Hhhhhello?

MAN, so, hello. For the first time in four years, I am unemployed, not actively looking for a job, and feeling ... bored?

The Cliff's Notes: in 2020 I got a job in game dev as a writer. The job was challenging, rewarding, MASSIVELY triggering and retraumatizing, taught me a lot, let me meet some amazing people, and ended abruptly in 2023 when our parent company cut most of the studio before game launch. I was fortunate enough to be quickly picked up at another game studio run by legendary designer Jordan Weisman, so I only had about a month of downtime. The startup I was working for initially had me working as a writer, but I quickly acquired more responsibility and management duties because I don't know how to set boundaries. This job ended abruptly at the end of April 2024 when some of our funding didn't come through and the studio was forced to downsize.

So ... here I am! Funemployed for the first time in years.

Today I'm sitting here feeling guilt. Why? Because I'm still in contact with folks who are working at the Weisman startup, and I am keenly aware of how many things I didn't get done there. I was only ever able to finish one project. The layoff happened when I was finally getting close to finishing one of the biggest ones I'd been working on with a writer and designer since September, and finally getting some traction on another that I'd been working on with a different designer since October. When I was handed a tutorials project back in December, it dragged on and on until I had to hand it over to another project manager so that I could work on the other game projects I'd put on hold. Even the small projects I'd tried to get going with the idea that they'd be rapid to execute ... I couldn't finish.

And while I know for a fact that those projects were handed off to someone I trust, I feel bad that he now has to finish them. And I have a gnawing suspicion that some of them are going to simply get abandoned, after all those months of work I did. I feel like I let down the teams I was trying to lead, and made problems for people downstream from me.

Rationally, I know that this isn't (mostly) true. Even Jordan recognized from early this year that my teams were struggling to finish things because he kept asking us to move onto other projects, which were supposed to be small and fast but never were. And, rationally, I know that failures happen, and that I was learning at a breakneck speed on the job -- you can't get better at something without fucking up a few times. And, rationally, I know that everyone around me found me incredibly impressive. They kept telling me so! Jordan said he wished he could keep me on and hoped he could figure out a way to bring me back.

But, you know. Rationality ain't the strong suit of an anxious brain.

I've always struggled with finishing things. Our musical Sarah Blackwater is the longest, most complex thing I've ever finished, and in some ways it does feel very unfinished, even now, five years later. (Lauren was writing music up until the eleventh hour, and there's structural stuff I know I could improve.) Maybe part of the reason I'm reluctant to go back to it is because if I restart work on it, I'm afraid I'll never finish it again. Right now it is imperfect, rough, but complete.

Four years into my game dev career and I've never actually been there to finish a game. Admittedly, I've only been at two companies. I don't think this is even a very unusual experience in the industry. But it still feels rough. It feels like maybe I'm not capable of finishing things. Maybe I'll only ever write first drafts, and unfinished ones at that.

Of course, I can point at things I have finished. Papers in school. School! Blog posts. Needlework projects. Games. It just feels like those things are all dwarfed by the pile of stuff with its progress bar at 75%.

I dunno. I have therapy on Wednesday and I'll talk about this then. I know -- rationally, yet again -- that this is a skill I can build, in the same way I'm starting to build parkour skills. (I'm taking a parkour class, btw!) Little by little. Start small and low to the ground. I was once able to do this, so I can do it again, but not if I immediately try to throw myself off a building and expect to be able to do a backflip and a three-point landing. Write something all the way to the end.

Maybe starting here, with a journal post. Hello, Dreamwidth. Anyone still out there?

So hey. It's been a week, hasn't it.

( Obviously this is some emotional vomit about the election. )

Here's something that's maybe a little more fun, though. ladysingsthe  suggested, and I jumped on board, that we run an Inktober/30-30 style art challenge in the 30 days leading up to Trump's inauguration. We're calling it Art Trumps Hate (#arttrumps3030), and the goal is twofold: to start channeling our feelings into creation (the opposite of war, as Jonathan Larsen said), and to troll that fascist motherfucker. I'll post about more details as we develop them.

Anyway. I love you. I am not going anywhere anytime soon (even if I do continue to stay off Facebook).

Whoo, I did it! I wrote a coming-out letter to my parents, and they called me last night to tell me they got it and discuss logistics. Highlights:

• Because I handwrote the letter and my b's sometimes look like 6s and sometimes look like Gs, they misread it as "This probably won't surprise you, but I'm GI" -- which they parsed as "Gender Indeterminate." My mom said that processing that took about thirty seconds and her reaction was basically, "Oh, that makes sense." (Which ... it probably does, but I am not ready to have a discussion about gender identity with my parents, and anyway I think of myself as more of a cis woman than anything so identifying as non-binary is not what I want to do right now.) "No no," I said, mildly panicked, "BI, with a B." "Oh. Well, that makes sense too."


• Their main question was "How do you want us to deal with telling the rest of the family?", which was something I hadn't even considered. I told them that I plan on making a Facebook post, which means a decent fraction of my extended family will get the message, but we agreed that the chances of it even coming up were pretty slim. Since the most likely question they'll get asked is "Is [Adiva] dating anyone?" and the answer continues to be "Nope, she's happily single," the gender of my non-existent significant other never even needs to enter into it. I told them that if someone did ask "Is [Adiva] queer?" or something along those lines -- which is not outside the realm of possibility given the kind of stories I write and the way I present to the world, in my Doc Martens and flannel -- they were free to say "Yes."


