Daily Check-in Archives - Page 2 of 2

Day 10 – 502 words about frustration

What on Earth can I type 500 words about tonight? I’m feeling discouraged and frustrated about job hunting. Found out I didn’t get a job I wanted after three rounds of interviews, but considering how they reacted to my tough questions, maybe I dodged a bullet. But unemployment checks don’t come forever, so I have to get something going. I do have the advantage of a dad who’s got a little money who can help for a bit, that’s always nice. I just don’t want to lean on him too much, y’know? I’d like to pull my own weight. I know I can be a great employee for the right organization. I can fix things. People tend to like me. I can jump in and be useful almost immediately and have a short learning curve.

Where is the boss that wants someone like that? You’re out there, I can feel it. I’m right here. Come find me.

I had a dream last night about being gaslit by the organization I mentioned above, the one that went a different direction after three interview rounds. I’m a practical person, don’t believe in metaphysics, so I won’t say it was a psychic revelation. I just knew that since I hadn’t heard back from them when they said they’d know either way by earlier this week that no news was bad news, and it permeated my subconscious.

Still working on this website and working on another one I will focus my technical skills and stories about working the Help Desk, and getting the rest of my digital infrastructure in place. Was messing around with OBS Studio last night and maybe I’ll start streaming on a regular basis again. Had fun doing that for Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, and now that the Fallout TV show is out it’s making me yearn for the wasteland once again. Would streaming older Fallout games be interesting to people? I’m willing to try.

Have to re-write my Hire Me page; it’s a mess right now, not very good from a marketing perspective and I’ve been trying to learn more about marketing and sales since that’s a huge weakness for my liberal arts ass. My sister is great at that, and so is my friend Christi, so I’m trying to apply the lessons they have to teach me. I can learn. Is our Brian learning? Time will tell.

Just a hundred more words and tonight’s diary entry is done. I don’t know what else to write. I’m doing daily walks; that’s a good thing. Gotta stay active. Dad is still here and will be for another couple of weeks while they rebuild his apartment space. Was supposed to play D&D last night but it got postponed another two weeks from now, which is frustrating but that’s the status quo of D&D games. Finding time for that is hard for adults with busy lives. It’s not like back in the day when we could play all weekend every weekend.

Two more words. Done.

Day 9 – Old Home Week

Daily Story Project

Dammit I had an idea to write about today but I forgot what it was by the time I had a chance to sit down at my computer.

Dad needed his tax forms printed out and I hate printers. Also I don’t have a working one currently. So I drove him over to my sister’s house to get that all taken care of. It took him a while to do it, so I messed around on my laptop and chatted with my sister and my brother-in-law, took a look at the damage from the ice storm and pipe bursting, and petting the Very Good Boy Archer. Tried to figure out why my remote login to my home server worked on one subdomain but not the primary domain (still don’t know why but since I can get in one way, it’s not a huge urgent deal.)

Then dad had to go poke around and look for some things that got packed away when he had to start his controlled-homelessness run. By the time we left, it was after 5 PM and rush hour was in full bloom, making the estimated Google time to get home, across town, nearly an hour due to traffic.

Dad, navigating, sent us near his home bar, and I laughed and suggested that he’d done that on purpose; since he’s been living with me, he hasn’t gone, and it’d been a few weeks. “Your friends probably miss you,” I said. And he thought about it, and said, “well why don’t we swing in for a drink and wait out the traffic?”

You will notice, dear reader, that was not a denial.

Dad knew the bartender, several people sitting at the bar, as well as nearly everyone out on the covered patio around the fire pit. And he introduced me to every single one of them. Almost everyone there knew who I was, told me how much they loved my dad, and said that he only told them good things about me. “Your dad says very often that he’s been blessed with good kids and grandkids,” they said.

It was wild. A little intimidating, even. But it was fun to see dad hanging out with people he knew. I ate greasy bar food, and drank semi-fancy beer (Rogue Dead Guy Ale, for the record) which made me feel only slightly out of place) and listened to dad tell his stories and to other people telling him stories about their lives. Dad remembered everyone’s names. He knew what they did for a living. He knew who was married to whom. It was nice.

