thinking and doing

[fandomonymous]

work: It feels like both a challenge and a privilege, to take a team with talent but little experience and get them to where their ambitions take them.

Working from home is a general pleasure and has given me a lot of energy, even when it's isolating. it's how i've pulled off all the other big changes this year has had in it. i can feel myself unmasking in a neurodivergent sense.

home: i've spent most of this year cohabitating with alexei, and the vast majority of that in various apartments in canadian cities, that by definition were bigger and more modern than kawa arena.

i don't miss how much effort it actually took to live alone in an old, rent-stabilized apartment, where the laundry was half a block away and the dishes all had to be hand washed, where if you wanted a home cooked meal you needed to do both the cooking and the cleaning, and day-of to avoid vermin.

i am finally feeling more settled in our apartment in calgary, but many things are still being unpacked. i do miss how the sun looked from my old windows (and i really miss the floor-to-ceiling windows where we stayed in Burnaby, but is that also that I miss spring as a season?) i like how regularly i see magpies, which might be my favorite corvid.

i am adjusting better than i thought i would to the cold, but also we've had a stretch of warmer weather in early November. i am not sure how well i am adjusting to the shorter days, the early darkness.

i kind of miss my old supermarkets. it feels weird to be in a "nice" enough neighborhood where the closest supermarkets are focused on higher class and organic goods, compared to the cheap bins at the place near the subway in woodside. we can (and do) drive out to the other places, or i can get there by transit, but it's not as easy to get to.

i definitely miss having a regular social get-together where i was already established, and time keeps slipping as i try to find one here in calgary to start becoming established in. for example: there's one this weekend by a local mutual aid group, but it intersects poorly with the postmortem meeting for Roguelike Celebration. then in a week from that i'm already in Florida, and missing a fair number of interesting Calgary-local things while I'm there.

crafts:

i've folded a small variety of origami flowers and stars, to decide what kinds of things i'd like to make more of for the wedding. getting origami paper in quantity might become the actual issue, we will see.

i tried home printing our save-the-dates but the printer i have access to doesn't like making a variety of blue shades.

i've mended several socks and one pair of jeans. i have an order coming in for a large variety of embroidery floss to do even more mending.

some feelings:

i've had to be the responsible one/hold onto executive function a lot. This is true at work, as my colleagues hit the limits of their mental capacities. This is also true at home, in times when my partner has been sick or grieving (and there's been things to grieve this year). that's tiring.

overall, i am being asked to be hopeful and patient and well organized, and while these are attributes i have and value, it is still work to do them.

i want to look outwards more, get more integrated into the community and know people. i feel intimidated by trying to get involved in activism, even as that is one of the more obvious ways to do so. obviously there is a lot wrong with the world, and even specifically with Canada, and even more specifically with Alberta. i tend to be bad at being a witness to anger, even (especially?) when it is warrented. i realize the way to get better at that skill is to practice it; it is hard to actively choose to practice it.