aesmael

No journaling yesterday, and didn't post the one from the day before until after starting to write this entry. New phone and new eReader[1] both arrived and setting both of those up carried me through to bedtime. A chunk of today too, and likely ongoing as I discover more details that didn't make the transfer and need to be fixed up.

Aside from that, laundry. Raining today so hung inside, and still hanging until tomorrow where normally I like to get that put away on the same day. And so not able to get my sheets washed either; hoping to fix that tomorrow.

Hung out with friends, quietly. Played a bit of Demon's Souls, which I haven't picked up in several years but finding more amenable this time around.

Realised I hadn't made any progress on the playlist for several days and downloaded episodes for Ockham's Razor (another ABC podcast), Nature, Point of Inquiry, and OSNews. Fixing up their metadata will have to wait for morning. And correspondingly, I must remember to reload the prior playlist onto my new phone, and find the episode within it that I was up to. I think we're about 1/7 through listening to that one so there is time yet to get the next cleared up. Time yet, but not enough to be complacent in.

Overall today feels like a bit of a lost day, yet in retrospect it doesn't seem so bad. I think mostly I am feeling the lack of physical activity. Looking forward to the new case arriving tomorrow so I can treat the phone as less terribly fragile. Really want to move and do a bit more; if it isn't raining the garden could do with being a bit less neglected again.

[1] My old eReader met an unfortunate end a few months ago when a carton of almond milk leaked throughout my bag and the lack of it has been increasingly bothersome

Current Mood: sleepy

Tired. Can't write much tonight.

A little more story backgrounding. Main activity was practising drawing again. Finished the exercise I have been working off and on for some days now. Likely start the next one in a couple of days. A little intro reading on Python, but hesitated to begin the work proper. Considering being foolish instead.

I have some notes to make. And then sleep.

Current Mood: tired

Reminding myself not to feel bad about not getting many things done today. May not have gotten any practise drawing or programming but that is because I spent most of the day writing. Or rather, laying the foundations for future writing. There is a story I have been wanting to write for a couple of months now and I spent most of today gathering together the assorted floating ideas I have had for it so far and trying to mark out the questions that need to be answered to proceed further.

Important questions like, what are the names of these characters? Or their personal goals and ongoing motivations?

For this story I feel I would like to try a heavier outlining approach than I normally do. Really go deep into planning plot beats and arcs and going scene by scene. I'm curious whether I will find that works better or worse than my usual approach of rough goal and get going - I find that style frequently leaves me with long pauses in the actual writing where I sit and think about what I want to have happen next. Perhaps deciding all that in advance will make the words on page flow smoother?

Also I better go back and add some of this to my notes too. I was so busy collating world-building notes I forgot to ask what the characters want and why. Ta!

Current Mood: accomplished

Making note of things I have done, to remind myself they have been done. Otherwise it is too easy to forget, too easy to spiral down into believing I don't do anything and beating myself up over it.

So. I have been up to plenty, despite not having much to show for it. Various bouts of practising my drawing with exercises from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, getting familiar with the command prompt via exercises from the appendix of Learn Python 3 The Hard Way, and batches of podcast episodes being downloaded and metadata updated to compile into a playlist for my phone. A lot of activities that are of the 'keep plugging away and eventually see results' sort.

The playlist is a bit more mammoth than I had anticipated. I have probably mentioned that my routine in constructing those is to manually compile playlists to listen through my subscriptions in chronological order, as not all their RSS feeds extend back far enough to work neatly with a proper podcast player. I'm currently listening my way through 2009 and thanks to a few mishaps with some becoming unavailable by the time I reached them in my listening order, and some shenanigans with how far back some archives extend, my scheme ends up trying to span the entire year of 2009 in just two playlists. I only realised this after loading onto my phone a list spanning January to August and finding the rug pulled out from under me for what was expected to be an August - September list, now extended through to the first days of January 2010, adding about 2.5 times as much work as I'd got done, just as I got to the part where I would have been sorting the downloaded files into their play order.