And every time someone new walked in, he yelled the same damned joke: “It’s about fuckin’ time you showed up! We can get this meeting started now.” Well, sometimes he started the joke and someone else finished it for him.

Everyone there said they were happy to meet me, and they all seemed sincere. I should go back sometime. I wonder what kind of reception I’d get if I walked in alone? I’m more of a loner than a charmer like my dad. It’s too bad I take more after my mom that way.

Day 8 – Here I am

Daily Story Project, fear

This whole 500 words a day writing exercise is supposed to be about just giving myself the chance every day to sit down and write something. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be about something. I just need to put 500 words down on the screen and post them to the blog.

That being so, why did I just complain to my bestie, Tracy, that I didn’t know what today’s post was going to be about? I know it doesn’t have to be about anything. I’m the one who set the rules up. I know this in the cockles of the soul I don’t have.

Tracy, being helpful, suggested a few things, asked me some questions about what I’ve been doing all day, even suggested I could ask ChatGPT for a prompt. Not gonna do that last one. I don’t really trust ChatGPT or the other LLMs for anything creative because every time I’ve used them they’ve lied, made things up, or gotten factual things wrong and been very certain about them when questioned. They’re not ready for general purpose use yet. But that’s not on Tracy. She was trying to help.

I’m flailing. I know I should just do this, ramble and harrumph and blather until I hit the word goal. Because last night’s post was good. It was real good. It was tight, it had an emotional basis, it took a natural event and made it personal and even profound. I loved it. Today, I wanted to try to top it.

That’s not how this works, though. I have to just do it, the writing bit, and see what happens. Inspiration is incredibly fickle; if I have to wait for inspiration I might be waiting a long long time. This project is about building a habit. About making space. About giving myself permission to be bad, or even clumsy and un-word-y-like. I don’t have to DO anything but put down at least 500 words today. Tomorrow is another chance to write, and the day after that, and the day after that. Maybe some of them will be beautiful. Maybe some of them will be hilarious. Maybe some of them will be sad. But, realistically, as Theodore Sturgeon once said, 90% of them will be crap. That’s how it works.

I need to be OK with that and I guess, today, I’m not, so it’s a snag and I’m having trouble getting past it. You can’t see this but I’m looking at the word count on screen and I’m just barely over 400 words. I have to go on, and on. I should stop using contractions just to eke out a few extra words here and there. You, dear reader, have probably stopped reading because you can tell I’m padding all this out. It is true, I very much am. I do not blame you for moving on at this point.

But you should at least know this: tomorrow I will be back, doing this again. I’m showing up. Imperfectly. Honestly. Just me.

Day 7 – Turn around, bright eyes

Daily Story Project, fear

Obviously the big thing that happened today was the solar eclipse. I don’t know if I have 500 words about it, though. For one thing, we only got about 22% coverage here in the Portland of Oregon, and for another, it was very cloudy so I couldn’t see much of the sun at all.

I did make a point to be outside during the event, though. Listen, I’m a practical person. I try not to give much attention to spiritualism or magic or the supernatural. But for days now I’ve been seeing people talk about Eclipse Energy and how it represents a break, a cleansing, a shift in perspective. And that all seems like unfounded disconnected thinking.

I say that, but I do also have a horoscope app on my phone, and I know my Big Three by heart (Capricorn Sun, Scorpio Moon, Sagitarius rising) and I share daily horoscopes with my friends. I think that those Big Three do somewhat circumscribe my personality in many ways. I do have a practical side that fits with the general Capricorn vibe; see the paragraph above, even though this paragraph may, to some, undermine my argument. But my practical side is also weighted by the sharpness and intense nature described by the whole Scorpio thing; I just mask it a bit. And backing all of that, the traits of a Sagitarius rising means I’m curious, novelty-seeking, and get bored easily.

In many ways this is also a description of the ADHD mind, at least my (technically not professionally diagnosed) ADHD mind.

And I’ve been on a run of bad luck lately. I’m unemployed, and beginning to doubt I’ll ever find a job that’s a good fit that I can ride out the rest of my professional life with. The pressures of modern late-21st-century capitalism are getting to me. I just want shelter from the elements, healthy food and drink, and medical care when necessary, and all of those things are becoming harder and harder to find. The idea of a cleansing, a break, a magical way to shift my focus and find something better… it appeals. It appeals strongly. Doesn’t it? You feel me on this, right?

