New Year, Slightly Used
Jan. 4th, 2023 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gneechSo my new year's ruminations post perfectly fits the mode of my life for the past few years, by being done nearly a week after I intended, squeezed in between napping in the car after my shift and trying to get something else done this afternoon.
Life has been stressful, friends. So much so that I didn't even mess with my usual yearly review post last year... because it felt like there was no point. :P
I haven't exactly advertised, but I haven't hidden either, that financially we crashed and burned a few years back, when my various job-hunting and entrepreneurial efforts all came up zero, followed by Laurie's job (which had been foreseeably circling the drain for years) finally collapsing in on itself and her own job-hunting and entrepreneurial efforts met with about the same success as mine.
In the time since then, we've been buoyed by the kindness of my sister allowing us to basically use one floor of her house as an efficiency apartment. It's out in the middle of nowhere and we don't have much in the way of kitchen amenities, but there are worse lifeboats. Laurie found a job that was best described as "better than nothing," and I picked up a barista job where we could share the (very long) commute, and that's where we were when 2022 started.
But, in a turn of events I haven't felt since sometime before 2010, this year has actually been better than the year before it. Laurie's job got a serious upgrade, to the point that we're actually looking at getting our own place again, and if we can pull that off, I'm going to pick up my own job-hunting as well. I started picking up extra money as a professional Dungeon Master one night a week, which has been a very interesting experience and increased my own income noticeably. And best of all, I finally managed to find some help getting me through my writer's block on Suburban Jungle in the form of Spiritwolf. With his help I've FINALLY finished issue 8, as well as a working outline for issue 9.
I can't express how huge that is.
So this year, finally, I feel like I have enough of a handle on my life to look at where I am, and set some goals for where I would like to be this time next year. I mean, if the past several years have proved nothing else we don't know what tomorrow will be like, but I do feel like maybe life is taking on a more recognizable shape again. So, 2023... what do I intend to achieve?
1) Move. I am super-grateful to my sister and her crew, but our living arrangements are a pretty significant source of stress I want to clear out of our lives. We may never be back in something as nice as The Hobbit Hole again, and certainly not on our current income, but not losing 2.5 hours to the Beltway every day, having a kitchen of our own, and being able to come home after my shift is done instead of having to find somewhere to put myself until Laurie is off of work will all be huge and free up both time and mental bandwidth for other things.
2) Continue Rough Housing. I'm still looking at probably bringing it to a close after issue 10, which would give me enough material for two large collections and allow me to feel like I gave it a proper run. But as much as I love it, the emotional and financial rewards of it just do not compensate for the time and effort. Once upon a time, when I dreamed of somehow "being a cartoonist" in any meaningful way, working nightly and weekends on Suburban Jungle felt like I was trying to build a future; now it feels more like trying to recapture the past. I don't know if I'll get all the way through issue 10 this year, but issue 8 is done and issue 9 will follow shortly, so it's possible. If nothing else, I'll finally have something new at AnthroCon again.
3) Reclamation Project Year Two. Speaking of having something at AnthroCon, one of my resolutions for early 2023 is to get this book done. I've received several new submissions since Midwest Furfest, and will do one more big call sometime this month. I have too many people who've been waiting too long for this project to move forward, and fans asking for it, to let it stay hung any longer. I don't like being the single largest obstacle to my own project. XD
4) Big Income Boost. I want to live comfortably again. I don't (and never have) cared about the trappings of wealth, I just want a clean and pleasant place with a little space to put my stuff, do my work, and take care of my cat. But what I do care about, is not having to think about money all the damn time. Weighing the probabilities of whether or not the car will die this month, being certain that I can just go to the grocery store and there will be funds to cover it, etc., are more of those sine qua non things that really screw up my productivity, and ironically, the less I need to care about money the more likely I am to bring it in. Whether that boost comes in the form of a traditional job (doing what? I don't know these days), illustration work (I still have those art lessons I invested in and have only used about 1/10th of), or something that has yet to present itself to me, I need to keep my eyes peeled for opportunities on that front.
