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Most times, you don't get the raw scoop here. It's pretty canned. Sometimes it's really raw, like when I'm crashing, or when I wrote that hangover bit, or something like that, but for the most part you're getting something I've thought about a lot and kind of rehearsed and not off the cuff. That gets stale, sure, but I like to control my own message. I'm just kind of spitballing today, though. Kay switched gigs from Office Max to Weekend's Only for a 300 dollar bonus, a $0.75 per hour wage increase, and slightly more hours, but no assumptions that the job itself is actually better. In retail, one job is fundamentally similar to another, but co-workers and management can make heaven a hell and a hell... well, not heaven. Purgatory, maybe. Anyhow, all that means is we both got up at 6 AM out of solidarity, but I don't have to be in until 10, so I'm letting myself kill the time today.
So, it's a fairly candid status update kind of day. I did a few entries in a row a little while ago, let it go for about a week, and you'll probably get a few in a row now, too, so I hope you enjoy this kind of thing.
I feel like Katie and I have both cooled our heels in Limbo for a few years too long, really. I think I was ready to shake that shit off in 2010, 11, or something like that and go do something with myself, but we both got trapped in no-wage/low-wage hell, which is something I've seen stick a pretty goodly number of my generation. It can last for a few years - if you're lucky. Every day feels like an eternity but looking back on it feels like it was an undifferentiated morass. As a lifestyle, it sucks at your heels and pulls on your hems, because it feels like society really doesn't even want you to break out of that. Looking at it more objectively, our economy right now is really leaning on technically capable, low wage earners, so we say you're supposed to break out, but the tools are deliberately faulty and the signs are misleading. There's a pile or corpses at the bottom of the morass. You have to hope that their cooling bodies are sturdy enough to stand on as you foist yourself out. These bootstraps are extremely morbid.
Not everyone shares this admittedly bleak outlook, but if you can't admit that even the most meagre personal success rests on the backs of people stuck in miserable positions we depend on but, societally, we refuse to support in turn, you're simply wrong. If you want out of the pit, the ladder's made of bones. You don't have the luxury of deciding the material. You neither add to the pile or build the ladder, but you either climb it or you stay there. Capitalism is inherently predatory; you might not be the butcher, but you're still eating meat.
Don't get the wrong impression, though. Not everyone likes my metaphor, and it's easy to assume I'm feeling down about my situation, but it's actually the best it's been in a long time. Kay might be getting a crummy, but living-wage paying job in the near future. Everything's in for my grad student application, so I'm just cooling my heels for a little while and waiting on the results of that and my loan application. We're still poor and stressed, but we're marginally less poor and stressed than we've been, which is an amazing difference in quality of life. And my bean and tomato plants are looking really good. So I'm in a pretty good mood. On a day to day, I'm in a better mood than I've been in for literal years.
It just is what it is.
I've been doing a few things for fun, lately. I finally sprung for Civilization 5, after over 200 hours over a pretty good span of time on Civ 4. Civ 5 is intense. It's significantly different from 4, too. I bought it yesterday, clocked a few hours on it, and it's good. I'll try not to lose too many hours to it in the coming days, but it's Civilization, so, you know. Wish me luck. I started playing Persona 2: Innocent Sin. There's another long game. I finished Mass Effect and immediately went to Civ and Persona, so you know I'm a glutton for these time sink games. Persona's a series I have strong feelings about. I've finished 1, Eternal Punishment, 3, The Answer, and 4. Even Arena, for what it's worth, though I hear there's a new one. Innocent Sin is really the only traditional Persona I haven't gotten to, so I figured it was about time. I bought it over a year ago. My media backlog is huge. I haven't even tried to watch TV shows in a long time.