Twenty minutes before the maximum coverage for my location, I headed outside, in comfy workout clothes and sturdy walking shoes, with Bonnie Tyler singing that every now and then she falls apart. Me, too, Bonnie. Me, too. I’d love to not fall apart. Can I soak up some Eclipse Energy and make it happen? Or maybe I just need to pull myself together and make it happen, eclipse or no eclipse.

I stopped on my walk at 11:25 AM Pacific, and pointed my phone at the sun behind the clouds (not looking directly at it, I’m not that gullible) and sang along with Bonnie. I don’t know what to do, and I’m always in the dark. We’re living in a powder-keg and giving off sparks.

To this atheist, this was as close to a prayer as I will allow myself to make.

And the only one who can respond is the person making it.

Forever’s going to start tonight.

Day 6 – Capitalism

Daily Story Project, Politics

Can I limit my definition and concerns about capitalism to only 500 words? Let’s find out!

I was listening to a podcast last week that I will not name; just using this as a jumping-off point. The hosts are generally liberal or left-leaning, and the normal topic of the show is the tech industry, but because of a reader question they were talking about tech CEOs and what they could do to push back against things like anti-labor practices, wealth inequality, and resource exploitation. In other words, the hosts were talking about capitalism, especially as it’s practiced in the early 21st century here in America and the world.

And one of the hosts said that they like capitalism. Specifically they said they like some parts of capitalism, some parts of socialism, but that neither one of them is the complete picture of how to organize society.

And that struck me as just dumb. It’s that whole “moderate” view where you try to thread the needle so you don’t take any particular stance. And my one thought was, how does this person define capitalism? Because by my understanding, there ain’t nothing good about capitalism in the basic idea. I would love to ask this person for their definition, but that would probalby just end up in an argument, and generally I like this person and their tech and social opinions.

Instead, here’s my baseline understanding of capitalism, and how it’s been running lately. The base idea of capitalism is that it’s good to accumulate capital. Capital is whatever tangible goods, objects, factories, or labor needed to make things people need. Capital is classically the machines and factories used to manufacture goods, but that ignores the very real labor that the workers in that factory also provide. The labor is also capital, human capital.

Folks with the most capital are called capitalists. We generally don’t examine, at least outside of lefty circles, what or how those capitalists accumulated their capital. How did they have the money to buy or have factories built? My inclination is that most of them inherited it, and then through the process of underpaying for the labor and overpricing the output, kept accumulating profits that gave them even more capital.

Because that’s the ethical failing, as I see it. Labor will always produce a surplus. A leftist thinks that the laborer should retain most if not all of that surplus. A capitalist, though, claims to own that surplus because they own the factory. To my mind, that’s a tautology. The factory was itself built by labor, and labor was underpaid for that construction, because the capitalist retains ownership of the property.

Capitalists, are, definitionally, profit extractors. Rent-seekers. That’s how they accumulate capital.

Let’s briefly touch on what capitalism is not. It’s not the concept of money, or markets, or buying and selling. All of those things existed before Adam Smith tried to define a new economic model. Capitalism is also not the idea of profit; that, too, existed previously in human history. Funnily enough, excessive profits was seen as a negative, nearly a sin, definitely a moral failing. It’s just that it was called usury (and to be quite honest, applied in a very discriminatory and racist way.)

I’d love to bring back the accusation of usury, but I’d apply that to billionaires. Are you with me?

Day 5 – Foods for thoughts

Daily Story Project, Tech

Not sure what to talk about today but it’s 10:44 PM and I haven’t written a daily post. So bear with me while I ranble for 500 words or so.

Today was supposed to be a day for working on my blog, figuring out how to advertise and sell my skills, and getting started trying to make a little freelance income. The hard part is that, in my head, I have two skills and one of them is hard to sell on a piecemeal, client-by-client basis, and the other one is widely known as not a good way to make money these days.

