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I have a job again! Which means I'll probably be on these forums more again, which is a kinda weird thing really.

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11 hours ago, jennegatron said:

ty yothatlimp, nappi, erkki, & dewar :) 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh congratulations Jennarrrrrrr I'm super happy for you both! :D

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I'm having a weird moment thanks to some incidental genealogy. A friend had just finished S-Town, and I was telling her how my family history, especially on my father's side, reminds me of Bibb County and its denizens. On whim, I tried to double-check where my grandfather was born, but all I brought up was the divorce record for my parents on some random genealogy site... which listed their date of marriage as 1979, four or five years earlier than I'd always thought it was. I confirmed it with the county records, but I'll spoiler the rest because it's both personal and boring.

 

 

The story of my parents meeting and getting married, as each of them have told me once or twice, was that my mother moved from Iowa to Texas after getting a degree in graphic design to work with 7-Eleven on their Olympics sponsorship. Her roommate there, whom my mother knew from Iowa, was a friend of a friend with my father's roommate, whom my father knew from the university he'd attended. Over an unspecified amount of time after being set up by their roommates, they dated, married, and, once the 1984 Olympics had concluded and my mother had left her job with 7-Eleven, had me. However, if they were married in 1979, working with 7-Eleven on the Olympics couldn't have been my mother's reason for coming to Texas, because 7-Eleven only started sponsoring the Olympics in 1981. I understand waiting five years between getting married and having me, if my mother was focusing on her career and saving money with my father, just not what she was doing in Texas before 1981.


I don't know. By now, I should expect everyone to tell fibs here and there about their relationships, even one's parents, but I'm still a little caught off guard by this. Not sad or angry, just surprised, you know? The bothersome part is, I don't think I'll get any answers if I go right to the source, because my mother is still angry about the divorce and my father isn't really someone who likes to talk about the past. I may have to pretend to be anxious about where I'm going in life and ask my mom about her path from college to career to motherhood, just to get it out of her... Kidding! Mostly.

 

Sorry for oversharing. It's just been a bee in my bonnet today, and I thought someone might get a laugh of recognition out of it.

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Perhaps you can get your dad to spill the beans though? It's kind of a "neat" mystery even though you say it's boring. I wish I could dig up my parent's past but they are really bad at either remembering or talking about it.

 

Also I like all the mentions of 7-Eleven. I am a junkie for the terrible food at those convenience stores. I never had them growing up in Houston despite it being a Texas company. Apparently something happened where they went out of business there in the late 80s and never really recovered. They are all over Austin and Dallas though.

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Yeah, not sure how long its been since the divorce, but I've generally found that my dad has been pretty open to talking about stuff from the past the further its got (but it's been about 20 years now for them).  I talk with him about stuff with my mom all the time, sometimes specifically to fill in gaps in my knowledge about their past and whatnot.

 

Family mysteries are weird and fascinating.  Mom discovered after her mother died that we were the lost branch of the family tree, that grandma had cut contact with her greater family (siblings, aunts, uncles, a whole huge clan of them) back in the 40s and never told either of her children that this whole big family even existed.  I'm sure there was a reason, but if anyone knows what it was, no one will say.  Mom and I went to a family reunion once, and she exchanged some phone calls and letters with a number of them after discovering that they existed.

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While on the plus side this last days I enjoyed some very good event with both our local Japanese fashion community and very good anime event (which I was able to use my cosplay and get some photos), while lately, I feel a lot more confident in my illustration skills (overall in pixiv my arts have reach very good amount of views) and I have been trying to figure out how they did the art style in some Japanese visual novels/adventures and I did make some progress so far (I just might need figure better how to have different level of dithering in clip studio paint, which Is the main tool I use)...

 

...On the other side, I kind worried and frustrated, still looking for a job/freelance, as a graphical designer, but with no luck: Linkedin (at least the Brazilian version) is just flooded with fake job offers from other Linkedin-like sites (long story short, the deal is they hope to trick you to subscribe in to them and maybe even make you pay for premium subscription, but the offers themselves don´t exist or are very old), I have been trying some facebook groups for freelance/job and deviant art forum for job offers but nothing so far, Artstation offers are very few and often out of my reach, I could try send email to someone (agency and ect...) but I don´t know to who I could send(but I send email to a friend ask for suggestions). And I kind don´t know exactly what do to, thankfully is nothing dire, but still...  anyway, at least one friend I have in our local Japanese fashion group did say she would check with some people she knew.

