Ambrosia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
missroserose) wrote2020-09-21 09:25 am
missroserose) wrote2020-09-21 09:25 am
Entry tags:
Life in an elevator
(Gotta say, on the balance of evidence I kinda prefer Aerosmith's version.)
Ups:
My reading was a smashing success, or at least, that's how it felt. We had a good crowd—it appeared to be roughly 1/3 open-mic readers, 1/3 salon regulars, and 1/3 friends of mine (some from Tumblr, some from meatspace). I was honestly humbled by how many people showed up; I'm not sure if it was the novelty of having a fandom writer featured, or the fact that everyone was super into hearing something smutty that night, or my promotional efforts, or just good luck. (Probably some combination of the above.) Regardless, somebody commented later that it was the most people we've had yet at one of the virtual salons (I think we hit 25 participants at one point?), so that's encouraging.
One of the difficulties of doing a Zoom-based reading is the relative inability to get audience feedback in real-time—even if you have your work on a separate device so you can leave the Zoom window open, your eyes are focused on the page, and everyone's muted/in tiny video-chat format anyway so you can't easily read changes in body language. However, when I finished, I came back to a surprisingly lively chatlog—a couple of my Tumblr friends had shown up and been the absolute best hype-men in the comments, even getting some of the salon regulars to participate. (I was somewhat darkly amused to see that, at one point, the conversation had devolved into a not-quite-argument over whether each character was a top or a bottom, respectively. I've seen these arguments turn into outright fandom wars and cause major schisms, but apparently it's less of a fandom thing and more of a human thing? I dunno, I seem to have unchecked the "a character's preferred sex position is clearly an immutable aspect of their personality rather than a function of personal preference and context" box during my Human installation. Luckily the conversation moved on.) One of my meatspace friends who showed up told me later she'd been watching the video feeds and the scene clearly landed; perhaps most encouragingly, the host texted me afterwards (and reiterated in front of our writing group the next day) "You should know you're writing at a professional level, and if you file the serial numbers off there's a good chance you could sell this." Which...I sorta suspected as much, at least in the better sequences, but given my spotty history with longer projects I think I'm best keeping the pressure low until I've at least figured out whether I can actually finish it. Still, it was a lovely vote of confidence.
Condo board stuff is ongoing. I did get a contractor out here whose back-of-the-envelope calculations for the masonry work were significantly lower than the first contractor's. (The scope of work was also smaller, but he considered it sufficient to stop the leaking; his opinion was that the rest of the work the first guy recommended was a good idea, but not urgent.) I liked him a lot, he clearly knew his stuff and was happy to explain his reasoning; I never thought I'd meet someone who got that excited about different styles of brickwork, but I do love people who're passionate about their work. Additionally, it was his opinion that the issue wasn't a leak per se, but bricks absorbing moisture that was causing the water intrusion; that fits with what Aaron (the unit owner) told me about it only being a problem during major/extended rainstorms, and lowers the likelihood of significant damage by a lot. So all of that was a big relief. He's promised to have his formal estimate to me by today, so fingers crossed he comes through and it's in line with his initial assessment. Sunday we have a meeting to discuss all of this and figure out the path forward.
Through a piece of good luck (and a lot of wrangling), I also have managed to achieve one of my low-key goals for the building, and have obtained and set up an extremely high-quality elliptical in the workout room. KC had sent me the Craigslist post (a unit that went for $3K new, selling for $400), I had emailed the board offering to pay for half of it (since I was the one who wanted it) as well as take care of the truck rental and hauling; after some back and forth about insurance and cleaning and maintenance questions, and some low-key grumbling on our treasurer's part, I got everything sorted, got a truck rented, and got out to Northbrook. I was half-convinced it was too good to be true, but nope, the seller was a 70-year-old dude whose wife had purchased it a few years before she died, and he and his son were trying to clear out the garage. Moving it was no joke—the specs say it weighs about 250 pounds, and rarely have I been so grateful for my stocky-but-solid-muscle husband or all the Sculpt classes I've been doing. (It was worth it all just to see the look on the seller's face when we hoisted it up into the bed of the truck with relative ease.) I now have an impressive bruise on one thigh where I rested my end of it at one point during moving, but I also now have a high-quality cardio machine that I suspect will be invaluable during the upcoming (and frankly rather bleak-looking) winter months.
