no provision but an open face

Sunshine and two-headed puppies

My last post was a real downer.  Really quickly (because I am at work right now, and holy crap I’ve got a lot to do today) here are some awesome things that have happened in the past few months:

• I got to keep my job and my swanky office
• I’m officially a full time, permanent web designer (with medical benefits!)
• I bought twenty seven acres of undeveloped land for a very reasonable price, and will eventually be building a house on it
• I turned 25 in January
• I’m going to PAX East this year (which is why I’m hauling ass at work today, trying to get everything sorted out before I leave tonight)
• I played the ever loving hell out of Skyrim and loved it.
• I am still playing Mass Effect 3 with a couple different Shepards, and I love most of it
• I’ve started SWTOR, and I’m fucking shocked how much I enjoy it

SO YEAH, PAX EAST THIS WEEKEND.  Driving to Boston from Nova Scotia.  Gonna be sweet.  Might I see any of you there? 

Must go work now.  ewwww.

I’ve missed you

So, I’m okay, and thank you to all who’ve tried to check in with me.  I’m truly sorry for worrying anyone with the disappearing act, but I just… took a break from everything for a while.  I just want you all to know that I’ve missed interacting with you, I’ve missed my chumblrs so terribly some days, and I’ve really missed writing.

Yeah.  I’ve been struggling to put words to paper for a while, and the frustration of being stifled by my own mental and emotional blocks has been one of the reasons I’ve been AWOL.  That’s not to say I haven’t been writing, but cranking out half-finished stories and aborted ideas for the past few months has been an unpleasant experience.  I’ll admit I’ve been hiding, just a bit, but I’ve been hiding from a fuck-tonne of things for the past few months.  Hiding from y’all was stupid, I know.  I know, logically, that talking through this earlier and not just hibernating about it had a damn good chance of helping me sort some things out.  But, at least I forced myself to write some stuff, instead of stewing in my own fermented creative juices.  

Wow, that got gross suprisingly quickly.  

Anyway, there are more details about what’s been up with me under the cut, but here’s the brief run down:

• I suddenly lost a close family member in November, and it was very difficult
• My job was in serious jeopardy, then in limbo, and altogether stressful
• I was eventually able to keep my job (Yay!)
• Work has been busy as hell, and now I feel especially invested since I know I’m staying
• I have felt emotionally drained for months

No, I don’t have updates for any of my WIPs.  No, I don’t know when anything will update.  No, I’ve not abandoned anything.  If I need to drop a story completely, I’ll post about it here.

ON TO THE MESSY DETAILS :(

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ilikelookingatnakedmen replied to your post: Still employed, still waiting

Good lord… what do you do for a living? Good luck!

I’m a web designer (also dipping into graphic design when the need arises); my company offers a pro bono service designing, building, training, and maintaining websites for local nonprofits, organizations, and municipalities.

What I’m going to be doing in the new year is still very much up in the air.  If they keep me on, I will probably still be doing tech work of some sort, but the new contract might be for large-scale data entry, film work and video editing, or something else entirely (plus all the design and maintenance work the senior designers will inevitably filter down to me).  Right now, I just have to wait for the new contract to see what they offer me.

I’ve been seriously considering going freelance in the future (probably specializing in affordable design for small business), but depending on what kind of new contract my bosses may or may not offer, the future may be sooner than I’d planned.  We shall see.

Thank you (and everybody else) for the good wishes :)

Still employed, still waiting

Thanks so much for the good thoughts and hopes for my continued employment, chumblrs.  I really appreciate it; it makes the uncertainty a bit easier to bear knowing you’re rooting for me. <3

I know I’ve been quiet lately, but right now I’m busy trying to prove the invaluable contributions I make to this office.  Gaze upon my wizardry, upper management.  Gaze upon it in awe, and give me money.

My bosses have told me that they will know by next week whether they were approved for the grant that will keep me on for another contract.  

They don’t have the budget to employ three web designers, and our other designer is due back from maternity in December.  This means that if they manage to find the funds to keep me, it will not be in the same position I’m in now.

They can’t tell me any details about the project they want me working on, if the grant goes through.  They can’t tell me what my salary will be, my hours, or anything else.

And then when I said “Thank you so much again for trying to keep me on.  I really enjoy the work I do here” one of my bosses looked over her desk, giggled, and said:

“You might not be saying that when you see the project I have lined up for you.”

Okay.  Okay, cool.  So long as it’s a job, I can make it work for me.  My colleagues in this office are pretty swell, and I would like to stick around for a while.

Milestone ficlet for camilladilla - m!Hawke/Anders angst

I swear I’m eventually getting these milestone ficlets written.  Seriously.

This one is for camilladilla, who asked for “Anders/M!Hawke (default is fine) twenty years later, Anders’ Calling. Make it achingly tender and bittersweet, but ultimately I want to cry.”

Please take it in the nicest possible way when I say I hope I succeeded in making you cry, darling, or at least sniffle.

You can find it on AO3, FF.net, and below.

“With Silence Favour Me”

Garrett was the first to notice anything, which should have been surprising. Anders was a healer, for goodness sake; if he had failed to notice his own body start to decay, how in the Void could he be expected to properly identify injuries and illness in others? Had he been missing things, overlooking things, for very long? Had he truly been so blind, so bloody stupid—

Before he could work himself up into too much of a lather, Garrett was there, crawled up from the foot of the bed where he’d been slowly stripping Anders out of his socks and nuzzling kisses against each spindly ankle. That was where he’d found it, of course.

You traipsing around barefoot again, old man? You’ve bruised your heel.

But it was not a bruise— Anders would have felt a bruise. Felt it in his flesh, the bite of a pebble into his sole, but also deeper; he would have felt the injury happen, the impossibly tiny veins bursting under the pressure of a sharp stone, and his unshed blood clotting. This was nothing, with no pain or sense of injury radiating from it, but when he had stretched his magic out toward the small, mottled black spot, no bigger than the pad of his thumb, it made everything itchy, like ants skittering over his skin.

Garrett had known something was wrong the instant Anders went so very still. Even if he hadn’t been so damned perceptive, and so infuriatingly dogged about every little thing, Anders had been utterly unable to lie to the man for two decades, not since the stink of charred wood and drakestone had burned everything away, leaving them both broken and new.

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