 

I have been trying to improve the visibility of my works, but here things got a bit complicated:

 

On Pixiv, overall my illustrations have been reaching a very good amount of views, likes and bookmarks, nothing spectacular, but much more I imagine, since I though that there the competition would be really hard...

 Twitter, only appear to work when I share some of my art using japanese hashtags, because without, didn´t appear to make much or any difference. Artstation, which I use to have a "serious" place to have my work as a portfolio (also it where I post the 3d modelling stuff I do), is good, nothing amazing, but the views is at least better that behance, which I give up do very low visibility (also to avoid have works in several places too). Deviant Art (which I mostly use to post photos of my outfit, cosplay and illustrations), is kind weird, in the old days I remember some works (keep in mind, very early and poorly made) reaching very good amount of views and favorites, now the views are so low is kind hard to understand the way, even sure things, like send works to groups don´t work anymore. The strangest part is that DA says the everyday there is at least 20 to more people coming view my profile, but they don´t appear to do anything (like or comment), this is even strange in cases where the daily view says something like 50 or 75. Somehow my journal views weirdly high, like 1000 or more, but no comments at all (is DA counting a view everytime someone just look in my main page?). Also the total views are 28k for DA (which I have for much older time) and 40k for Pixiv (which I have for a shorter time).

 To have a comparison:

One of my works, a fan art of Chihaya Kisaragi on pixiv is around 3197 views (and growing) , 15 likes and 9 bookmarks. on Deviant Art, is just 78 views (not growing at all, even submitting it to several groups) and 15 favorites. A single tweet of this work from pixiv, using the japanese hashtags can get around 150+ views (depending on the time I post and the time in Japan), during the birthday of that character it got a lot of retweets. Tweeting art from DA does not appear to improve views at all.
 

 

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I've been feeling like crap lately, to the point that last night I took a trip to the ER.  Turns out most of my problems are because I have extremely high blood pressure (somewhere around stage 1 and stage 2 hypertension).  I've done a piss poor job of taking care of myself, something I intend to fix immediately.  I think the other main contributing factor is work and life stress.  I'm doing what I can about work stress, but the main source of life stress for me is the ongoing state of Trump's America.  As much as I hate the idea of turning a blind eye to it, I think I have to stop paying a lot of attention because every time I do I get really worked up which in my current condition is potentially dangerous.

 

In other words Trump being President is literally killing me.

 

(I joke about all this as a coping mechanism, in reality I'm actually quite scared)

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We often feel a sense of responsibility to focus on the world and the shit happening in it so that we can do our best to fight against it, or at least be prepared for things to get worse.

 

But if it's damaging to one's own mental, or even physical health, well, sometimes you have to look out for number one. It sucks, but it's also important to stay healthy. If you aren't healthy, how can you realistically expect yourself to be able to cope with shit, let alone fight things like Trump?

 

Do what ya gotta do, and come back at it when you're doing better.

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I hope you really are doing what you can about work stress, because in a lot of your posts about it you seem to be doing a lot more for your work than could reasonably be expected of a human being...

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Managing my work stress mostly amounts to trying not to worry about it too much while I'm here and not thinking about it when I'm home.  I talked with my supervisor about my condition and he was pretty understanding.  I told him that I might occasionally leave early or come in a bit late depending on how I'm feeling but I would do my best to get my work done in a timely manner and he said he'd do what he can to help me out.  Unfortunately he's going to be promoted to another position in a different department soon so there's not much he can do long term.  I know the person taking over for him and he's pretty laid back too but I'll have to have this discussion again with him.

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Sounds good. It would possibly also be a good idea to mentally prepare yourself (in a relaxed way!) to put your foot down when they ask too much of you, and have a big list of how much above-and-beyond stuff you've done for them. I always get caught off-guard when employers take the piss, and fail to react as strongly as I should.

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So my dad called and I guess we're trying to plan a rare family vacation to the long-fabled land of disneyland/world this christmas break, and it's almost certain I have to opt out because it's impossible to get time off around holidays if you don't have kids. Spent about 45 minutes trying to talk my dad out of his massive excitement for finally, after years of promises, being able to take us to Disneyland, which was always the height of incredible vacations growing up in rural SD, just because I know that even with 6 months of warning, someone will want to take their kids to the grandparents a week beforehand for Christmas and that will always trump anything going on in my life. I don't disagree with that, I don't want to fight them over that, kids should have good holidays, and that's why I no longer celebrate any, I always have to work on them to cover for the child-havers.

