Spirit of the Wind

The last month has been eventful. In multiple ways, good and bad.

As some of you may be aware, I had a job. And the emphasis is on had, because I don't have it any longer. It didn't work out. I was able to handle my job just fine when I was working ordinary hours and things were quieter. But over the past few weeks, this had started to change. Working conditions generally were getting worse. I was working overtime every week, I was having to work with particularly nasty chemicals, and I had to clean up after small children, which was gross and stressful because I don't like small children. While I tried to hide my distaste, I was less successful than I thought and my boss offered to shift my hours.

I'd have accepted that without much thought... if the changed hours weren't from 7:30 PM to 2:00 AM, except one day when I'd be working 11:00 AM to 7:30 PM (except actually usually around 9:00 PM). And I didn't have to shift to that new schedule in two days.

For a while I angsted over what this meant for my work ethic, but after talking to some people I've decided that I just am not good at emotionally handling that kind of work and it's better I left, because if I didn't things would have gradually gotten worse and I might have lost the job anyway, but on worse terms. Multiple people I know, offline and online, have said that they could tell the job was making my mental stability decline.

So now I'm job searching again. Hardly a worse time for it, though I'm hoping that I might be able to sell my art (and possibly writing) to--I won't say make ends meet, because I am nowhere near that good, but at least make it so my debt from graduate school doesn't grow as quickly. Or let me occasionally get new supplies. One or the other, most likely.

Other than that... well, there's some stuff that's private enough I only want to talk about it in an access list entry, but in this public one I will say that I missed leaf peeping season. Pretty much all of them have turned already and I didn't get to go to any of the nice woods I know where you can admire all the pretty colors. Perhaps next year. One of my orchids is starting to form buds, so there's at least that. I'll post photos if and when they fully

I also wrote something for a contest on the SCP wiki and it did adequately. Go check it out here, if you like that sort of thing.

Lastly, I got to rejoin one of my RPG groups. We're going to be starting Wildsea--it's a game where your PCs sail a vessel over a planet-spanning ocean of trees--and have designed this awesome living manta ray-esque research vessel together. Really looking forward to making my character and getting to play.

It really has been quite a while since I updated this.

For months my job search went very poorly, to the point that I wasn't getting any interviews; I must've applied for 150 positions in my field over the past few months. That got me nothing, so I started applying for positions outside them. At first it was stuff related to my interests, but as of late it's been gas station attendant positions. Honest work, but really not what I wanted to be doing.

It turns out that a lot of job openings are "ghost jobs" these days, and they're using AI bullshit to filter out results. So I have no idea how many of the positions I applied for I ever really had a shot with. I assume that the ones in my field were real because I just don't think state agencies or NGOs are likely to do that, but I don't know. And the jobs I applied for on Indeed, some of them are probably fake.

I did eventually find work, though. Now I've got employment doing manual labor and will be starting next week. It pays pretty well and so I've decided I won't be moving across the country to Iowa even if I do get a job offer in my field. Probably, anyway. I might make an exception if it's a really good job.


I came to the reluctant conclusion that I may be a weeb after realizing that while I have no interest in anime or manga, I like Japanese folklore, traditional architecture, art, ikebana, bonsai, and kumihimo. A friend then pointed out that definitionally weebs get all their knowledge of Japan from anime, so I may be an anti-weeb instead.

Regardless, I've taken up kumihimo weaving again and am trying to make a little curtain out of the ropes, then attach beads to the end. I'm going with an ocean theme and will post it once I'm done. I'm also hoping to take up glasswork again once I have the disposable income to afford a new torch. Flower arranging... I'll give that a shot in the spring.

Oh, and I should really finish those Wanderer's Library pieces I'm working on. I'm like 90% of the way done with a few entries and have a decent start on one where a human woman discovers she is much happier as a fox, but they sit unfinished in my sandbox. Perhaps more caffeine will help.

Scientifically, I continue to help with a few projects I'm not going to go into detail over in a public journal entry.


Oh. And Harris lost.

Like, she lost by a lot. I know some of you aren't from the USA and believe me when I say that it's genuinely shocking she did this badly; the entire country shifted to Trump. Urban voters, minority voters--Trump (relative to 2020, at least). Republicans won the Senate and I suspect they're going to win the House. CrimethInc argues that a large chunk of why is simply that in the modern era incumbents are generally unpopular and I suspect they're right.

As far as what to take away from this, since everyone and their dog is giving their take: The far-right wants us to feel helpless and intimidated. During 2020 there were mass uprisings in the USA and a majority of the public backed a police station being burned down. Mass action works and the ruling class is afraid of the population. I've been linking to the Slingshot Collective's contact list for a while, but also check out any Food Not Bombs chapters near you (note that those chapters are not all currently active; FNB is shit about updating their website).

I wish I could give a neat directory of places that do squatter's and tenant's rights because given the atrocious housing crisis it's necessary. I can't think of much else better for suppressing people than to make them on the edge of losing housing, have housing be nearly impossible to get once you don't have it, and have the police harass homeless people. Unfortunately there is no such directory that I could find.