I am actually worried I will not be able to fit the full playlist onto my phone when it is done, coming as it does on the heels of another quite massive playlist. Especially as several months back I actually outpaced the playlists I had loaded for the first time since beginning this project many years ago and turned to loading some audio books and dramas to fill the gap while I got the list loaded; I've decided to intersperse these playlists with more such dramatics. Not even bothering to try sourcing those until I have the podcasts themselves down and sorted. I suspect that I may have to break it into two chunks, with the first being what I'd downloaded before that rug-pull and treated as essentially a continuation of the playlist I'm currently listening to, and then the second to follow as the 'real new' playlist when I get past the current one and can delete it off my phone.

With my normal procedure of keeping three of those on the go - one for current, one to have ready to flow into when that one ends, and the third as backup in case I get through two playlists without making a new one ready - I will have a long while at this before I can be done and coast awhile again. Once I do I intend to get a bit more proactive and pull down the archives in advance. Too often, and especially of late, have I come to fetch episodes only to find the archive truncated, reorganised, or even the site entirely gone. I would rather guard against that by backing it all up locally if I can manage the hard drive space to hold them all.

Perhaps the curse of journalling so infrequently is my inability to remember what I have and have not recorded in the past.

For a while I've thought it could be fun to engage in solo-RP activities and turn the result into a story. And for a long time I believed the way to go would be to learn web formatting & styling so I could present the narrative as a 3/4 page column and the underlying dice rolls pegged alongside in a slide-in and slide-out 1/4 page column. The existence of the Beaker Browser project encouraged me to think this was a viable project especially as it could be hosted locally and I wouldn't have to worry about where and how to put this for people to read. But, with Beaker being shuttered I am at a bit of a loss.

I have also been wondering if I might do better to use a specialised document format. HTML is easy enough but maybe if I have any particular styling requirements it would be better to present in PDF, and maybe even style the document using LaTeX. The trouble with this is

The web isn't set up well to flow between such documents
I don't have anywhere to host them
I don't even have enough local storage to install LyX to do that editing

Current Mood: busy

I don't like that I've fallen back into starting diary entries, not finishing them, and leaving them abandoned. There is a good chance this will become another. It feels weird that life is both too much and yet it also feeling as though nothing is happening. I don't really believe that is a paradox, although it does feel like one. The mundane of life builds up and I have difficulty making space for the dream.

In fact my life isn't that hectic, so although I believe our lives are shaped and pressured into desperations which keep us too frantic for survival to do much beyond creating value for others and zonking out, much of my own problem is I suppose that technically I'm disabled? Or disability-adjacent anyway. Being certainly autistic and perhaps also ADHD makes it difficult to perform needful things effectively and to organise my time. So I feel like I could do more (that I wish to do).

Lately I have been interested in keeping a wiki as a structured and interlinked repository for my notes and projects. First I tried Instiki but was stymied when the build instructions failed - it looks like there is a problem either with the script they provide for windows or with the rubyinstaller tool. Easier to believe the problem is with Instiki as rubyinstaller is surely more widely used, and it wouldn't be acceptable if that just did not work. I'm hoping to pick at these and untangle them into something that does work for me, but the difficulties I described in the previous paragraph mean I'm not findign that easy to do. Meanwhile I'm trying out dokuwiki and zim, which were both straightforward installs.

It became much easier to find channels within my followed list on twitch when I realised that like all corporate social platforms, it would be structured to incentivise addictive engagement. A simple way to pursue this goal is to try and maximise the opportunity for diverting me into impulse watching by placing recent subscriptions and channels I've been watching VODs on at the bottom of the offline channel list. And of course the ones actively broadcasting are at the top, sorted by popularity. So far this hypothesis is holding up well.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: on the verge

2019-01-01
The thing about Julia Wolfe's "Lad" is it may be the first time I've really enjoyed a piece written for bagpipe. I'm not someone to cringe and theatrically dismay at the sound of bagpipes, but they hadn't really clicked with me either as something which sounds amazing or beautiful.