• And then we got sidetracked into a discussion about the word "queer" which I will probably need to revisit with them because I didn't get to my real point about "It is the umbrella term that I and many people I know prefer, but you'll want to be careful, as straight people, using it that way," because we got sidetracked from the sidetrack by talking about one of my college friends who has gotten really TERF-y and I had to explain what "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" means.
  
  
  • Which also got into a discussion about how I've known an awful lot of trans men but don't personally know any trans women who have identified themselves as trans to me, and I gotta keep working with them on understanding that our old neighbor's kid identifies as non-binary, not male, and the neutral "they" is your safest bet when talking about someone whose gender is unclear to you. But they're working on it. I'm proud of them.
  
  
• Mom: The only other person I can think of who might have a problem with it is your grandmother, and she's not around.
  Dad: Yeah, I'm not expecting to hear from her.
  Me: Right. And anyway, maybe now she feels vindicated. "I told you if you went into the arts!" Well, look at me now!


• "Was there an irony in the fact that you wrote the letter in pencil? So it could be easily erased?" "Uh, no, well sort of, since I did do two drafts of it, so I wrote it in pencil ..."

I guess it's very me that I'm trying to choreograph all of this to maximize both the intended emotional impact and the entertainment value; I gave myself a deadline to come out to my parents so that I could come out on Facebook before the Democratic convention, specifically so I can have the punchline "In other news that shouldn't shock you, Bernie Sanders hasn't conceded."

There's a ton that I want to write about -- the political reasons I came out now, in the aftermath of Orlando; the personal anxiety I felt for years about writing stories about women who love women and whether that would out me; watching Sense8 and feeling like the Wachowskis were standing behind me and pushing me gently but firmly towards the closet door; how very strange it felt last night to say to my friends, as we left the bar, "I have to call my parents because I just came out to them as bi," which in turn was my way of coming out to those friends.

Not to mention silly but no less real issues that I'm still grappling with like how do I signal my availability to both genders at the same time?? If I perform queerness really hard with my rainbow accessories and comments about attractive women, won't straight guys assume I'm off the market for them? But if I don't perform my queerness by wearing more traditionally femme signifiers and talking about attractive dudes, how will cute girls know they can flirt with me? And should I cosplay hipster Steve Rogers at ECCC next year and make a denim vest plastered with bi pride flags?

Important questions, y'all.

Oof, you'd think that with having the show done and not being sick anymore and not being on my period, I'd be really relaxed! Instead, my anxiety's been flaring up and my mood's been see-sawing like anything.

If I've been a dick or a flake to you recently, I apologize; I'm probably aware of it and I'll try to make it up to you.

This summer I keep meeting people who are incredibly self-assured (and younger than me) and are kind of dicks as a result. I have to go run errands before work so I don't have time to unpack this to my satisfaction, but there are these people who fall somewhere on the spectrum of thinking they're all that and a bag of chips, and they're actually all that but not the chips, or in some cases they're just that. You know?

In every case I suspect that their loud self-assurance is covering insecurity -- in one case I have it confirmed, in another I'm not sure -- so I try to remind myself to be sympathetic. I'm insecure too! But my insecurity usually manifests as self-deprecation and people-pleasing. That's not necessarily good, but I do think it's better than insult comedy.

(I also keep meeting people who are like "Firefly is the best show ever" and I'm like "okay we can be friends because you are somewhat conversant with SFF pop culture but I need to watch what I say around you." Which is really to say, I miss the days when I also though FF was the best show ever and had less awareness of its flaws.)

Oh wow, everyone told me that House of Cards was about Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright being the Macbeths -- which is true -- but nobody told me the first episode also had a scene where an extremely ambitious young woman faces down Kevin Spacey at his coldest and highest status and barely blinks.

Helloooooo my narrative kryptonite. Please tell me Kate Mara and Kevin Spacey have many more such scenes. Even better, tell me Kate Mara and Robin Wright have such scenes.

As Agents of SHIELD improves throughout the first season, watching the show increasingly becomes like having a kink meme in my head.

Look, I ship everyone with everyone, it's just what I do! And May wanders around in black leather, and Fitz says things like "I'm the gadget guy. Sometimes I like to do things with my bare hands," and can you blame me if my interests are prurient?

ETA: FINE, SHOW, go ahead and have the whole team pulling together as a found family and make me clutch at my chest, YOU GOT ME, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW. I CARE ABOUT THE BLAND STOCK CHARACTERS.

HAYLEY ATWELL IS COMING TO EMERALD CITY BUT SHE'S ONLY GOING TO BE THERE ON FRIDAY WHICH MIGHT BE THE DAY I HAVE TO BE IN REHEARSAL.

I'll be over here lying on the floor screeching.

That moment when you suddenly remember that you left a nice dress to air
dry in the shared laundry room weeks ago and then forgot about it--

Yep, it's gone. Unless my pre-coffee brain is misremembering and it's in my
closet or my floordrobe somewhere, but I don't think so. I really loved
that dress, too. :(

DUDES.

My favorite PigPen song is the weather on this week's Night Vale! So if you have not checked them out before this, now you can get a sample of them for free!

I have thought for ... well, over a year that these guys should submit to the weather. I'm so chuffed that it's happened.