noodle prayer

 my meeting with my now ex-boss went very well, although it began with a neighboring alarm going off  for a few very painful minutes and it reminded me that i've recently become more and more aware that i suffer from misophonia - not that the alarm counts, obviously, but i'm hyper-sensitive to anything unexpected, especially patterns of noises that should not be. like my family's chewing. or a dog barking the same bark in a loop.

anyway.

i returned home for a while before heading to my interview, and by the time i left i was quite nervous. i don't interview well, and this one was really important.

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it seems to have gone well. i'm now gathering additional references (my current bosses referred me, i've got my previous team lead / manager on board and tomorrow i'll chat with a coworker from my last gig in cape town), and preparing for my next interviews and meetings. 

i've got another interview tomorrow.

we ate ramen for dinner.

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i headed to the office and spent the next few hours making arrangements and brushing up on some blockchain stuff, had a brief encounter with one of my now-ex coworkers, then headed out and home.

i realized this afternoon that in the whirlwind of the past week or so, i've barely stopped to breathe and just let thoughts settle. i'm fantasizing about getting a job offer very soon, and taking a couple of weeks completely off before returning to work.

at some point in the afternoon i fired off a message to copywriter regarding the sharing of political posts, we don't usually do that but he's a democrat and recently been particularly fired up:

dude, let's chill with the political stuff. there's so much extreme shit on all sides, everyone posting shit without context and manipulating everyone. at the end of the day, i understand you're scared for what's happening now, but i've been scared about what's been happening until now, and nobody really knows what's coming or how things are going to turn out.

the only thing i know for sure is that america and the west in general have been played by russia, china and iran for decades, and we're in deep shit. if it takes bad people to change the balance, so be it. in my opinion there's no worse outcome for america than what comes after what we've been seeing across america and europe since october 7th.

you don't have to agree with me, and we don't even have to agree to disagree. but please avoid posting me political stuff because it's just more of the same of what i'm seeing in my feeds and i don't want any of this shit in my head. i want to be safe, and i want to be functional, and i want to have some peace of mind

fortunately that was received in the spirit it was intended. but now that i'm on the topic, i just saw this clip on the colombian deportation debacle and you can't make this stuff up.

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it was a bit difficult to get mr smear to cooperate with working through fractions with me, it took a few rounds. i hit upon what seems to be an effective system: if he doesn't cooperate, it's five minutes "time out" + fifteen minutes off his "privileges" (screen time). it took three rounds, and when he finally decided it wasn't worth the fight we got through the exercises and he appears to have learned.

i told him that i really don't enjoy the battle of teaching him stuff when he gets in that mode (which is almost always due to a lack of confidence on his part), but that i really enjoy the payoff: seeing understanding dawn on his face when he *gets* something, and being able to show him how silly his resistance was in the first place 😈

hopefully our next session will be smoother.

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the eventual success and the rest of the evening was good, though as usual i flaked and passed out on the couch trying to watch something with gd (operation finale). to be fair, it was after i'd spent half an episode of cowboy bebop trying to fix her neck with bengay :P