2019-01-04
It was probably 2017 that I started playing my "current" game of Angband. I've hardly played it at all - not at all for the past year I think - because I decided I wanted to stream it and show how that version worked before switching to the more adventurously experimental versions then and currently in development. Unfortunately I also switched back to Windows sometime then and, in Windows, OBS seems unable to capture all of Angband's sub-windows without capturing the entire screen, which means having to take great care not to accidentally leak any unwanted personal information of myself or anyone I communicate with that could potentially be displayed. It proves to be a big enough obstacle that I effectively have ceased playing altogether.

Therefore I have concluded that particular commitment must be done away with. I shall finish that game to death or victory, and any game I do stream will most likely be played at the public server at http://angband.live/

What happens this week? Bought a new PS3 controller as the old one seems to have quit working. The new one refuses to connect however, so we don't seem to be better off.

2019-01-10
Today I baked a lime meringue pie, taking a recipe for lemon and making a simple substitution. Not yet has it been tasted, although it ought to be delicious.

Today I learned someone must have hit my car while it was parked, most likely last night while I was purchasing ingredients for the pie I baked today. The rear left corner was scratched up and streaked with blue paint, possibly dented. Disheartening as my last car was wrecked by someone driving into me and striking the same location. I feel superstitiously afraid this one's days are likewise numbered.

Today I mapped out the basic location-concepts for the quest path for Star Wars: The Lost Heart. I want to develop those into enough detail that I know what their mysteries are and who are their major players, factions and tendencies so that I'll be able to bring them to life if and when we get there, but not to go so much detail that I already have the whole story written to force people into. Similarly with the state of the galaxy at time zero and what other major figures or points of interest have a good chance of coming up - or being available to pull out of a hat if I suddenly need them. Essentially two sets of landmarks, one for The Galaxy Now and one for The Quest As Intended. Then I can feel relatively confident at letting players loose without having to make quite everything up on the spot.

Or so I imagine.

Inventing is actually hard for me, I think. Or inventing the satisfying right thing of story. This is my supposition for why I write so slowly, for I feel I can at times quite readily toss off some broad idea which feels quite exciting, but to follow through with invention in details is quite laborious. I like to think that practice will make this easier, or perhaps to create an outline from which to work so that when it comes to the writing I am only filling in the details of how it happened, having previously resolved the tricky questions of what and why.

Now, writing as in journaling. That is mostly difficult in terms of remembering to do so. And remembering what has happened in order to write it down. And especially in doing my journaling later at night when, yes, the day has mostly happened to be written about in retrospect but also when I am feeling quite sleepy and actually transferring the text from journal-local to journal-webbed feels an obstacle not worth the effort of surmounting.

So, will these words be retrospectively published in the morning? Tune in to find out.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Assorted tracks by Frederick Delius

LiveJournal and Dreamwidth are so desolate, I think I have seen more than one person refer to them as ghost towns. Even though I have contributed to this by having so little to say for so long, and not saying what there was of it here, I'm not happy about this. The two of them are to my mind the best-structured of any sites I have tried which might bear the label 'social network'.

Flaws, sure. But at least they are structured in a way that supports blogging or journalling and gives me some control of what happens to the post afterward and who can access it. Even though I mostly only post public anyway.

I have decided therefore to go all cargo cult about this. If I post more, talk more about what is going on in my life and thoughts, then I can pretend to myself this will have some sort of encouraging effect on the wider internet and these sites could live again.

This is an excellent plan.

Crossposts: http://aesmael.livejournal.com/671777.html

Quiet day of work, probably just as well for my still-recovering self. Also my still-recovering voice, which I seem to have damaged yesterday afternoon in a protracted period of coughing and hacking. Nearly called in sick again but the voice was pretty much the only problem and I practised talking in the morning to make sure I could actually do my job. Did have to convince my co-workers I was mostly recovered and the dread sound of my speech were mainly an artefact of damage than illness per se.

