Starkess

I am very supportive of EVs, but to say that we are "there" with charging is absolutely not true. I bought a car a few months ago in CA, and I couldn't get an EV because I don't have a reliable place to charge it. Not to mention the points above about electricity generation.

Well, after crickets for a month, I attempted to contact [third party] recruiter with no response. Reached out to hiring manager directly (she had encouraged me if I had any questions and "are you still hiring?" is a pretty valid one IMO!) and she did not respond either! However, 2 days after emailing her, the recruiter contacted me and said the hiring manager had asked her to get in touch with me and let me know that yes, they were still hiring and yes, I am still in consideration. That was a month ago now and nothing since then. Like I don't care (much) that I didn't get the job, but jfc ghosting me after multiple interviews and meeting me in person?? Taking over 2 months to make a decision when you claimed to be "moving fast"? Give me a break. Insulting. Anyway, fiance and I decided I would take all of February to relax (well, work on personal projects mostly) and not worry about job hunting. That time flew by, and now I'm trying to get 2 applications out a day. I still don't totally know what I want to do, so shooting out a lot of arrows with the idea that, if I get a hit, I can learn more during the interview process. So far had one firm very similar to my past government consulting gig reach out (hard pass, I hated that job) and have a phone screen for a financial quant job that is probably way out of my comfort zone. Found I've been gravitating a lot towards data analysts job descriptions, so may try to specifically focus my search and brush up on a couple weak spots for the field. While I'm unemployed, continuing to work on my SciComm channels, which I really missed doing, and writing a new novel, which has been a lot of fun. Stupid bills meaning I need a stupid real job

I finished listening to Invisible Things, a political satire wrapped in sci fi. Didn't totally work for me. The setup for the politics was a bit unbelievable, and it was just the same frustrating and/or exaggerated shit that happen in real life without like going anywhere. At least in Don't Look Up the damn Earth got wiped out and we got the death-by-alien coda. This book literally just ends with the stupidest cop-out. Meh. My WoT re-read continues with The Shadow Rising, which is one of my faves but also it's a bit hard to read these all back-to-back, so I probably need to take a breather after this one.

My Valentine's flowers were lovely, as always. Fiance picked the ones with the orange roses because he knows it's my favorite color, and I loved the whole arrangement. Lots of bright yellows and purples too. I'm a sucker for color! We had a quiet early dinner at a nearby restaurant. They were having a V-Day special of a bottle of wine and 2 burgers, which we got, and we also started with a cocktail. We ate around 6 PM, by the time we went to bed at midnight I was hungover Poor fiance had to get up and work the next day too (I'm unemployed so I slept in)

Ugh, got too fed up with that Half-Blown Rose novel. Had a new hold come in at the library so now I'm listening to In A Garden Burning Gold. This was another I picked up without any context. So far it seems to be a story about a family that are kind of like gods for their nation? It's not terrible but hasn't really grabbed my interest yet. It feels very disjointed. Like on the one hand, they have to manually place the stars every night, but on the other, they're constantly worried about being deposed by humans? The fairy tale aspect and the politics aspect just don't line up for me so far. We'll see. I also finished EEtW and am onto The Great Hunt in my WoT re-read. This has never been one of my favorites in the series, tbh. The middle section where everyone is split up and kind of killing time and the horn gets stolen back and forth feels a bit useless and everything to do with Selene is so annoying. I understand she's using some sort of compulsion so it's not exactly Rand's fault that he's such a dumbass, but still...! I've just reached the part where they're about to head to Falme, though, so looking forward to it picking up again. Also just our first big glimpse of the Seanchan with Domon and gods it's fun to be reminded how much I hate them!!