In other positive news, Dexter is hanging in there, far better than I'd expected. When I wrote about him a couple of weeks ago, I'd really thought it was time to call the vet. But it turns out the continence issues were more related to the litterboxes all being downstairs; I set one up in the second bedroom (easy enough to do, since I'm not hosting clients right now) and he hasn't had any difficulty using it. He still has active days and less-active days, but he doesn't appear to be in distress, and he still comes and snuggles on the regular. So we're not quite to the end yet.
Downs:
Well, I mean, there's the obvious.
My personal reaction to the news has been weird. Like, when Brian told me, it was a blow, but in the way that the eighteenth blow in a fistfight is—there's no shock or horror left, just a certain numbness and the grim reality of "well, gotta deal with this too." Which isn't to say I didn't react—I spent much of the evening in a low-key dissociative state, which is unusual (and disconcerting) for me. I've since been experiencing moments of profound grief, for the death of our country's self-image and democratic norms as much as for the woman herself, but in between I'm just...carrying on living. Because really, what else is there to do?
I spent the whole weekend in the Zoom version of a massage seminar I signed up for back in January. And while I learned some potentially useful techniques, it was hard not to feel like the time was pretty well wasted. I'm not going to be practicing probably for another six months to a year at least, and by then the knowledge will be more or less gone. To be honest, I'm not even certain I'm going back to massage as a primary career; right now my primary energy sink is writing, and if I can keep up this kind of consistent productivity even after quarantine is over I may well make this my primary focus and just keep massage as a sideline. I enjoy it, and I genuinely miss that feeling of making people feel better, but I don't miss the constant hustle for clients or the uncertainty of the income or the "???" of a future career path. (I realize, with some irony, that writing as a career is even worse on all three metrics, but it feels like there's so little expectation that you'll ever be able to make a livable income that there's less pressure? Psychology is weird, man.)
So, yeah. Lots of change happening. Some good, some bad, some just...different. I'm trying to stay focused on the things I can do, and not worry about the stuff I can't. It's tough. I'm not always in a great place. But life is movement, and so...onward.
Ups:
My reading was a smashing success, or at least, that's how it felt. We had a good crowd—it appeared to be roughly 1/3 open-mic readers, 1/3 salon regulars, and 1/3 friends of mine (some from Tumblr, some from meatspace). I was honestly humbled by how many people showed up; I'm not sure if it was the novelty of having a fandom writer featured, or the fact that everyone was super into hearing something smutty that night, or my promotional efforts, or just good luck. (Probably some combination of the above.) Regardless, somebody commented later that it was the most people we've had yet at one of the virtual salons (I think we hit 25 participants at one point?), so that's encouraging.
One of the difficulties of doing a Zoom-based reading is the relative inability to get audience feedback in real-time—even if you have your work on a separate device so you can leave the Zoom window open, your eyes are focused on the page, and everyone's muted/in tiny video-chat format anyway so you can't easily read changes in body language. However, when I finished, I came back to a surprisingly lively chatlog—a couple of my Tumblr friends had shown up and been the absolute best hype-men in the comments, even getting some of the salon regulars to participate. (I was somewhat darkly amused to see that, at one point, the conversation had devolved into a not-quite-argument over whether each character was a top or a bottom, respectively. I've seen these arguments turn into outright fandom wars and cause major schisms, but apparently it's less of a fandom thing and more of a human thing? I dunno, I seem to have unchecked the "a character's preferred sex position is clearly an immutable aspect of their personality rather than a function of personal preference and context" box during my Human installation. Luckily the conversation moved on.) One of my meatspace friends who showed up told me later she'd been watching the video feeds and the scene clearly landed; perhaps most encouragingly, the host texted me afterwards (and reiterated in front of our writing group the next day) "You should know you're writing at a professional level, and if you file the serial numbers off there's a good chance you could sell this." Which...I sorta suspected as much, at least in the better sequences, but given my spotty history with longer projects I think I'm best keeping the pressure low until I've at least figured out whether I can actually finish it. Still, it was a lovely vote of confidence.