One patron asked if we had a particular book which has had a bit of recent notoriety, something he had heard was a bucket list kind of read. I tracked i down for him while he went off to browse other stuff - others had recently asked about it so I knew there was a copy around, just had to find the exact title which neither of us could remember off-hand. When I saw him later I said there is indeed a copy in the system but it is on loan currently and would he like to place it on hold? But he declined, as he was going in for heart surgery soon and did not know when he would be able to get back in to pick the book up.

I read into that a bit of what I felt to be understandable fear that this forthcoming operation would be the end of him and some desire to get in what classic stories could be got first. But of course this impression may have far more to do with me as a brief stranger in this person's life and how I see things than any actual insight into the person. I think it's important for me to remember that.

He also seemed to get frustrated having some difficulty navigating the self-checkout system which I attempted to guide him through - clearly had used it before, but was attempting to do different from usual things with it. Contrasting what I said just above, this prompted me to consider that people's frustrations might not have so much to do with me as something like annoyance with themselves for having difficulty with someone they don't think they should be having difficulty with, or some other pressure in their life. Certainly I've felt those things enough myself yet I don't so easily remember other people might be feeling similar things.

And of course there is always so far room for improvement in my own handling of interactions. Details to wonder if I could have said this or that, or framed the other thing in a different way.

The previous post I typed up using RedNotebook, journaling software I originally installed via PortableApps as a means of taking down notes and musings while I worked on my assignments this past semester. That experience led me to think RedNotebook would be useful for actual diarying and then if I liked the result I could just copy and paste the results as a substitute for blogging.

Although, not these words which I am instead typing as a post on Dreamwidth. And with its calendrical structure it would not be suitable for accumulating notes to refer to in an ongoing way instead of the thought-clearing sort of doodling I was doing previously. Well I've seen some hints it can be customised for other uses but nothing to convince me I should attempt that over other more-favourable tools.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://aesmael.livejournal.com/669967.html

Read some more of A Game of Thrones this morning, very much getting back into that story again and enjoying it. Likewise getting more into and enjoying Sailor Moon, and the contrast between those two stories.

Have been enjoying, also, taking some quiet time to make notes on what I am reading and how that encourages me to reflect on the stories as they go. In light of how this adds to my appreciation of what I read and brings pleasure in itself, am more firmly resolved to continue doing so despite my recent worries that no one else reads or cares about those entries. This is my diary, so to speak, and so long as I am pleased with it that should be good enough for now.

I think I may have overexerted myself by working yesterday. Been feeling a bit sicker again today so I have resumed symptom-alleviating medication to compensate, though I am still past what felt like the serious phase of it. Also, lots of tea courtesy of the staff kitchen. Have decided I perhaps like unsweetened black tea and am taking time to savour its flavour. Hopefully I shall be completely recovered, so that I can sleep more easily and this lingering fuzzy-headedness will no longer interfere with most anything I attempt to do.

Previously I managed to forget to mention that on the Tuesday evening when I succumbed to this illness I also gained one flat tyre[1]. That had not previously happened to me so I did not initially recognise the occasion, never mind that I can be spectacularly unobservant at times. The nearest moment I can think of was when I changed lanes around a cyclist and misjudged a change of gears, as happens occasionally (I want to attribute this one to falling under the weather). Shortly after that it seemed as if a patch of familiar road was uncharacteristically rough, but after that I was on the motorway and at high speed everything seemed fine. Only when I exited the motorway did the rough shakingness return and I began to worry I had somehow damaged the functioning of the car, as I always fear at the back of my mind whenever I do make such an error with the gears.

Having come to such a grim and expensive conclusion, I even managed to fill the tank with petrol without noticing the flat. My family went out and looked and informed me in the evening of the flat after I got back, though I like to believe that had they not done so I would have seen it for myself in the light of the following day.

