aesmael

Early in the week my aunt said she'd visit by the end of the week, and call me first to check in. She hasn't done either and I'm sad about that. Despite that I was also nervous about possibly coming out to her.

I better check with her if everything's okay.

=== A Lament From 2017-07-11 ===

Even though I'm glad not to be the weekend supervisor any more, and especially to be taking fewer shifts at the library in general (now, if only that would translate into "living my time off in a way I feel happier with") I'm still feeling frustrated at not breaking them of all their bad habits before my time was up. Mostly this bugs me because it's me who works Monday mornings and has to clean up after any errors - they're not major problems but it still causes me a bit of extra work every week and tweaks my sense of "this is not proper". Currently the weekend staff is 3 new people (as in hired since May), 1 casual on Saturdays, and 1 long-term person on Sundays. Normally there would be one of the weekday full-time librarians on Saturdays but she is currently filling in as the head of circulation for another 3 months. So, a lot of opportunity for this stuff to get embedded and harder to shake.

On the bright side, yesterday and today involved meeting and training two of the newest casual hires. Working on being available and informative and keeping an eye on what they are doing, while also showing trust and confidence and not being overbearing, and being clear about the distinction between library policy and my preferred implementation of same. Little bit kicking myself for forgetting to update one today that library patron PINs don't actually have to be numbers. Maybe remember next time we work together.

Anyway: trying to be helpful and supportive, not hurtful, useless or assuming incompetence. We'll probably be working together semi-frequently, so I hope I like them and get along with them.

Feeling conflicted about stuff like: part of my role being stuff like telling kids to stop running around the library. Kids need space to be kids, rather than teaching them to suppress themselves. And spaces that are child-unfriendly also end up being de facto woman-unfriendly so long as the childrearing and childcare burdens fall disprorportionately on women. Plus the folk who complain about children in the library tend to get on my nerves and inspire me to feel vindictive toward them. But, times when there are many boisterous kids in the library do tend to give me sensory overload and headaches, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who is negatively by this - it surely makes using the library for intended purposes like work, reading and study more difficult. So I feel conflicted.

Luckily I'm not very good at it, and they tend not to stop running or playing Counterstrike quietly for very long?

Home stuff! Today a pair of socks I ordered arrived, long socks in asexual pride colours (black/grey/white/purple). Was pretty excited, and if they wear well I want to order some more in other patterns, especially since many of my socks are getting holes in their toes. After opening the package, showed them to my mother (didn't say the colours represented anything, just that I got new socks). All she had to say was to tell me not to wear them to work and that they're unprofessional.

That's really upsetting. It would be great if she were ever happy or complimentary for me about anything. The only thing I can remember her being congratulatory about was when I got hired from casual to permanent part-time, and that was an act of self-defence because whoever got my current job would be taking the hours I normally worked as a casual, and leaving me with sharply reduced income.

She doesn't show that she's happy for me, pretty much ever. Any time I try and talk to her it turns into her issuing orders and telling me to change, to be or do less, or what not to do - find doctors closer to home, find work closer to home, don't go places, don't buy your own groceries, and so on and on.

Can't she ever be happy for me? I'm aching for someone to share my excitements with, and sharing a home with someone who redirects every communication into a not good enough or an act of racism is poisonous[1].

[1] Latest example: on the weekend I told her I was watching the Games Done Quick stream, which is a charitable event raising money for Médecins Sans Frontières, and her response was to grumble about how awful it is those countries don't look after their own people. Gotta find a way to be negative everywhere, hey?

Today has been 2015-08-20 and it feels a long way from the 10th. On the 10th I had two assignments due, one of which I got done and submitted that morning. Also that morning, a call from the municipal council's HR about the job I had interviewd for the week before - references from my current position were unacceptable due to conflict of interest, being from my current employer and therefore also the employer I was hoping to get the new job with.

I had not any other current references; they said some pre-employement contacts would be fine. So rather than heading home to finish the other assignment I drove around first to the library the toy library of which I had volunteered at. The librarian who had been my contact back in 2011. She had gone home, but still worked there, and I was able to confirm a phone number with someone who was on duty. Then off to the university library I had had my second student placement under a few years before that. She had also gone home for the night, but still worked there, and I was able to get a phone number to reach her at.

So then I could get home at last and to schoolwork, although I do not really remember if I made much of any progress on the other assignment before its deadline. I did finish it the next evening and get it submitted before midnight and that was a great relief, especially as earlier in the day I had managed to call both of those contacts and obtain their consent to act as references for me, and forwarded their details to HR and got confirmation this would be suitable. Although I still have not heard back on how that went, and whether I will be getting the job.

