Good news, everyone! After three months of job interviews, calls, negotiations, asking people for advice and what not I have made my choice and will be signing my contract this Friday. Out of the five companies I've had serious talks with, two weren't a good fit for me, two were really interesting, and one was the gig I'd been doing alongside my last year of my master's degree. They made a compelling offer but I mostly thought of it as my backup option. Yesterday I called my manager there to let him know: "Hey! I've made my choice, and it's sadly not in your favour. I had two other very interesting options - one was [well-known engineering firm], and the other was [the Chosen One]. I appreciated your offer and am glad that I could work for you guys, but the Chosen One was better in [all the ways that matter to me]." "Congrats on the choice! You definitely chose the best out of the three, [Chosen One] is a great company and would totally fit you." He said that like three more times in the same phone call - not at all disingenuously. I do think I've made the right call, the company I chose is a small urban planning consultancy focused on sustainable innovations. If I were to start a business like that, I'd probably do it the way they already do. Now I just gotta finish my darn thesis. I want to have it done by Christmas so that I can spend that week with family (and without worries). I've written my executive summary, formalised my methodology and have rewritten the first two chapters, so I'm on track, but I still have lots to do. Plus, I need to do Adult Life Stuff like find a better insurance company and find a place to move to. What's the John Lennon lyric again? Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans? edit: Also, because I don't celebrate Sinterklaas this year I bought myself this Casio I had been eyeing for a while: I love that it has a world map! I can scroll through time zones and the map will show the part of the world covered by that time zone. Plus, it's supposedly inspired by the James Bond's watch in Octopussy.
Life Event, Pt. 1 Today's my birthday. I've never been much of a birthday person. For this one, I'm thinking a 16km run, 10 climbing routes, and maybe driving out somewhere to catch a meteor shower. The run will be solo, the climb with some friends, and the meteor shower with who knows. One of those instances where having a partner would be nice, but here we are. Community Involvement I'm on the board of local Nonprofit. We've been going for 25 years. We might end up going dark next year due to a lack of funding. What happened? Years of mismanagement both monetarily and people-wise, a lack of board members, and a lack of focus on sustainable fundraising. This year, one of the members had promised at least submitting 5-6 grant applications, with help from some local graduate students. The graduate students did their part, yet the grants were never submitted. I really like this organization and think it's good for the city, but damn. Talk about a situation to find yourself in... Life Event, Pt. 2 Ran my last race of the year this past weekend. A 25km race out on the peninsula, it was an amazing course with some single track trail interspersed through a great park. Small crowd, extremely friendly crowd which is par for the course for trail running. I went with two friends, who came in 1st and 2nd overall. Somehow I'm friends with some really great runners, who are also really great people. My race got off to a great start, was going to set a personal record for this time and probably place top 15 overall (granted, the field was probably 50 people but I would have taken it!). Until my achilles started to blow up. What an exciting, new issue to have come up! It was a crushingly disappointing moment, standing there after 15km, feeling great outside of one small area of your body, but knowing that dropping out is the safe option if you want to keep running in the near future. I haven't been that angry in a long, long time. Ended up wandering off into a field and just throwing a lot of my clothing. Working on finishing up my marathon training plan, fitting in climbing and strength workouts, and planning to get a full gait analysis at a place up in Seattle, along with chatting with a "hopeful 2020 Olympian" friend on all this. I'm feeling so much more determined to make 2018 a great running and racing year after this letdown. Maybe that's what resiliency feels like.
Happy birthday! And, as someone who has sat on Nonprofit boards for arts organizations for more than 15 years, I know what you are dealing with. Nonprofits only work if everyone is working together towards the same goal. It sounds like this organization does not have a clear mission, or, if it does, the current board does not fully buy-in to that vision. It is super easy to turn the heat down on the org, and just leave the pilot light running. Spend the next 3 months, 6 months, year, on making a plan EVERYONE is excited about, and committed to, and then putting the structure in place to make that plan happen. Many nonprofits run before they walk, and then try to continue running when they have no shoes or pants on, and their achilles tendon is sore. (Sorry.) Taking the time off to stretch, put on the right gear, and get the body functioning right, will help you win races in the future. (To use a particularly apropos metaphor...)
Thanks goobster! Yes, we had the realization that there isn't union among board members as to what, exactly, our mission is. We have a focus as a regional event but have not been clear enough of our communication to the community-at-large that that is what we are, not solely a locally focused event. Problem 1. I'm excited to have these conversations, but very concerned that we won't be able to recover in time to have an event next year. Maybe I can PM some more specific information, if you have interest in talking a bit more on this topic. Awesome metaphor, I might have to steal that for future use...