I'm reading Godel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid, which doesn't synch with what I'm traditionally adept at. It's heavy on logic structures and it's a dense fucking read. I went for Comp Sci in college and tanked it, because I'm balls at math, so I'm reading the book but I'm intentionally not focused on grokking it - really internalizing it - so much as I'm taking in the words, determining what's in the book, and more or less just moving on. I'm filing away a detailed understanding of what kind of information the book contains in the event that something catalyzes in me and I understand it in a flash of data structure based enlightenment. I don't really enjoy reading it, but I want to have already read it. It's just that the only way there is to do it, so whatever.
So that's that. For now, anyhow.
So, it's a fairly candid status update kind of day. I did a few entries in a row a little while ago, let it go for about a week, and you'll probably get a few in a row now, too, so I hope you enjoy this kind of thing.
I feel like Katie and I have both cooled our heels in Limbo for a few years too long, really. I think I was ready to shake that shit off in 2010, 11, or something like that and go do something with myself, but we both got trapped in no-wage/low-wage hell, which is something I've seen stick a pretty goodly number of my generation. It can last for a few years - if you're lucky. Every day feels like an eternity but looking back on it feels like it was an undifferentiated morass. As a lifestyle, it sucks at your heels and pulls on your hems, because it feels like society really doesn't even want you to break out of that. Looking at it more objectively, our economy right now is really leaning on technically capable, low wage earners, so we say you're supposed to break out, but the tools are deliberately faulty and the signs are misleading. There's a pile or corpses at the bottom of the morass. You have to hope that their cooling bodies are sturdy enough to stand on as you foist yourself out. These bootstraps are extremely morbid.
Not everyone shares this admittedly bleak outlook, but if you can't admit that even the most meagre personal success rests on the backs of people stuck in miserable positions we depend on but, societally, we refuse to support in turn, you're simply wrong. If you want out of the pit, the ladder's made of bones. You don't have the luxury of deciding the material. You neither add to the pile or build the ladder, but you either climb it or you stay there. Capitalism is inherently predatory; you might not be the butcher, but you're still eating meat.
Don't get the wrong impression, though. Not everyone likes my metaphor, and it's easy to assume I'm feeling down about my situation, but it's actually the best it's been in a long time. Kay might be getting a crummy, but living-wage paying job in the near future. Everything's in for my grad student application, so I'm just cooling my heels for a little while and waiting on the results of that and my loan application. We're still poor and stressed, but we're marginally less poor and stressed than we've been, which is an amazing difference in quality of life. And my bean and tomato plants are looking really good. So I'm in a pretty good mood. On a day to day, I'm in a better mood than I've been in for literal years.
It just is what it is.
I've been doing a few things for fun, lately. I finally sprung for Civilization 5, after over 200 hours over a pretty good span of time on Civ 4. Civ 5 is intense. It's significantly different from 4, too. I bought it yesterday, clocked a few hours on it, and it's good. I'll try not to lose too many hours to it in the coming days, but it's Civilization, so, you know. Wish me luck. I started playing Persona 2: Innocent Sin. There's another long game. I finished Mass Effect and immediately went to Civ and Persona, so you know I'm a glutton for these time sink games. Persona's a series I have strong feelings about. I've finished 1, Eternal Punishment, 3, The Answer, and 4. Even Arena, for what it's worth, though I hear there's a new one. Innocent Sin is really the only traditional Persona I haven't gotten to, so I figured it was about time. I bought it over a year ago. My media backlog is huge. I haven't even tried to watch TV shows in a long time.
I'm reading Godel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid, which doesn't synch with what I'm traditionally adept at. It's heavy on logic structures and it's a dense fucking read. I went for Comp Sci in college and tanked it, because I'm balls at math, so I'm reading the book but I'm intentionally not focused on grokking it - really internalizing it - so much as I'm taking in the words, determining what's in the book, and more or less just moving on. I'm filing away a detailed understanding of what kind of information the book contains in the event that something catalyzes in me and I understand it in a flash of data structure based enlightenment. I don't really enjoy reading it, but I want to have already read it. It's just that the only way there is to do it, so whatever.
So that's that. For now, anyhow.
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