Currently running on the spare until a replacement can be obtained, which necessitates taking slower and more complex routes in the meanwhile. Not fun with poor sleep and lingering sickness clouding my wits at the moment. But at least I now have experience recognising and changing flats, and recognising tyres in danger so I'm better equipped to travel into the future.

I'm also feeling much better for finding and taking some quiet time in which to write all this out. It forces me to realise how much I have missed blogging type activities and how much I might need to cut down on social media type activities to be able to return to this. I think doing so will be difficult; as the name implies I get a lot of socialisation from social media and I feel a bit of guilt at potentially withdrawing further from the friendships and associations I have developed there.

In truth I have already done so to a degree over the past several months for both emotional and practical reasons. But my current habits are still not well-aligned with the sorts of thinking and speaking I have been missing and it is very easy to default back to especially twitter as a ready source of stimulus for any moment of boredom. I do not know what would be best to do; I aim to try different things at least until I find myself more pleased with my being than I am now.

[1] Previously been referring to this as 'blown out', but have just looked up the term and discovered I was incorrect to do so.

Crossposts: http://aesmael.livejournal.com/669746.html

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday's progress: not written. Did, while cleaning up my desk in search of my camera, uncover my course transcripts which I had been looking for the day before. Those are slightly essential for actually getting work and had been intended as a rather important basis for my big cover letter project mentioned last time. Now safely stored where they should have been all along.

Today procrastinated - had appointment with case manager, except she wasn't in today. Her substitute gave me some good leads for bookshops in suburbs I don't normally visit, which I shall have to follow up on soon. Called and confirmed my intention to be at farewell event for the toy librarian next week.

Also called up the university I previously attended to find out if I would be able to go back and finish my course of study. It does not look good. Confirmed that they offer nothing equivalent to the degree I was studying for a few years ago. I could get a science major in geology or biology or climate change, but the university no longer offers astronomy, physics or chemistry.

The verdict I got is I will need to enrol with them again to find out anything further, such as how much academic credit I get with them for units already studied, and I suppose my best hope is that they will be able to make some special case for me. Otherwise instead of being one unit short of a degree I'll be back to several years short of one.

Don't know what to do in that case, but it's probably very expensive.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I've been worrying a lot lately, for values of lately that include the past 4-5 years. Trying to do the sensible grown-up thing and get a job, to prove to future prospective employers I can hold a job, to obtain educational certification that I am someone capable of doing what employers want. My goal is to be able to move in with my loved ones and also be a financial benefit to them rather than a drain.

So far it is not going well. Three years looking for work, two of them with a fresh diploma proving I am capable of all sorts of things employers presumably like, and about half a year of actually working for people in a volunteer or trainee capacity, and still haven't ever been actually paid for work. It's upsetting, I shouldn't dwell on it. I expect I am doing something wrong, like not trying hard enough or looking in the wrong places.

My watchword continues to be diligence. I realise I can't expect to be 'on' all the time, to always be taking some productive step toward my 'sensible grown-up' goals, nor even to my more appealing creative ones, and that I need to allow for having fun so that I don't either burn out or not get anything done. I harp on to myself about it, but so far I am not very good at it despite having created semi-structured time in my life to work on that balance. At least I can keep feeling like I am getting better at it, and just never reaching my ideal, rather than slowly slipping into a pit of failure like job-hunting feels.

Probably, reporting on how I am going at this balance thing, how well I am managing to both make progress toward important goals and to not either burn myself out with nothing else or to slip off into frivolous time-wasting would help. And help again my goal of writing more online again by having something to talk about as a starting point.

I expect it would be good for me psychologically too, being more deliberate about saying "this has been my project(s) today and this is the work I have done toward completing them". Even if it is just about obstacles I encountered and trying to get past those.