Happy birthday! I'm sure this coming year will be fantastic.
Happy birthday! Must admit: a lot of mixed feelings from a lot of mixed signals when you start talking about your achilles. Best of luck. Crush the motherfucker. Be good.Life Event, Pt. 2
I'm feeling so much more determined to make 2018 a great running and racing year after this letdown.
I walked to work in the falling snow listening to Mozart. That's a wonderful way to start the day. I cut through along some railroad tracks and there's a dead coyote frozen there. Hi frozen coyote. I'm actually home until the new year, and that's longer than I have been since last spring. FL made a new dev hire and he's working here in the A2 office with us. I like him. I started this painting in SF, and recently brought back to MI to get back to work on it. It's another pond in a marsh. I'm not sure why. Recently I have been sort of attacking the painting and seeing what comes. I don't think I am technically ready for that approach, but that's what this one is going to get.
Finals week starting with my first exam this Saturday morning. This week I'm handing in final papers and projects and learning the final lessons of this fucking difficult, kick-my-ass rollercoaster of a semester. Good luck to everyone else taking finals. Fuck I wish I had a half-decent work ethic.
Is this your first semester? How's it been? I guess it's better to ask in two weeks when this is all over, huh?
Third now. It's still mostly core classes that are largely unrelated to each other, such that within 24 hours I have final exams in Persian, American Foreign Policy, and Physics. The hard part at my school isn't the academics alone, but it's getting the academic work done through the vast, writhing shitstorm of a million smaller time-sucking responsibilities on the military side of things. Takes a lot of mental endurance. I'm working on it! Have you graduated already? How are things over there, where the grass is greener?
Not graduated yet. Three more semesters myself, one of them abroad hopefully. That's fascinating. I have a bit more to juggle than the typical college student, but it probably doesn't compare to your writhing shitstorm. But that sort of practice, the imposition of a gauntlet of mass obligations, might be worthwhile. It's a tired cliche, but time management and prioritization are probably among the most important and universal skills for the self-actualized. That said, I don't want to romanticize painting boulders, or whatever mind-numbing shit they have you doing. (My mom's unit, during basic training, once was tasked with painting rocks for a day.)The hard part at my school isn't the academics alone, but it's getting the academic work done through the vast, writhing shitstorm of a million smaller time-sucking responsibilities on the military side of things. Takes a lot of mental endurance. I'm working on it!
People keep dying. Cancer is a bitch. Alcoholic liver failure is a bitch. 'Supplement' companies who allow heavy metals and hepatitis positive blood into their products are a bitch. Been a rough week. A double for me please. The RPS has exams today, a holiday party for her student org tonight. We're gonna go pick out our Winter Solstice tree tomorrow. I've decided I'm done with Christmas.
Bummer. Any plans to try later? What a badass fuckin' statement.There was supposed to be a Cyberpunk 2020 session this weekend, but it's not happening for various reasons.
Both of my diploma projects are in a rather advanced stage of development.
Next week I'm going hiking with the goal of finishing the Adirondack High Peaks. I have two left: Basin and Colden. The plan is Basin on Sunday and Colden Tuesday, weather permitting. Sunday looks good, which is awesome as Basin is the harder one. I fly home Friday, so I have a couple extra days to try to get these. Nothing is assured until I've made the summit and made it back to the car. It feels like mile 25 of a marathon. I can't believe I've made it this far, but wow is that last mile a real challenge. I haven't decided what, if anything, I'm going to do to mark the occasion.
Cars and Antiques I don't want to overhype this, but I bought the most wonderful sales book for The Nash 600. Every page you open to, the left page is a beautiful illustration and the right page is a long pitch for a particular feature of the car. It's hard to describe and do it justice, but each page says in so many ways "This car is a triumph of technology. We fell in love with it when we made it, you'll fall in love with it when you drive it." Tomorrow or Friday, when I have the time, I'm gonna take a few pictures and share my favorite pages. Jobs Yesterday I applied to one I'm really hopeful for. No response back yet. I'll give it another day or so and then give them a call. It's nothing fancy, so my chances are in the high middle, but I like the place and I don't like where I'm at now so I'm really hopeful. Drawing I have some ideas. Nothing put to paper and I don't know when I'll have time to put something to paper next. It's nice to have ideas though.