Condo board stuff is ongoing. I did get a contractor out here whose back-of-the-envelope calculations for the masonry work were significantly lower than the first contractor's. (The scope of work was also smaller, but he considered it sufficient to stop the leaking; his opinion was that the rest of the work the first guy recommended was a good idea, but not urgent.) I liked him a lot, he clearly knew his stuff and was happy to explain his reasoning; I never thought I'd meet someone who got that excited about different styles of brickwork, but I do love people who're passionate about their work. Additionally, it was his opinion that the issue wasn't a leak per se, but bricks absorbing moisture that was causing the water intrusion; that fits with what Aaron (the unit owner) told me about it only being a problem during major/extended rainstorms, and lowers the likelihood of significant damage by a lot. So all of that was a big relief. He's promised to have his formal estimate to me by today, so fingers crossed he comes through and it's in line with his initial assessment. Sunday we have a meeting to discuss all of this and figure out the path forward.
Through a piece of good luck (and a lot of wrangling), I also have managed to achieve one of my low-key goals for the building, and have obtained and set up an extremely high-quality elliptical in the workout room. KC had sent me the Craigslist post (a unit that went for $3K new, selling for $400), I had emailed the board offering to pay for half of it (since I was the one who wanted it) as well as take care of the truck rental and hauling; after some back and forth about insurance and cleaning and maintenance questions, and some low-key grumbling on our treasurer's part, I got everything sorted, got a truck rented, and got out to Northbrook. I was half-convinced it was too good to be true, but nope, the seller was a 70-year-old dude whose wife had purchased it a few years before she died, and he and his son were trying to clear out the garage. Moving it was no joke—the specs say it weighs about 250 pounds, and rarely have I been so grateful for my stocky-but-solid-muscle husband or all the Sculpt classes I've been doing. (It was worth it all just to see the look on the seller's face when we hoisted it up into the bed of the truck with relative ease.) I now have an impressive bruise on one thigh where I rested my end of it at one point during moving, but I also now have a high-quality cardio machine that I suspect will be invaluable during the upcoming (and frankly rather bleak-looking) winter months.
In other positive news, Dexter is hanging in there, far better than I'd expected. When I wrote about him a couple of weeks ago, I'd really thought it was time to call the vet. But it turns out the continence issues were more related to the litterboxes all being downstairs; I set one up in the second bedroom (easy enough to do, since I'm not hosting clients right now) and he hasn't had any difficulty using it. He still has active days and less-active days, but he doesn't appear to be in distress, and he still comes and snuggles on the regular. So we're not quite to the end yet.
Downs:
Well, I mean, there's the obvious.
My personal reaction to the news has been weird. Like, when Brian told me, it was a blow, but in the way that the eighteenth blow in a fistfight is—there's no shock or horror left, just a certain numbness and the grim reality of "well, gotta deal with this too." Which isn't to say I didn't react—I spent much of the evening in a low-key dissociative state, which is unusual (and disconcerting) for me. I've since been experiencing moments of profound grief, for the death of our country's self-image and democratic norms as much as for the woman herself, but in between I'm just...carrying on living. Because really, what else is there to do?
I spent the whole weekend in the Zoom version of a massage seminar I signed up for back in January. And while I learned some potentially useful techniques, it was hard not to feel like the time was pretty well wasted. I'm not going to be practicing probably for another six months to a year at least, and by then the knowledge will be more or less gone. To be honest, I'm not even certain I'm going back to massage as a primary career; right now my primary energy sink is writing, and if I can keep up this kind of consistent productivity even after quarantine is over I may well make this my primary focus and just keep massage as a sideline. I enjoy it, and I genuinely miss that feeling of making people feel better, but I don't miss the constant hustle for clients or the uncertainty of the income or the "???" of a future career path. (I realize, with some irony, that writing as a career is even worse on all three metrics, but it feels like there's so little expectation that you'll ever be able to make a livable income that there's less pressure? Psychology is weird, man.)
So, yeah. Lots of change happening. Some good, some bad, some just...different. I'm trying to stay focused on the things I can do, and not worry about the stuff I can't. It's tough. I'm not always in a great place. But life is movement, and so...onward.