Whatever the mess you are, you're mine.

I just finished my GenEx assignment, which is due tomorrow at a really confusing time. At least they provided a countdown.

I had the day off, sort of, but went to the optional in-service with my dad and had someone taller and more practically skilled with things help me with a couple of things in my classroom.

Monday is an actual day off, too, which is great because I haven't even started my auexchange fic. I am a very fast writer when I am determined, and I was super-excited about this particular assignment from the start, but starting work ate my entire life and motivation. Luckily, this prompt is kind of allowing me to write a fic I've always wanted to write anyway?

I really need to just find a good zoning playlist and write a lot tomorrow.

My friend I've been watching Stargate with is currently afk all the time, so that's been on hold. No room to whine, though. His reason is that he's been in the edge of the path of Harvey. Last I heard, while they had been predicting his house would get floor-level flooded, it miraculously just missed getting in the house.

My first day at work went pretty well. However, I have another thing that is of pretty huge concern for me. If you pray, I'd appreciate my dad being thought of in those prayers. He got a letter, short and succinct, from a local small city whose civic pest control he has provided for more than 20 years saying that they would no longer require his services. My dad ended up in that profession through basically getting caught up in helping his father early in his life and then never being able to venture beyond it. My grandfather died before I was born, but my dad closed and restarted to business. This city has been happy with his services these many years, but they have stopped this account, probably because they've found someone to low-ball the bid. My dad does good, respectable work, and he does it all on his own.

I genuinely don't know what I can do. I am already, just out of personal conviction and conscience, committed to doing what I can financially for my parents (helping pay for some extra housekeeping and stuff for my mom because I am not a fantastic domestic person and my mom is disabled, for example) but I just don't really see a way through for my dad. It's not just the money, it's also his self-worth that worries me. I just want him to be able to respect himself and to make a living, and lately he seems to struggle to do either.

I joined the FFA... sort of.

I spent my first hour on fail_fandomanon. I actually sort of figured out how it works, etc.

I have really enjoyed these past few days of dreamwidth actually being active in some ways and not just shouting into a void.

I got a job today! My first teaching job. It's not official quite yet, and it's 45 minutes drive. It could be better, but it could be so much worse. I feel like if I can stick this out for a year or two, I can save some money, pay down some debt, help my parents, and figure out where or if I want to move to a more metro area. It's in a beautiful rural area, and I live in a small city (50k). I would like to go somewhere with more opportunity and more nerdy social outlets, but int he meantime, I love the landscape here. I don't want to feel financially or socially pressured to move just for the sake of moving. I am blessed to get along with my parents and I don't especially want to leave them or our dogs when I don't have an interesting or especially safe or comfy place to land.

I'm considering whether or not to institute some kind of minor locking of my entries, but also I am l-a-z-y and don't want to have to change gears every time I make a post.

This is a line just so that every line-break in this post doesn't start with "I."

So I'm planning on making another addme_fandom post in a minute, and I wanted to actually do a short post here before I got to that. Since I wrote another Dear Author letter the other day, I was reminded that I'd tried to do this back when I had a lot more time on my hands. I've noticed that my tumblr posts have gotten a lot more self-chatty with little response again - though I have gotten a few, so that's good. So I thought maybe I'd come back here. Hi anyone who's still around from the last time I added a few people! Sorry I flaked.

Since the last time I made that one post, I have gotten a full-time job. It's in a cemetery office, which isn't as spooky as it sounds. The scariest thing I deal with is our ancient filing system. Weird useless fact: file folders from the 40s smell just fine and hold up well, file folders from the 80s deteriorate and smell in such a way that it makes me feel ill.

I'm hoping to get back into school next year, fingers crossed. I just got this job back in June, but I'm already looking to leave. Experiencing work in an office, even a small one like this, just makes me want to run back to school forever. So I've decided to pursue teacher education, I think, pretty certainly. I really miss my subbing job.

As far as fandom stuff goes, I've gotten into yet another anime. Lately, I don't seem to watch much of anything that isn't animated. Somehow, even when what's happening in anime is emotionally distressing me, it's less high stress because of the tendency for stuff to only require 20 minute increment time commitments.

The most recent one is the Fate series. It feels like one of those "problematic fave" things. Sometimes I find out about specific things Type Moon has created and sorta feel "Please say it isn't so." Like almost all the material in that Illya AU anime. Or 99% of Heaven's Feel. But I can still say that by and large I love this stuff and really recommend it. Both the Unlimited Blade Works anime and Zero are on netflix, though I think UBW might have only the first season so far. It's fun to be on the UBW bandwagon before it's gotten old and left without me.

A few friends of mine and I have all agreed that Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, Fate/Zero, Steins;Gate, and Robotics;Notes all take place in the same universe and it's so much fun working on all the connective tissue. The semicolon ones are already canonically connected and developing that further is a lot of fun.

I'm working on two different Fate fics. One is Fate/Zero fandom and is about Gilgamesh and Saber. I'm reluctant to say whether it is a shippy fic or not, but it definitely does involve expanding upon their canon relationship in a canon divergent AU.

The other fic I just started today, but I've been thinking about it for a while. I am really, really hoping to have it ready for posting by December. It's sort of a Christmas season fic about Rin following UBW. Sort of. It's got some time travel stuff and is based on a lot of Christmas movie type tropes. I feel so ashamed but the initial idea came from thinking about The Family Man, which is a Nicholas Cage movie my family likes. Suggesting a serious thought and a Nicholas Cage movie in the same sentence seems odd, but it grew out from there. But basically it's about Past/Present/Future, stuff dating back at least to A Christmas Carol but probably before, and family and figuring out what you want out of life the most. I'm really excited and nervous about it, but it's actually taking some form after months of thinking about it.

Trying to learn to write chaptered fics that make sense and see them through to the end has been a goal of mine for a few years now, and this month has been the most promise I've had in that area. One reason I'd like to make some friends to chat back and forth with more personally than tumblr tends to allow is for moral support for that type of thing.