I used to go to street fests and stuff with my parents, one of the first shows I remember is Spin Doctors at Summerfest. Must have been 1994ish? But the first like actual concert I went to was No Doubt when I was 15 or 14. I got 2 tickets as a birthday gift (it was well known No Doubt was my favorite band--I had previously asked for tickets for Christmas and did not understand the concept of touring and thought you could just always get tickets for bands? haha oops), and my sister drove me and a friend up to the Twin Cities for the show. She dropped us off so we were on our own and felt very cool. Good times. ETA: Okay, I hate not remembering exactly, so I did a little research and Spin Doctors were at Summerfest in 1993, so that was the year (I would have been not quite 6). The No Doubt concert was in St Paul on October 9, 2002, so they were for my 15th birthday.

I started listening to Half-Blown Rose, which is so far the worst of literary fiction tropes. Kinda want to quit but I don't have another audiobook lined up so I'll probably continue on. Given extra free time this month, I started re-reading Wheel of Time. Almost done with Eye of the World, enjoying it a lot as always.

Thanks everyone! I'm sure I'll find something. Job hunting is always nervewracking though and I know I violated the cardinal rule by quitting before I had another one. But I know it's all going to work out, somehow! My current position has now been listed and my boss posted about it on his LinkedIn and I was like "damn that sounds really cool!" and then I was like...but wait...haha. It's hard that something that sounds on paper so perfect for me felt so awful, but that's how it goes I guess. Just makes me second guess everything that even sounds interesting now...

I finished up my PhD last year, but wasn't interested in the typical academic route. Pivoted into science communication, but my first job in that vein was a poor fit, so now I'm leaving after just 6 months. I think I still want to do scicomm, but feeling pretty skittish about it after such a big fail. Possibly considering moving into a more techy track, data science or similar, but I'm not sure yet. I'm feeling pretty discouraged about ever finding something that works for me, but I guess all I can do is keep trying!

I mean it seems pretty logical that if they have to pay a lot more for grad students, they're going to take fewer students. Hopefully it doesn't affect you! Well, I did it and quit my job, last day is next Friday. As relieved and happy as I feel, I know it was 100% the right decision. But it sure doesn't feel like good timing... I'm waiting to hear back on a job I interviewed for--I was one of the final candidates and they said they wanted to "move fast" so I think I should know soon. If that doesn't pan out, I've got some real thinking to do about my career path.

My fiancé is indeed awesome. I've reached the breaking point with my job so I am going to resign next week (at least, that's what I've decided today, will be TBD come Monday if I chicken out I have a potential job lined up and if that doesn't work out, I might actually just take the break and do it. If someone tells me a hundred times they're happy to do something, I suppose I ought to take them at their word and not worry so much that they don't really mean it. In the meantime, I'll try to do some writing this weekend!

I love that the mods have just let this thread trail on to 28 pages and counting Writing goes slowly for me. Was excited about my new manuscript but since the holidays progress has come to a standstill. My fiance is being super supportive and trying to encourage me to take a year if I want and really focus on writing. So far I'm of the opinion I'd feel too guilty not being a contributing member of the household and knowing that I probably wouldn't have any success in that time period which is a bummer. So trying to convince my stupid brain to get some stupid writing done now while I have still have a job and a shred of sanity.

I think it's totally reasonable to be concerned about declining educational success rates for men. I fully encourage men or anyone who wants to try to tackle that issue. Start support groups for men in college! Set up mentorships! Provide plans and guides for those who don't have personal experience or know those who do! Have career circles and book clubs and whatever you can think of! But "well not everything is perfect for men so misogyny is the logical outcome" is straight up bullshit.

Of all the new social media sites experiencing a boom of former Twitter users, my favorite has been Post. I really hope it does well. Right now it seems to be mostly reporter and political junkie types, would love to see a wider variety of content. But it could just be my current very limited following list is biased because it's mostly based off suggestions written by...journalists...

Between my Achilles being off and making running out of the question for the time being, my new schedule making it difficult to do daily workouts, my depression making everything feel insanely difficult, and the overindulging of the holidays...not at my best health right now. But I'm telling myself that at least I've been doing something (about 2x/week lifting) and that's better than nothing. And it won't kill me to lay off the desserts for a night or two...