5) My Health. My day job has me on my feet for several hours each shift, so it's not like I'm not getting any activity, but it's mostly standing in one place or running back and forth over a single 10' space during rush periods; and because I'm eating a lot of Starbucks lunches (on the grounds that it's already payed for), I have gained a lot of weight around the middle. I very much miss my weight lifting and honestly any kind of fun exercise–not that I have much time to get any as it is (see also the 2.5 hours of commuting every day). One of the places we're looking at moving to, we've lived before, and I used to actually enjoy jogging there, so maybe I can do that again. If we end up someplace with a weight room, heck, if we can get our finances to a place where I can set up a VR rig and start playing Beat Saber even, who knows? But the timer is running out before my body decides it doesn't want to play any more and, well, seeing so many of my friends getting old around me, is really starting to upset me.
6) Integrate With My ADHD. Figuring out the ADHD diagnosis a couple of years ago was a giant bombshell, and has been a journey ever since. First was just re-examining my life in the new context, to re-frame so many things I thought of as "character flaws" as instead being "symptoms." Second was to just sort of allow the ADHD some room to breathe, to indulge in the various behaviors it leaned towards instead of fighting them and beating myself up about it, to see what the effects and consequences would be, and learn what approaches were healthy and useful, vs. things that ended up with wasted time, effort, or making things worse instead of better. I'm still in that stage to some extent, but I feel like I'm nearing the end of it. It turns out that, with the exception of the beating myself up part, my ADHD was reasonably well-managed, thanks to a lifetime of building my own support structures and coping methods. Getting back to that state, but now with a healthier sense of self and self-esteem, will make items 1-5 work much more smoothly.
7) Take Control of My Time. All of the above lead to this one, but this one in turn informs and underlines all of them. I started this post talking about how I've spent several days trying to get to a time and place where I could write it, because that's where my life is right now. Laurie and I seem to spend almost all of our time either in the car, or recovering from being in the car. I am in a constant state of trying not to fall asleep where I am (not a good state for driving for hours, let me say), and always four interrupts deep on whatever I have to do, while the ADHD is screaming loudly in my ear about what I want to do. It is, as I said above, stressful. My real goal for 2023, more than anything, is to get ahead of things again, instead of chasing after them. A tall order, yes, but I've been there before and I can be there again.
So, those are my resolutions, if you care to look them as such–my roadmap for the next twelve months. Whenever I get stuck trying to figure out what to do next, I'm going to look at these and think, "Okay, what can I do that serves these goals?"
Hoping for great things... and for the end of Interesting Times.
-TG
Life has been stressful, friends. So much so that I didn't even mess with my usual yearly review post last year... because it felt like there was no point. :P
I haven't exactly advertised, but I haven't hidden either, that financially we crashed and burned a few years back, when my various job-hunting and entrepreneurial efforts all came up zero, followed by Laurie's job (which had been foreseeably circling the drain for years) finally collapsing in on itself and her own job-hunting and entrepreneurial efforts met with about the same success as mine.
In the time since then, we've been buoyed by the kindness of my sister allowing us to basically use one floor of her house as an efficiency apartment. It's out in the middle of nowhere and we don't have much in the way of kitchen amenities, but there are worse lifeboats. Laurie found a job that was best described as "better than nothing," and I picked up a barista job where we could share the (very long) commute, and that's where we were when 2022 started.
But, in a turn of events I haven't felt since sometime before 2010, this year has actually been better than the year before it. Laurie's job got a serious upgrade, to the point that we're actually looking at getting our own place again, and if we can pull that off, I'm going to pick up my own job-hunting as well. I started picking up extra money as a professional Dungeon Master one night a week, which has been a very interesting experience and increased my own income noticeably. And best of all, I finally managed to find some help getting me through my writer's block on Suburban Jungle in the form of Spiritwolf. With his help I've FINALLY finished issue 8, as well as a working outline for issue 9.
I can't express how huge that is.
So this year, finally, I feel like I have enough of a handle on my life to look at where I am, and set some goals for where I would like to be this time next year. I mean, if the past several years have proved nothing else we don't know what tomorrow will be like, but I do feel like maybe life is taking on a more recognizable shape again. So, 2023... what do I intend to achieve?
1) Move. I am super-grateful to my sister and her crew, but our living arrangements are a pretty significant source of stress I want to clear out of our lives. We may never be back in something as nice as The Hobbit Hole again, and certainly not on our current income, but not losing 2.5 hours to the Beltway every day, having a kitchen of our own, and being able to come home after my shift is done instead of having to find somewhere to put myself until Laurie is off of work will all be huge and free up both time and mental bandwidth for other things.