At present I have a job application with a relatively short deadline and I am bad at those. Library job applications are often relatively demanding compared to the generic customer service positions I have been looking at, requiring me to submit lengthy documents explaining how I meet their particular selection criteria. My immediate goal is to create a set of base documentation addressing common requirements, covering as much of what I have done as possible, so that when I see a position going I can put together an application much more quickly. As it is, I typically put in work on these applications over about a week and end up sending them in at the last moment, trying to make them as good as I can.

If I can get these applications in much earlier I hope I will have a better chance of being considered, and if I can write this documentation up without time pressure I can hopefully do a better job of it. Of course I can't quite escape time pressue, since if I finish over the next couple of days then I can put in an application for the job mentioned above. If not, then I can't. At least I don't expect to get it either way. That lightens some pressure.

So I should probably sleep soon if I want to make a good crack tomorrow.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Something I dislike about working with the public is the gendered depersonalisation that happens. To anyone with a small child in tow it seems I become "the man". "The man" this, "the man" that, "Don't bother the man" (even if I don't mind at all). Unexpectedly cutting since I otherwise manage to avoid that sort of thing. Especially, I don't like being used as a proxy threat to keep someone else's children in line.

I would say I should get a badge that has my name on it, instead of only 'volunteer', but the one I have for the toy library has my name on it and the same thing happens there. It's hard to make signs unmissable.

I suspect this hurts more than I am admitting to myself, but there is little I could do about it.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

First day back again, feeling almost no longer sick. Just an easily irritated cough and an annoyingly cloggy nose. Wasn't sure whether the toy library would be running this week, hadn't got a response back from my email and didn't see anything that felt definitive on the website, so I called and left an enquiring message with my name and phone number. Felt proud about that because I usually stumble and mishandle these phone things.

At the charity shop today the first hour was occupied relieving one of the senior staff at the till, until another volunteer wanted to take over. Then I tended to the books for sale for the remaining two hours. First priority was restocking fiction and non-fiction from the staff area at back, to fill in the gaps that had accumulated over a week of custom. Seems like the new arrangement is doing pretty well. Lots of Stephen King and religious books gone.

Once I had those shelves restocked I moved to the back of the shop, staff area where items are kept for sorting and pricing. To make future restocking easier I reorganised the books back there into stacks as fiction, non-fiction and children's.

Feeling a lot better flow and camaradarie there lately, getting to do some cooperative work that is actually useful. Still hoping I don't run out of things to do before I run out of time there. Would hate to return to the original situation. Dreary.

Shortly before I was finished with the charity shop for the day, got a call confirming the toy library is not on this week, nor for the rest of the school holidays, so ended up coming home early. This would mean I need to do extra hours at the charity shop to make up the total required of me by Centrelink, but I have fortunately been putting in about 2 hours extra each week, which means the two hours I spend on Tuesday mornings cleaning returned toys for the library keeps me at the required amount of volunteer work to not be censured.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Been trying to write a post each day this month, but didn't manage one yesterday. That was not because I am sick at the moment, nor for having no intended post. Rather, I was wrestling with a disappearing bookmark problem that has only just been resolved. And now I am busying myself with organising those and clearing away nearly a decade of bookmark clutter and duplicates that have crept in.

What I was going to post was a link to an image of Torchwood as various anthro-animals and use it affectionately as an example of why I invented a semi-shapeshifter species for my Unified Erotica Setting. Mainly because as much as a variety of anthro folk can be nifty and useful it tends to bug me when used in stories, whether everyone is sorted into families by base species, or designed according to personality, or whatever - I think I have a hard time with suspension of disbelief over that many individualised people-species running about, or the ecology of the whole thing makes me twitchy. So I ended up inventing a species that could give a similar effect without me having to worry where that species of bear-people came from and why we haven't seen any before if I decide to suddenly introduce one in a story.

Incidentally, I found that image from reading the thread on fanficrants which inspired it.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Watching the movie Next starring Nicholas Cage. Have decided prescience is memory theft. We see an exchange between people happen, come to a conclusion, then the film jerks time back to show it has not happened yet and our protagonist takes a different path so what we saw never happens. So, he's stealing memories from the people around him, he remembers what no longer will happen and they don't get to.