Dad has finally broken into making money commensurate with his work, having a minor management position, and I know he now has money enough to not only support us like he always has, but also to have saved up enough to take us all to Disneyland, and my little sister is graduating with a teaching degree that winter. I felt like crying the entire time he was going on about planning flights and getting a travel agent to plan it all and which one to go to because I knew the entire time it wasn't going to happen. I don't even want to go to Disneyland/world, I don't care about it more than whatever slight environmental stuff I'd pick up that the Thumbs and VGHD folks talk about. I feel like I'm going to end up disappointing my dad again because the sort of work I ended up doing doesn't allow me the sort of freedom of holidays that an office gig or teaching does, and I resent that it's entirely because of other people's kids being inherently more valuable than anything involving my family or my parent's feelings. I feel bad doing it, but I do, I don't ask for time off otherwise and I work every other holiday period they also need off, and I cover for them when a kid is sick or has a concert, and that gets me exactly shit when I actually want it.

Edit: Also, my dad is a fucking saint, his only hobbies outside work are home improvement, going out to the farm to do chores, and hunting (for food to eat and because it's a family event anyway). I have literally, honestly, never seen him be mean to a person or ever say anything cruel about anyone. He's a hick who does his best to learn PC trans-people lingo despite being a complete hick because I had a friend who was trans. Had to mention it once. The man does nothing for himself, ever, he works and eats and sleeps because he's built that way, and he asks nothing of anyone. The least I can do is this, help fulfill one of the dreams that must motivate him, and I don't think I can.

 

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I don't have advice or anything to share but I just wanted to say to both of you, SecretAsianMan and neonrev, that your recent posts resonated with me. In your case, SAM, I totally get the feeling of the state of the world being a permanent stressor and trying to find a work/life balance while still accomplishing what you want or need to do. I've definitely been reading the news less and less over the last year or so (Brexit decreased my desire to consume news and Trump decreased it further), and sometimes I feel guilty about not engaging as much with the world but it's just so fucking bleak any time I do that it's hard to want to be a part of all that.

 

Neonrev, you summed up such a complicated situation so well at the end when you said this must be one of the dreams that motivates him, and I get the sense that you feel like you owe it to him to try to do this, but you just don't think you'll be able to (and don't really think it would be for you anyway). That's a shitty situation to be in, but I think it's to your credit that you're so sensitive to his state of mind and that your problem exists mostly for unselfish reasons - especially because you mostly don't plan holidays so those with families can.

 

Again I don't really have any advice, but I hope things work out for both of you in at least a not horrible way. Hopefully it helps to know you're valued members of the best internet community there is, and that we wish you the best. This is one of the threads that constantly reminds me how special this place is and how lucky I am to have found it.

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As the person who normally works around Christmas so others can go see family, this sounds important and I'd say that you're entitled to one Christmas vacation, regardless of the child situation. Now if you don't want to go, that's fine and I definitely get that, but if you want to go, you should make the time.

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Agreed. Your father is as big a family commitment as someone else's kids are to them. You've got loads of time to give people advance notice. If what's holding you back is "their family is more important than my family", check yourself and go on that vacation.

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+1

 

I'd go to management and say something along the lines of "I'm booking this well in advance because I know people with kids often book last-minute and are given precedence. I normally go along with that and work holidays, as you know, but this year I need vacation at this time and won't be able to cancel, so I'm giving you plenty of warning."

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Agreeing with everyone else about family vacations.  As a (relatively new) parent I love my kid and want to spend time with her, but I'm not going to use her to jump to the front of the vacation line.  In the past I'd voluntarily work those days and take my vacation in the off season (something I still highly recommend if at all possible) but there have also been times where I've planned something far in advance and cancelling at the last minute in favor of someone else was not going to happen (short of a true emergency).  Your family is also family and you should be allowed time with them.

 

On a personal front, I've started a diet and exercise plan.  It hasn't even been a week yet but I already feel better for the most part.  I'll still occasionally feel terrible but I suspect it's because of my rather abrupt change of diet.  My body seems to be trying to adjust to these green, leafy things I keep feeding it.  The stress thing is a work in progress.

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9 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

Today is my daughter's first birthday.  I've been a dad for a year now.  Still hard to believe.

 

Hoozah!

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I just wrapped on a short film I wrote and directed! It was exhausting, probably moreso for my partner who was the lead actor and was given way too much dialogue to remember. I don't know when it will be edited and finished but making it was a real learning experience.

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