The first one is computer hardware and software troubleshooting, diagnosing, building, and maintaining, also known as Help Desk. I have done this in the context of businesses and agencies for decades where it makes sense. Staff a phone and inbox with techs, tell the employees or customers where to call, and let them meet in the middle to hash things out. Working in those jobs, I often get approached by other employees who eventual say “Hey, it’s not a work computer but I’ve been having trouble; could I ask you to take a look?” On that basis it always seems like there are people out there that want or need help and can pay. But it’s few and far between, and there’s a difference between troubleshooting a computer bought by a business and configured in a standard way, and troubleshooting a computer that someone bought for home use without knowing much about computers, software, or standards. No offense, y’all but the things a lot of people install or allow to be installed on their home computers can be downright frightening.

So my instinct when offering computer support is to try to narrow things down a bit to just recommending computer builds, adding or removing hardware or specific software, things like that. And it just doesn’t seem to be worth it to be a freelance “computer tech.” I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong? How do JayzTwoCents, Linus Tech Tips, and Gamers Nexus do it? Hmmm, guess they’ve built a video empire, not just selling their time and experience taking on one problem at a time. Food for thought.

And of course the other skill I have is copywriting. I can write clean straightforward friendly stories, I rarely make grammatical and spelling errors, and I have done this for my entire life. My insecurity here is that I don’t have a degree, and I don’t have a lot of bylines outside of my own blog. I can write but, as I mentioned a few days ago, I don’t seem to be able to market or generate traffic. Yet. It’s a skill I think I can learn, but there’s that little nay-saying voice in the back of my head that says nay. That is the skill I’m working on building, though. I’m taking some online classes in marketing and writing catchy ads and it’s given me a lot of food for thought on this topic, as well.

It’s all a learning process. And at least it is costing me nothing to try right now. I’m already paying for this blog space. Stay tuned.

Day 4 – Despicable Dodgers vs Sugar Titts

clippings, Daily Story Project, Portfolio, Sports

As a life-long Dodger fan I’m really disappointed in them right now. I even rooted for the Cubs today when they hosted the Dodgers in Chicago (and the Dodgers lost, which is just karma.)

What on earth could make me so mad? The way the Dodgers treated a fan this week who managed to catch a home run ball hit by new Boy in Blue Shohei Ohtani. She was sitting in the pavilion at Dodger Stadium, a location I’ve been before; baseball game tickets are expensive these days.

The team is promoting Ohtani as their new star, having paid a lot of money for him after losing some big hitters to free agency. And I don’t have anything against Ohtani; I think he’s a great addition to the roster and will probably do good things on the field. But on Wednesday, when Ohtani hit his seventh-inning homer padding out LA’s lead against the fucking Giants, the ball landed in the hands of Ambar Roman. And that’s when the trouble began.

Roman reports that security staff descended on her, separated her from her husband, and made an incredibly low ball offer to buy the ball from her. She says that the pressure was unwelcome, and that they even made threats to withhold the certificate of authenticity from her if she decided to keep it and take it home with her.

Two baseball caps signed by Ohtani. That was their offer. Auction house representative Chris Ivey, from Heritage Auctions, says that ball is worth US$100K easy. In fact, the Dodger fan store is selling a ball hit and signed by Ohtani for US$15K, and it wasn’t even a fair ball. The fact that the offer was bumped to include a bat and a ball (Ivey says is worth maybe a grand) doesn’t make this any better.

Roman has been posting about this on social media. Her Twitter (you can’t make me call it the dumb new name, Elon) handle is, and I swear I am not making this up, Sugar Titts. Her pinned post is the video of her catching that ball, clearly a proud moment for her. When she’s asked, she repeats that it’s not about the money, but the treatment, and I believe her. It was a big moment, and she acknowledges that it’s a big moment for Ohtani as well. He hit the ball, he should get the momento.

She didn’t even get to meet him to hand the ball off, although apparently Ohtani’s translator may have given that impression.

Today the front office said they’d be willing to do a little more and offered Roman and her husband, Alexis Valenzuela, a private box for her birthday. At least at that point, she’ll get to meet the team, not just Shohei Ohtani. The front office says they’re going to review their protocols for important situations like this in the future. Even today as I write this, they’re saying they’re open to trying to make it up to Roman for all this bad feeling.

But their immediate actions and the reporting on it has tainted my view of the team, and that’s no small feat after almost 4 decades of following the team.

Gotta say on this one, I’m on Team Sugar Titts.

