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Today is quite weird. It's my last day at ZeroTurnaround RougeWave Perforce and I'm joining a new company after 8 years of working here. Last post from work laptop :)

At my new employer I will travel to San Francisco occasionally so maybe I can join some thumb meetup some time if any is happening there. Haven't been paying attention.

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5 hours ago, Erkki said:

Today is quite weird. It's my last day at ZeroTurnaround RougeWave Perforce and I'm joining a new company after 8 years of working here. Last post from work laptop :)

At my new employer I will travel to San Francisco occasionally so maybe I can join some thumb meetup some time if any is happening there. Haven't been paying attention.

🎉 congratulations Erkki! NorCal thumbs sometimes meet up, especially for GDC, but we are known to hang out together for other events/get-togethers.

 

Even if you don't frequent the slack, popping in to tell people you'll be in town might be the best way to get something organized. We have a '#straightwestcoastin' channel that is nice for organizing people

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I'm really stressed right now.  My wife and daughter are in China visiting my in-laws and my daughter has developed a medical condition that may require surgery.  They're going to see a specialist in the morning (which is night for me).  We'd rather have it done here if need be but that means it'll be at least a couple days, not even counting the time it will take for the doctors here to examine her.  The other issue if it needs to be done right away is the way health care in China works, you have to pay for everything up front.  I don't know if my insurance here will cover this in the first place, but I guarantee they won't pay for anything up front even if it is covered.  I'm not sure I'll be able to to pay an up front cost in addition to flying out there myself.

 

 

Right now I can't do anything but wait until they can see the specialist.  I don't know what to do.  I hate this so much.

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That's awful, hope you and your family get through it okay <3

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Geez, that's horrific. Wishing you a lot of strength, hope it works out. Even if it requires up-front payment, are medical costs as insane there as in the US?

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Thankfully, it ultimately ended up being a false alarm.  We'll need to keep an eye on her but she's ok.  I appreciate everyone's concern and support.  It really does mean a lot.

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Yeah dude, that stuff always sounds terrifying. Glad it ended up being a false alarm. When it comes to things like that I would rather that medical specialists err on the side of caution and be wrong.

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I successfully defended my dissertation yesterday. It's (almost) the end of a grueling three-month process where I was promised another year's extension on the program deadline, denied that extension by the university administration, and then given the chance to defend an abridged version of my dissertation, after much bargaining and pleading with my department. I have a lot of feelings: pride that I was able to write almost 25,000 words in the space of a month while also working full time in order to finish a draft for submission, disappointment that my dissertation couldn't be the full work that I'd envisioned, relief that I got it all done anyway, humiliation that I was forced to spend weeks begging for professors and bureaucrats to suspend arbitrary and often informal rules that they'd always tell me they didn't personally agree with, and anxiety that... well, that feels a lot like low-grade PTSD, like I'm on the plane home but I'll always be ass-deep in that jungle muck.

 

I've been incredibly lucky to have a lot of friends, not a few of them from this community, who've supported me in this decade-long process, and I owe each and every one of them my thanks. Whether or not I use my doctorate to teach, as I had planned, I'm incredibly happy to have achieved a lifelong goal of mine, against such odds.

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Good job, Gormongous! Now you can finally spend a significant amount of time on anime again!

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2 hours ago, Gormongous said:

I successfully defended my dissertation yesterday. It's (almost) the end of a grueling three-month process where I was promised another year's extension on the program deadline, denied that extension by the university administration, and then given the chance to defend an abridged version of my dissertation, after much bargaining and pleading with my department. I have a lot of feelings: pride that I was able to write almost 25,000 words in the space of a month while also working full time in order to finish a draft for submission, disappointment that my dissertation couldn't be the full work that I'd envisioned, relief that I got it all done anyway, humiliation that I was forced to spend weeks begging for professors and bureaucrats to suspend arbitrary and often informal rules that they'd always tell me they didn't personally agree with, and anxiety that... well, that feels a lot like low-grade PTSD, like I'm on the plane home but I'll always be ass-deep in that jungle muck.

 

I've been incredibly lucky to have a lot of friends, not a few of them from this community, who've supported me in this decade-long process, and I owe each and every one of them my thanks. Whether or not I use my doctorate to teach, as I had planned, I'm incredibly happy to have achieved a lifelong goal of mine, against such odds.

 

I'm so glad that you got a happy ending out of this gorm! You worked so hard and accomplished something great!

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A thing happened recently that has me a little worried. I took a comedy writing class on a Sunday and it was kind of intensive and after the class I felt like my brain was really really tired while everything else seemed ok.

And now this feeling has been coming back. I can function at work, at least most of the day, and I am working on a video project at my spare time, at the writing stage. So maybe it's too much? But it doesn't feel like too much - I'm only spending a couple of nights in the week on the video project, the rest of the time I'm just watching movies or something.

 

There are also other things in my personal life, like a friend being depressed whom I've been hanging out with more, now. My sister is depressed and she's having some marriage problems while being a new mom. My mom is depressed because of the sister situation, and they don't get a long but she has to babysit a lot after my sister went back to part-time work. And now my grandma fell and is in the hospital for at least a month, and I really don't like his son, my uncle, who has somehow become a supporter of the local far right party.

 

I felt fine just a month ago, but now it feels like all of this is a bit much to deal with, and I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to perform as well at work as I need to, or that I'm going to have to slow things down with my filmmaking hobby, which I have actually wanted to spend more and more time on.

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A familliar thing to hear Erkki, unfortunately. It feels like the elasticity/capacity to deal with life's blows has been going out of things lately.

 

Try to take some time off, you *really* don't want to get into burnout territory.

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Also don't burn yourself out looking after/worrying about everyone else - you've got to look after yourself first. I know it can be hard to prioritise yourself over family and close friends when they're having a hard time, but it doesn't help anyone if you end up having a breakdown.

 

If possible, might be helpful to see a mental health professional (a therapist or whatever) to help you work up some techniques to deal with the new stress factors in your life. You don't have to keep going forever, and if you don't like the first one you try you can keep trying different ones until you find a good fit.

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Thanks for the recommendations. I'm feeling a bit better after a few days. I thought about going to a therapist. A few years ago I actually did find one I liked, but they thought I had no reason to keep going and I only went once. But now it seems they have moved and I don't remember the name and didn't feel like searching for a new one again. So maybe I'll wait it out a bit and if it gets worse again I'll try going to another therapist.

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