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Since the election, I've felt like I've gone through the various stages of grief repeatedly. It's very easy to fall into despair when the rest of your world has been flipped on its head.
I'm still struggling on occasion to come to grips with the fact that my faith in humanity is pretty much shattered, when the hatred of society towards anyone not white, heterosexual, cisgendered, and Christian is on full display for all to see.
Being social or putting myself into creative modes by making new photography or podcasts have helped to alleviate the pain, but leave it to my wife as ever to snap me out of such a funk, a trait she's excelled at for nearly 13 years. I feel now that while the world still sucks, and there's still a daily deluge of diarrhea in the news, it does not cause me to sink quite so much into despair. There's not so much a resignation or giving up, but more like acceptance--not of the terrible that's going on and the harm being done, but accepting that while there is nothing I can do as to the clusterfuck in Washington, there is still good that can be done in spite of it. There are still loved ones I can offer anything they need to. I need to take care of me and mine.
With that cloud lifted for now, I only managed to enjoy a short while of clarity when reality hit me in the face while doing taxes--for the first time in years, I can no longer claim the fact that I was in college, so all those years of getting a nice refund from the IRS were over. April and I got hit with a hefty bill, a bill that we can pay, but there was a benefit to this cold slap of reality. It forced us to take a good, long, hard look at our finances, and we realized that we waste a ton of money each month paying for conveniences and laziness and buying stuff that we don't particularly need. So much so that if we pretended that we were poor and living on a shoestring budget, we could tackle the giant Debt Kraken that is the biggest obstacle towards our starting a family.
I am not bringing a child into this world saddled with over $100K of debt (most of that in the form of my student loans and credit card debt), no fucking way. With the realization that we can make serious headway over the next couple of years and wipe out a big chunk of this to a point where we'd feel comfortable trying for a family and not go broke, that's what we plan to do.
In other news, PAX East 2017 is coming up this weekend, so I and my brother-in-law will be in Boston, MA for the 3-day convention. It'll be my 6th, and it's the only con I go to, so I don't mind the expense. Three full days of video gaming, tabletop gaming, panels, and concerts. I am so excited to see what this year's Indie Megabooth has in store.
After that, I have an art show opening on St. Patrick's Day in downtown Albany: the 39th annual Photography Regional, which rotates between several galleries in the Capital District. This year, it's the Albany Center Gallery's turn to host the event. One of the three pieces I've submitted to this year's show was selected for display, and that always makes me happy. Also that weekend, we get a visit from Rosemary. She's a lovely person, and seeing her and April together makes me such joy. The final weekend of March so far will have me getting back to running a D&D campaign with one group of friends. Been looking forward to it--we took a break for the holidays, and we're picking it up again after a 4-month hiatus.
Thinking about the week ahead. It'll be a short week because PAX, but I'm not looking forward to Tuesday...my first test as a new supervisor is to reprimand the person whom I supervise regarding his habitual lateness and leaving early. Apparently this has been a problem for some years, his arriving to work 15 minutes late every day and leaving 15 minutes early. His previous supervisor (who has since retired) was always of the opinion that since he's worked for the State for over 30 years, and is close to retirement, that there was no point in calling him out on his lateness and leaving early because he already has one foot out the door, as it were. Now that supervisor is gone and upper management wants this to be fixed pronto...they're throwing me at him, who has never officially been in a position of authority, to formally reprimand this person who's at least 25-30 years my senior. We'll see how it goes.
So that's where I'm at for now. Immersed in the world of Hyrule for the new Switch I picked up, immersed in my art, and in a few, immersed in sleep.
I'm still struggling on occasion to come to grips with the fact that my faith in humanity is pretty much shattered, when the hatred of society towards anyone not white, heterosexual, cisgendered, and Christian is on full display for all to see.
Being social or putting myself into creative modes by making new photography or podcasts have helped to alleviate the pain, but leave it to my wife as ever to snap me out of such a funk, a trait she's excelled at for nearly 13 years. I feel now that while the world still sucks, and there's still a daily deluge of diarrhea in the news, it does not cause me to sink quite so much into despair. There's not so much a resignation or giving up, but more like acceptance--not of the terrible that's going on and the harm being done, but accepting that while there is nothing I can do as to the clusterfuck in Washington, there is still good that can be done in spite of it. There are still loved ones I can offer anything they need to. I need to take care of me and mine.
With that cloud lifted for now, I only managed to enjoy a short while of clarity when reality hit me in the face while doing taxes--for the first time in years, I can no longer claim the fact that I was in college, so all those years of getting a nice refund from the IRS were over. April and I got hit with a hefty bill, a bill that we can pay, but there was a benefit to this cold slap of reality. It forced us to take a good, long, hard look at our finances, and we realized that we waste a ton of money each month paying for conveniences and laziness and buying stuff that we don't particularly need. So much so that if we pretended that we were poor and living on a shoestring budget, we could tackle the giant Debt Kraken that is the biggest obstacle towards our starting a family.
I am not bringing a child into this world saddled with over $100K of debt (most of that in the form of my student loans and credit card debt), no fucking way. With the realization that we can make serious headway over the next couple of years and wipe out a big chunk of this to a point where we'd feel comfortable trying for a family and not go broke, that's what we plan to do.
In other news, PAX East 2017 is coming up this weekend, so I and my brother-in-law will be in Boston, MA for the 3-day convention. It'll be my 6th, and it's the only con I go to, so I don't mind the expense. Three full days of video gaming, tabletop gaming, panels, and concerts. I am so excited to see what this year's Indie Megabooth has in store.
After that, I have an art show opening on St. Patrick's Day in downtown Albany: the 39th annual Photography Regional, which rotates between several galleries in the Capital District. This year, it's the Albany Center Gallery's turn to host the event. One of the three pieces I've submitted to this year's show was selected for display, and that always makes me happy. Also that weekend, we get a visit from Rosemary. She's a lovely person, and seeing her and April together makes me such joy. The final weekend of March so far will have me getting back to running a D&D campaign with one group of friends. Been looking forward to it--we took a break for the holidays, and we're picking it up again after a 4-month hiatus.
Thinking about the week ahead. It'll be a short week because PAX, but I'm not looking forward to Tuesday...my first test as a new supervisor is to reprimand the person whom I supervise regarding his habitual lateness and leaving early. Apparently this has been a problem for some years, his arriving to work 15 minutes late every day and leaving 15 minutes early. His previous supervisor (who has since retired) was always of the opinion that since he's worked for the State for over 30 years, and is close to retirement, that there was no point in calling him out on his lateness and leaving early because he already has one foot out the door, as it were. Now that supervisor is gone and upper management wants this to be fixed pronto...they're throwing me at him, who has never officially been in a position of authority, to formally reprimand this person who's at least 25-30 years my senior. We'll see how it goes.
So that's where I'm at for now. Immersed in the world of Hyrule for the new Switch I picked up, immersed in my art, and in a few, immersed in sleep.