Stress: Simplified my life, by dropping out of the local Burning Man community. It's not really where my life/focus is, any more, and I have given these entitled bastards far too much of my blood, sweat, and tears already. Competition: I'm getting my mojo back at work, too. One difficulty of being the company's Competitive Analyst, is that I need to assess our competitors' products with clear and open eyes. Looking at all the amazing things our competitors' products do, or do differently than we do, or their management teams, or their financial backing, or their strategic partnerships, can be REALLY defeating. All of a sudden everyone else looks like they have all their shit together, and my company is hopelessly lost and failing. Of course, that isn't even remotely true, but part of doing competitive analysis is to dig in to these details, so our marketing, sales, and product development teams have a clear understanding of the competitive markets we sell to. But it can really be hard on your company spirit. Fortunately I am actively meeting with some of our company's biggest "cheerleaders" this week, and getting re-infected with our sunny disposition and outlook. Keto: Starting to eat/cook in preparation for doing the Keto diet seriously in January. It's close to how my wife and I eat anyway, but with some key differences. I'd start the diet right away, but I know I will break it over the holiday with the family. So instead, I'm going to eat "mostly Keto" and keep the diversions to a minimum, and then go all-in January 2. Alabama: Fuck yeah. AND the horse you rode in on, you sick fuck.
I love how, on Hubski, one can simply insert a comment or a post into their reply. Had a big test today — not in the amount of time or effort it required but in the importance of it. I've been fairly absent from the classes for a long while, and my not being up to the topics played a part in the difficulty. If the test is good (or not terrible, at least), it may sway the teacher into a more favorable position. I have belated tests and essays. The exam is on Friday. With all the stress of the academic life I managed to forego two things: doing and living. My worry led me to put forbid internally the things that gave me joy. I haven't written a word, of code or fiction, for months, the NaNoWriMo failed entry that turned into Rosa aside. I also haven't read a book and seen only one film and three episodes in a long while — let alone bigger things: travelling, considering owning a car, changing something radically. What I came with while thinking about it is that I feel trapped, and I suffocate in such strict confines. I feel restrained by the prospect of having to spend another year and a half in the university — something enjoyable but ultimately exhausting to me. I came here on purpose, to study and to gain marketable skills that would allow me to keep afloat the creative forces that drive me passionately. Yet, at this stage, the studies feel tangential, irrelevant — so much so that I've become comfortable with the lowest passing grade, so long as it affords me the way further down the academic chain, closer to the graduation and the diploma. Such pragmatically apathetic attitude wasn't the initial one, but it's what I feel at the moment. I want to graduate peacefully and with good grades. I recognize that it would take effort. I also concede that I may not be up to the task. In light of this — and the fact that I'd rather push through than pass a year, given that I'm more than halfway through already — I'm going to look for whatever source of energy and excitement I can procur without damaging my academic progress. If this is the way of things for the next long while, I might as well buckle up and make it a worthy ride. ============================ Started cleaning up my collections: music, videos to watch later on YouTube, books that keep piling up unread... They say minimalism is economy of attention: the fewer things you have, the fewer things you have to worry about. Fewer things to worry about is what I want to have. Had a dream today, about being in the US despite having the same big test the same day. "Oh!", I thought, "If I hurry, I might be able to—" As I looked at the clock, I realized that not only had the test already started, I was also in an earlier timezone — though only by one hour — thus being late anyway. Therefore, I shrugged, and, a serene soul, strode outside, enjoying the low early sunlight around the vividly new streets, having just managed to pay for my daily stay in someplace with rubles (426 RUB, to be precise). As I was walking the narrow and cozy dreamland streets, a passing roadworker vehicle splashed me and my iPhone in something akin to tar, and as I scrambled to clean the phone off (I was getting increasinly clean seemingly by the passing of time alone), I noticed that its battery had swollen up. Worried — I had no money for a new smartphone — I decided to act riskily and push the battery in. It took effort, and the screen bulged out instead, but I've managed it — and, after an act of bending the phone that would've most certainly broken it in reality, I've managed to fix the screen, as well, averting the first-world crisis. It was then that Morpheus silently instructed me to wake up. I wanted to share the dream with you because it felt significant to me, in many ways. People have been surprisingly curious about Rosa despite having very little actual material to appreciate so far. I enjoy the attention my latest major work receives, however, and wouldn't want to disappoint anybody with any amount of faith in it. So I'm going to supply Rosa news with every Pubski, as has been the tradition so far, sharing what I could with whomever's interested. So far, I've realized that the world has been damaged by whatever happened to the Titans [I keep using it as a placeholder name, but it seems to have stuck]. It was no apocalypse, but the damage's been done, and there are still people alive to have witnessed it first-hand. People — and states — are still gathering themselves, alert to the danger the ruins of the mighty gone may still keep. People like Rosa are those willing to take the risk and delve further into the Titans' impossible, seemingly magical conduct with reality.