But I did get word back on the other assignment, which was actually extra make-up work in order to not fail a class I took last semester. It served its purpose and I got my pass, which is great because one possible venue for being kicked out of school has been escaped. Still working on the other one.

Three weights off my shoulders. For a little while I felt so very light. But the fourth came right back; another request for an opportunity to take my practicum in a library of interest, sent that off Monday and by Tuesday night was rejected. Running out of time to organise that. Running desperately short of time.

But I keep being so tired from work, plus I fell into a void. Friday a day off, wanted to get my hair cut and take care of things, laundry and tidying type things. But instead I get struck down by some mystery illness. Supposedly only four days out of it until I could risk being back to work, but really it was infinity. Such vast span of time as to make all this typing a distant, distant reconstruction. Really only last week? Somehow.

I will get my hair cut tomorrow, and I will make another practicum request - I must! And perhaps my car will even get a new radio, if I am very fortunate indeed.

But I do not like tomorrow because today is the 20th and tomorrow is the 21st, and it would have been my grandmother's birthday had she survived this long. And it has been months and I still, still, still do not know how to process that she no longer exists. All that great void of never again. Keeps coming up and it hurts and I do not know what to do with it.

Driving to work today I had to go past the place where she was put to rest, incinerated a few months ago. Drive right on past like it was nothing and I a functional driver - and there must be so many people swallowed up in there, and yet people keep driving on by every day. Past where we bid farewell to my cousin the next week, and past where we had retired to gather afterward.

And tomorrow is nearly here and it will be an incomprehensible date of significance, and nothing will be done to mark it because all are sick; too much risk to others who still live to make mark when infection might spread, and someday it will mean nothing again.

I will get my hair cut, and try to decide what else might or might not bear the significance of the specific-just-another-day.

I had some good news, too. But I will put that in another post, maybe tomorrow, and let it bear itself alone.

Finally answered the Malheurs' question about podcasts we listen to ('finally' - it was only yesterday morning). Left a few off because didn't want to flood, though. Mainly SF Crossing The Gulf, science news series like the Nature magazine podcast, and the story magazines like Escape Pod and Podcastle. And some I just can't recommend like Skeptic's Guide to the Universe partly for the often confrontational tone (and associated ablism) but especially what stands out is one of the host's periodic parodies of Asian accents. So, nope, however much I may enjoy I can't recommend at least pre-2008 version of the show.

Got the day off, so all that prospect of wide open day to fill and be diligent in. But we never manage that in the actuality. It's a nice dream.

Not been able to exercise in a while because of my leg, but that's healed now and was surprised at how easily the routine went this morning. First thought on the treadmill was that I really need to get a sports bra as the bounce was quite unpleasant. And then spiralling a bit of self-hate because it seems no one in the country makes sports bras sized for women as large as me with such small breasts. Going to have to wait for the regular bra I ordered to arrive and see how well that fits. And then most likely follow Ami's advice of getting a smaller size and an extender for the strap.

Hope that works. Been waiting on getting a bra sorted so I can fix up the rest of my wardrobe for nearly half a year now.

Last night on the drive home listening to Science Friday episode from 2015-02-06 they covered the final instalment of the show's bookclub reading The Lost City of Z. They'd been discussing that the past few episodes, a retracing of a British explorer who long ago went missing in the Amazon searching for a lost city. This had me wondering if and how such tropes as explorer's clubs and celebrity explorers might be used in RPGs, and whether this could be done in a non-colonialist way (the short answer I came to is probably no, and on my head be it if I insist on including them anyway). Ideas such as cross-planar exploration, seeking out unknown worlds and planar regions for establishing contact and trade or relations with, and possibly the world of narrative focus being but newly created and consequently not in a position to exert force outward. But that latter is less of a help than the details of motives in seeking outward and celebrating news brought back.

Alternatively or perhaps also, having characters be of non-European-derived societies, exploring into the ruins of a lost European-style society. Good excuse for lots of castle dungeons and monster-infested ruined townships. Could be explained as plague-depopulated (or some other catastrophe), much as what actually happened in the Americas and Australia when European settlers arrived (except of course no real monsters), although what I'd been thinking in that idea was not so much to make that parallel as more Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt to make a conveniently depopulated Euro-fantasyland. And the fact that it does make a parallel to the real world creates problems in using such an idea, because there is an implicit association that if such a depopulated land is suitable for guilt-free exploration and ruin-romps, then it must have been similarly okay for Europeans to go through Australia and those Americas after disease had drastically reduced the populations and ability to sustain existing societies there.

As was pointed out in the much more interesting (and far too short) following segment in which they had as guest an archaeologist to talk about actual Amazonian ruins and how they were laid out in a style of city distinct from any that I had been aware of.

