it felt like the world was slowed down. When I listened to my music, it all sounded slightly but uncannily flat, and I didn't care about it, even though it was music that was usually very powerful to me. I went to Goodwill to retrieve a flash drive I'd forgotten there, and came home immediately. It was obvious to me that I needed to just rest, today, and recover from my stresses... my body and despondent mind were telling me something was wrong and I needed to tend to that before anything else.

It seems much of this, my own participation in all sorts of other activities, including some active job search work, practicing various forms of my artistry... was largely prompted by Pup's computer being fixed, meaning he now has something to spend time with without me having to be there to engage him constantly. The fact that it's now, after this, that his responses to me have seemed to step up again in aggression and disrespect has some very disappointing implications that now that he doesn't need me as much, there's a lot more dissatisfaction and hostility he may have been holding back, that's now out. Perhaps having what he wanted has actually made his mental and emotional condition worse, because he can junkie out on video games and avoid real world responsibilities as much as he wants. I don't really know. Whatever's going on, I don't think this will last long.

P.S: I... just discovered something weird on my Writing.com account. Apparently someone spent $20 on me to get me three months of upgraded account. It was an anonymous gift, with the message: "Keep reviewing!". I... feel kind of stunned. It's weird that some random person on the internet would spent money on me to get me to keep doing reviews of writing... I wonder, is this how Grimith feels?