2) Continue Rough Housing. I'm still looking at probably bringing it to a close after issue 10, which would give me enough material for two large collections and allow me to feel like I gave it a proper run. But as much as I love it, the emotional and financial rewards of it just do not compensate for the time and effort. Once upon a time, when I dreamed of somehow "being a cartoonist" in any meaningful way, working nightly and weekends on Suburban Jungle felt like I was trying to build a future; now it feels more like trying to recapture the past. I don't know if I'll get all the way through issue 10 this year, but issue 8 is done and issue 9 will follow shortly, so it's possible. If nothing else, I'll finally have something new at AnthroCon again.
3) Reclamation Project Year Two. Speaking of having something at AnthroCon, one of my resolutions for early 2023 is to get this book done. I've received several new submissions since Midwest Furfest, and will do one more big call sometime this month. I have too many people who've been waiting too long for this project to move forward, and fans asking for it, to let it stay hung any longer. I don't like being the single largest obstacle to my own project. XD
4) Big Income Boost. I want to live comfortably again. I don't (and never have) cared about the trappings of wealth, I just want a clean and pleasant place with a little space to put my stuff, do my work, and take care of my cat. But what I do care about, is not having to think about money all the damn time. Weighing the probabilities of whether or not the car will die this month, being certain that I can just go to the grocery store and there will be funds to cover it, etc., are more of those sine qua non things that really screw up my productivity, and ironically, the less I need to care about money the more likely I am to bring it in. Whether that boost comes in the form of a traditional job (doing what? I don't know these days), illustration work (I still have those art lessons I invested in and have only used about 1/10th of), or something that has yet to present itself to me, I need to keep my eyes peeled for opportunities on that front.
5) My Health. My day job has me on my feet for several hours each shift, so it's not like I'm not getting any activity, but it's mostly standing in one place or running back and forth over a single 10' space during rush periods; and because I'm eating a lot of Starbucks lunches (on the grounds that it's already payed for), I have gained a lot of weight around the middle. I very much miss my weight lifting and honestly any kind of fun exercise–not that I have much time to get any as it is (see also the 2.5 hours of commuting every day). One of the places we're looking at moving to, we've lived before, and I used to actually enjoy jogging there, so maybe I can do that again. If we end up someplace with a weight room, heck, if we can get our finances to a place where I can set up a VR rig and start playing Beat Saber even, who knows? But the timer is running out before my body decides it doesn't want to play any more and, well, seeing so many of my friends getting old around me, is really starting to upset me.
6) Integrate With My ADHD. Figuring out the ADHD diagnosis a couple of years ago was a giant bombshell, and has been a journey ever since. First was just re-examining my life in the new context, to re-frame so many things I thought of as "character flaws" as instead being "symptoms." Second was to just sort of allow the ADHD some room to breathe, to indulge in the various behaviors it leaned towards instead of fighting them and beating myself up about it, to see what the effects and consequences would be, and learn what approaches were healthy and useful, vs. things that ended up with wasted time, effort, or making things worse instead of better. I'm still in that stage to some extent, but I feel like I'm nearing the end of it. It turns out that, with the exception of the beating myself up part, my ADHD was reasonably well-managed, thanks to a lifetime of building my own support structures and coping methods. Getting back to that state, but now with a healthier sense of self and self-esteem, will make items 1-5 work much more smoothly.
7) Take Control of My Time. All of the above lead to this one, but this one in turn informs and underlines all of them. I started this post talking about how I've spent several days trying to get to a time and place where I could write it, because that's where my life is right now. Laurie and I seem to spend almost all of our time either in the car, or recovering from being in the car. I am in a constant state of trying not to fall asleep where I am (not a good state for driving for hours, let me say), and always four interrupts deep on whatever I have to do, while the ADHD is screaming loudly in my ear about what I want to do. It is, as I said above, stressful. My real goal for 2023, more than anything, is to get ahead of things again, instead of chasing after them. A tall order, yes, but I've been there before and I can be there again.
So, those are my resolutions, if you care to look them as such–my roadmap for the next twelve months. Whenever I get stuck trying to figure out what to do next, I'm going to look at these and think, "Okay, what can I do that serves these goals?"
Hoping for great things... and for the end of Interesting Times.
-TG
no subject
Date: 2023-01-16 03:43 am (UTC)Yay goals!
I'm so glad you got approved for the new apartment. That should be an enormous improvement for you! 💜
no subject
Date: 2023-01-17 04:21 am (UTC)