There is not going to be a neat switch flipped where in January the USA goes from a democracy to a fascist dictatorship; while Trump would go for it if he went to 100% immediately he'd face too much unrest (yes, even from some of those people who voted for him mostly because they didn't like Biden). He may lay groundwork that someone else ends up using further down the line, but I suspect he will be dead by then. There will be democratic backsliding in the short term though, and if it's to be reversed I don't think it'll be reversed by a political party but by mass action.

I swear that about 99% of jobs in my field are dealing with fish. Specifically, game fish. It can be a little annoying when looking at job boards, because, well--I have less than no interest in dealing with fisheries. I might be willing to make an exception for something like salmon conservation, where the fish in question is also of conservation concern in its own right, but anything that's focused around maximizing fish yields--no.

That's not why I got into this field.

My job search is going decently--not going to go into details on a public entry--but it does feel a lot like nongame wildlife gets the short stick. This is why I have mixed feelings about the impact of hunting and fishing dollars. It funds important work, to be sure, but how does it affect the priorities of conservation agencies?

I went to the botanical garden a few weeks ago, for the Japanese festival. It was pretty nice--they had a display of bonsai and ikebana out, and all of them were absolutely gorgeous. I've never seen so many bonsai in one place before, and I'd never considered how useful branches could be in flower arrangements before seeing the ikebana. They make the arrangements much more dramatic, and make them seem to flow much better. And since it was the botanical garden, they had all sorts of interesting flowers used in the arrangements.

I got my own flower arrangement base and have been practicing. It's not great weather for it, since most of the year's flowers are gone, but I've done a couple attractive arrangements. Here's one below:



And here's a professional one:



I also went to the zoo, since I was in the area. There was a delicious looking gazelle:



There's something about just how delicate they looked, and that they were acting just a little bit nervous, that set off the metaphorical dinner bells inside my head. Yum.

Also these guys were cute:



There were some cheetahs, but I couldn't get good pictures of them because the trio was lounging around in the shade fifty meters away from me. They did what cats do best and slept for the entire time I was there. The snow leopard and the Amur leopard were not sleeping, they were pacing around... looked like both were interested in each other. The Amur leopard was mostly interested in shredding their neighbor's ears, given how they hissed every time the snow leopard walked by; in comparison the snow leopard was far more polite.

Other news? Didn't get the job I was hoping to get, which sucks. I really thought I had that one.

The plants are doing well. The butterfly garden established in the fall is... well, it's not quite as successful as I'd hoped; we didn't get any butterfly weed showing up, not yet. But the blazing star is coming up and growing rapidly, the boneset is coming back up, and the asters are coming back. And they will spread; boneset in particular seems to spread well. It's only been in the garden for a couple years, but we went from one plant to eight.

I've an apple tree outside my window, and the bees have been loving it. We (me and my mother) think we'll probably plant another one where the dying apple tree currently is, and maybe this time we'll actually get one with large, edible apples.

Also mounted a bird feeder outside my window! Where I am the squirrels can't get to it, so the birds have eagerly been devouring it all. Yesterday I saw a red-headed woodpecker, which was quite a treat. The cat loves it, of course, and when the window's closed the birds seem surprisingly tolerant of her. Perhaps they don't see her as well.


I've finally run a plot for Kaerwyn (a creative writing roleplay site). It did not work out well, though... it kind of worked out better than I thought at first? People thought the plot was too short, which is good to know, but also I've learned that I tend to railroad. But people really liked my ability to describe completely alien environments. I have ideas about how to use that advice, so at least it was a learning experience.


I was furloughed about a week ago. I get 75% pay, blessedly, but it's still somewhat concerning--and while I expect to be back to my job by the end of the summer interim, I've been wrong before.

Mostly right now I'm trying to use the time I've got to help out around the house and get some of my personal projects done so it's not a total wash. Applied to a job, but don't expect to actually get it.

I'm doing well in my internship. When I started, I was worried I wasn't going to be able to keep up with the other interns, which quickly turned out not to be the case. According to the senior intern, I'm pretty fast, though that may be as much due to other interns not focusing on their work as it is due to any natural skill I have.

Regardless, while I'm enjoying it a lot, I'm having to find another position soon; the internship lasts for the spring and I want to work over the summer. So far, I've applied to a few positions, mostly things in the Southwest. I've always wanted to live there, and it's actually warm down there. There are a surprising number of carnivore technician positions, but few in the area I'd like to live in--but it's seasonal work, so I'll be moving around anyway.

I did get a phone call back from a position in Massachusetts, so I may be moving up there. It's near Boston, which is nice. During the summer it should be nice and warm, and I can collect beach glass and visit my brother, who has gone to school at Brandeis.

I'm also considering volunteer work. There are a few positions that technically don't pay anything, but give you free room and board. You aren't ending up with money, but you aren't worse off and you get stuff out of it. One of the ones that's caught my eye would be in the South Pacific, on Johnston Atoll.


Personally, I'm okay. The weather doesn't suit me well, but I'm dealing, and I'm not too depressed.


Also, the dead raccoon, from earlier? I called it in two months ago and it is still there.