Day 3 – Comedy Gold

Daily Story Project

Dad’s been homeless for a couple of months. No, not like that. He’s been couch-surfing. It’s kind of a long story.

He had an apartment on the lower floor of my sister’s house, a nice little space with its own kitchen, full bathroom, living room, and a little covered patio where he could smoke. Yes, he’s a smoker. At the age of approximately late-80s (that’s a complicated story) I doubt he’d be able to stop smoking at this point.

But back in January, Portland got hit with a very bad ice storm. It shut down the city, and many homes lost power for days, including my sister’s house, which was rough on an old man. They stayed at my nephew and neice-in-law’s condo until power came back. Since my sister’s house is up in the hills, it was hard to get there and back again; dad couch surfed for a bit. And then it dragged out, because my sister’s house had a water pipe burst, and when the plumber came in, they found black mold, and asbestos in the walls. It turned into a big (necessary, of course, but still) project.

While my sister wrangled with the insurance and contractors, dad kept couch surfing with his grandson. That kept going, they wanted some privacy, so my sister asked if dad could stay with me.

Of course. Whatever it takes. I am happy to help!

Was nervous that having a roommate for the first time in years and years would expose all my weird habits and the odd gaps I imagine I must have in my lifestyle. I’ve been a solo bachelor for the huge portion of my adult life, after all. I have set ways of doing things. For some reason, as just one example, I don’t have many forks, compared to how many spoons and knives I have. I just live with it. If there’s someone else here eating food, they might notice and call out the dearth of forks. I can imagine it being A Thing.

Dad, though, has been a good roommate. If he gets up before me, he makes coffee. He’s got his own bathroom to use on the main floor and he keeps it clean. He tolerates going out on my uncovered patio to smoke. He’s help pay for groceries and put gas in my car. It’s been great.

But… he’s got a hearing problem. It’s been going on for months, since before Christmas, and no amount of nagging from me or my sister has gotten him to go to a doctor. So I’ve had to yell at him to get his attention, I’ve had to repeat myself a lot, and when he watches TV it’s very very loud. All of us have been worried it’s Something Serious, and finally my sister got an appointment at his primary care physician for this week.

All of this is set up for: his ears were just full of wax. It wasn’t Something Serious. He just needed to have them cleaned out. First thing he said when he got back from the doctor was, “What’s that roaring noise?”

Dad, that’s the heater. It’s sounded like that the whole time. You’ve just been deaf.

When he sat down in front of the TV and turned it on, he literally flinched at how loud it was.

It’s been comedy gold, frankly.

I love my dad. I’m glad he’s here.

Daily Check-In #4 + funny cat video

General

It’s Friday! Have a funny cat video. You deserve it!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ycromSr6PY&w=420&h=315]

How did I do on my writing goals yesterday?

I did find another two sites I can query or pitch to.
I did not look for any content farm sites.
I did search Mechanical Turk for writing HITs; found none.
I didn’t work on my novel.
I didn’t keep track of interesting articles.

I did apply for a non-writing job I found on Craigslist. Also made another $10 doing surveys on MTurk. And I found three technical writer positions late in the day; I’ll apply for those, after doing some research. The descriptions for the technical writer jobs all mention UML, and DMD; I have no idea what those are.

Must make some time to work on the novel today. Also, I’d like to post something here that isn’t just a daily check-in. And it’s time to hustle and submit stories to the sites I’ve found.

“Hustle” is such a great word. I thank my friend Tristan J. Tarwater for that word.

Daily Check-In #3

General

How did I do yesterday on my writing goals?

I did not look for more sites to send my freelance articles.
I did not look for any content farm sites.
I did search Mechanical Turk for writing HITs. Didn’t find any but I did a couple bucks worth of surveys.
I didn’t work on my novel at all.
I didn’t keep track of interesting articles online.

I did fill out my Contently site a bit more last night, including some links to some product descriptions I wrote for Mturk last year. I wasn’t sure they’d still be on the web, but I searched and found them. I saved a bunch of them as PDFs for my own records. Sure, it’s mind-numbing marketing copy but it’s still writing I got paid for.

How many days will I write “I did not work on my novel at all.” until I shame myself into working on my novel? Maybe the third time’s the charm! The day’s not over yet!