Clearly the theft of future memories is what powers his abilities. There is no other logical conclusion.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Avoided seeing my GP this week about an intermittent, sharp abdominal pain, mainly because it was not bad enough to prevent me from working, and only lasted a couple of days so by the time I was free to see someone about the problem it had been gone for a while, and I gave in to 'would have felt silly going in to complain about an absent pain'.

But now I'm having another recurring problem, a sort of torn pain in the sole of my right foot. That's been going on for months, and when it flares up it makes walking painful although definitely not impossible. So I probably ought to see someone about that, even if it is unlikely there's much to be done.

I feel silly posting about minor stuff like this, when I know people with much more significant problems not going on about them like this. But, it is a sort of goal to post about stuff that is going on in my life and right now what's going on is "foot hurts, walking difficult but doable". Ah well.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I think I half-believed my work of yesterday would be undone again. But it was still there, happily, and I got to spend a couple of hours at the charity shop improving on that still. Got the non-fiction sorted and shelved by broad categories (think I forgot a few yesterday), should be much more maintainable henceforth. Got thanked a couple of times for the work I put into organising their book displays too, which was admittedly gratifying.

A customer had wanted to buy a CD of educational children's games, but I could not find a disc in the book to match the case he brought to the counter, nor could I find cases for the alternative discs I recommended to him even after going through them all. This is disappointing. Hopefully I can wrangle my way into organising the rest of their media merchandise too, before my time there is done. I don't like being asked for help and not being able to provide.

Toy library went well too. Found out one of the library staff has volunteered to be support for the toy library until a new official toy librarian is secured, so that sessions can continue running and momentum can be maintained in the meanwhile. Mostly straightforward in execution today. A very satisfying finish, and some of the other volunteers had secreted a farewell card to which I added some words of my own... presumably it will be found at some point before the toy librarian leaves, or be mysteriously delivered when she least expects it. But I couldn't speak to that.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Situation continues to improve for me personally at the charity shop. Hopefully this keeps up; I keep fearing it shall fall out from under me and I shall be back to tedious boredom.

Yesterday I was asked if I could come in earlier today, and work 09:00-14:00 instead of 12:00-17:00. That was fine with me. Had been considering requesting such a switch, and hesitated to see if I could continue being up appropriately early for it first. When I arrived I was assigned to continue a project started by one of the senior staff yesterday, and which was basically identical to the book-sorting I had attempted a few weeks ago. Seems the undoing of my previously attempt was a bit of an abberration, as something like this restructuring had been wanted for a while if anyone were bothered to perform it.

So, I got to spend nearly my entire hours of work today separating the fiction from the non-fiction and alphabetising the fiction according to author's last name (or editor, or publisher in one or two rare cases), and by first name in case of identical last names. Made a very cursory start on categorising the non-fiction in the last ten minutes I was there today, into religious, craft, books about stuff, management and economics, life stories, children, history, self-help, and humorus anecdotes, but that did not get very far today.

Am hoping to continue working on that project tomorrow and perhaps next week too. Get non-fiction sorted, further organise fiction by publication order within author, nicen up the presentation some more.

Some customers who saw me organising the books asked about particular genres. The staff member who initiated this said it would be too much trouble to determine the genres of all those books for sorting them that way too. I think it would not be so hard, and not even require much reading of the promotional copy in many cases, but do think there is not the space available for such an undertaking, not and have it remain intact usefully long. At least working more closely with the books have given me a better working knowledge of what is in there, so as to more usefully field questions from customers.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Disappointed in myself at the toy library this morning. Most of the toys I cleaned ended up going in the storeroom as incomplete, and I wonder if I should have been bolder about renumbering parts to fit them. Felt like I could have done a better job with more time, but an extra half hour or so would have made little difference. Actually, I think most of those toys would have needed more work than I could have provided in the time before I had to be at the charity shop. So I suppose I am feeling bad about factors largely but not entirely beyond my control.