Getting to the point where soon new stereo in car will hopefully mean can start over the list ordering and go into the big and hopefully final catch-up project. Especially since recent investigations and external developments will make that more possible than before.

Something on the drive home reminded me of my grandmother and, as ever, I wanted to tear my throat out so I wouldn't have to deal with it. I think I thought of aiming for a collision again but of course I won't, I wouldn't. But how am I supposed to make sense of her being gone? I wish I could cry, for her, for my cousin. Even for Terry Pratchett whose words meant so much to me growing up (she once bought me one of his books as a child and I don't think she ever knew how much I loved that book). But I can never seem to grieve properly. There is always something taking precedence - maintaining a good face at work; school; getting home without killing myself. I fear that someday I will have time to grieve and the window will have passed, I will not feel it any more or need it.

Again and again and again.

Today is always wasted.

I watched some things. Part 3 of the Doctor Who serial Marco Polo, I think. Did not pay a lot of attention to it or follow what was happening, so what was the point in watching that again when I could have been doing something useful? Episode 38 of Galaxy Express 999, of which I wanted to say something about how repetitive that show is but this time it actually did something a bit different, showing a bit more of the workings of the interstellar railway line. Some episode of Scott & Bailey in the background, which I suppose I keep up more by inertia than anything else. I wish I had the time and the will and the focus to - if I am going to watch something - actually watch it and pay attention and think about it. I pressure myself too much to get through things and so cannot appreciate them.

School is stress. I am sure I am going to fail. I am always sure, and always sure that this time I really am. Of course last time, over the summer, I actually did, which means I am on academic probation and definitely have to pass this class to escape penalty. And I am doing so badly with it. I very much need to focus and not be social, to push through being tired when not at work. Today I tried to get progress on my assignment, the last one that will determine my grade, and mostly ended up wrestling with bibliographic tools before giving up and doing it the old-fashioned way. Insofar as using style settings in a modern office suite can be considered old-fashioned.

But at least I have done something. I have made some progress on the readings and entered some information into the document, so that is technically progress. I need to make this into my life somehow if I am to succeed, but I hate it already and thoroughly.

Been leaving lots of journal entries unpublished of recent, as the day escapes me. I wonder if I will ever publish them?

Yesterday:
Quiet, main achievement was folding laundry that had been sitting for a few days. Brief, quiet shift at work, main excitement was person who came in at 10 minutes to closing wanting some books but did not have his library card nor any ID we could use as proxy - in fact he hadn't been in so long his membership was no longer in the system; not about to let him use the account of the person he said was his son's either and potentially run up fines in someone else's name. Violated policy by putting the books aside for him to register and borrow tomorrow (today), so as to close up in time rather than push an argument for unknown duration.

Got home, found out my grandmother's life expectancy is estimated at 3 months. Don't know how to process this, never had to lose someone so close previously. Spent so much time grieving for her future loss when I was a child and she was healthy; Should I start grieving more early in preparation? Is there anything I want to do or say? Probably should do some research on how to approach or support someone terminally ill. If she knows - for at least the past year she's been inconsistently able to recognise her own immediate family or where she is.

Although so far she's always seemed able to recognise me. In a way I hate that; all branches of my family seem to have given me always so much more attention and value and support than my sisters, whether because I was firstborn or they thought me a boy or what. It's unfair to my sisters and not a social expectation I'm equipped to live up to.

Watched the second half of the writer & directors commentary on The Fellowship of the Ring with Ami. Finished reading The Player of Games for the discussion group. Still like that book, still find it lacking in parts.

Today:
Followed up on some correspondence I've been delaying on. Mostly university stuff and pre-planning for move to USA. Paid for the coming semester of school, updated my calendar with assignments and medical appointments. Updated work on when I'm available for shifts over the next roster period. Did some revised cost estimates on shipping stuff, got rather upset at the thought I may have to reconsider bringing my books. Made some new plans.

Failed to have the nerve to call and book an inspection for the car today. Used web form instead to book one for next week. Hope that won't prove too late. Checked grades for my summer class, looks like I failed it. Disappointed especially because I put a lot of effort into the most major assignment and thought I might have done well in that.

Going to try working on some personal projects and try not to think about food.

A thing which happens more than once is I find out at the last moment about major household stuff like impending modifications to the building or expected guests who must be prepared for, or some other such thing.

And it is distressing to me not only because unexpected impending disruption and not only because I feel I have been left out and no one saw fit to actually inform me of what was going on. But especially because when I say I did not know and have not the faintest stirring of memory on the matter, my family will insist I must have known and must have been informed, and if there is any defect of awareness it is mine.

I feel like my hold on reality is slim and my frequent fears of disconnection with the world be realised. But, if I can't trust my memory then, then what can I trust?