I would really like to be able to do more.

Worked the register again most of the day at the charity shop. Very nervous prior to having any customers, but forgot about that once got going. Went mostly well, I suppose. On Monday I had an appointment with my case manager and could have requested she find somewhere else for me, but didn't since the charity shop has picked up for me of late. This probably coincides with not seeing the other volunteers in a week or two. Fewer other people on staff means more for me to do which means I spend less time being bored.

I bought a gift from the charity shop for my sister, who is moving interstate in the next few months. Another copy of the household cookbook I have been working from, in rather better condition. She seemed quite appreciative, which was a pleasant surprise. I had been worried she would not want it. Also bought a few cookbooks for myself, as I had been wanting to start a collection of my own and these were significantly cheaper than the new ones I'd had my eyes on. I assume I will buy those eventually, when I am in a better financial position, but this alleviates the tension between considering a cookbook of mine as progress in life and more urgent financial needs. The books were Worldwide Cookbook, The Australian Heritage Cookbook, and Australia's Favourite Recipes.

Am looking forward to getting to try those out, and hopefully learning lots.

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Work at the charity shop has been notably improved since Tuesday, mainly because I finally got some training on how to work the register. I am amused to have been advised several times on that topic that I should occasionally walk around the store to alleviate boredom, as actually operating the cash register is about the most interesting thing I've gotten to do there.

Will have to update my resume to reflect this, now I have gotten something of value there.

Has been stressful, because with a machine that prints everything I have less room for error correction or conducting experiments than I have had with library software, although hopefully they are switching to a computer system next week. My main stress has been worry that I will make too many mistakes to be trusted further with the device, or cause accounting discrepancies. But I am also riled by suggestions from others that I stress too much - from experience this is how I operate in similar situations, to panic and worry when my learning experiences are under actual working experiences potentially actually inconveniencing the people I am supposed to be helping and potentially being some degree of costly or troublesome errors, but practice brings confidence and I won't be quietly freaking out for very long in the long view of things. I'm still getting work done, when I'm doing that, anyway, unless I am asking for help because I've encountered a new-to-me problem.

I'm not very fond of this style of learning on the job, because one gets an extremely partial education to start and then has to run for help every time something unexpected happens. I'd suspect that costs a lot of extra time and customer satisfaction, but it does seem to be standard. And I don't mind it in a more consequence-free environment, such as my little forays into the land of Learning To Program.

I think I can also say I like my work duties to be more definite, whether that be in the form of a duty roster or list of things which fall at least partly within my responsibility, whatever. I'm feeling a bit lost at this place because I have almost no responsibilities or duties beyond showing up for 13 hours a week. My only official instruction has been to familiarise myself with the stock and 'perform customer service'; pretty much everything else I do I make up to pass the time, or else is a one-off lend a hand type activity. Have mostly picked up my understanding of what sorts of things are appropriate to do from conversation with co-workers or observation (e.g. if I do X someone will come along and reverse it the next day, or no one stops me from doing Y). Am continuing to refine my sense of what I am supposed to be doing, but this is definitely not how I prefer to learn.

Probably I should give up hopes of having influence on the floor layout. Saw a job advertised last week for that store with duties including making sure the place conforms to the larger organisation's will, and Wednesday was occupied rearranging clothes within the store to comply with new display directives. Hadn't realised the place was as managed as those non-charity department chains (probably isn't, but nor apparently in the hands of those working there).

But I got to actually do stuff, and that is exciting.

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aesmael

May 2022

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Entries tagged with journal

Small netted fishes

Love is a free variable

Running headlong down winding grassy path with arms outstretched, and picking up speed

At the lip of the great dark chasm

A ramble a week late

Today I

Futility

Words in context

Words woken from quiet

Progress entry

Diligence

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Better

Belatedly

It's made of people?

Oops

Hurrah?

Continuing saga of stuff

Daily Days

I got to do something!

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May 2022

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