Post 85: Settling in
I have been trying to settle in and make things like home. Clutter is still overwhelming here, but I think a big part of that is because the sea shipment has not arrived. I know that once that comes in, I can do a “final” organization to where things are easily accessible and usable. I emailed the lady that is my contact since it should be about this time that we should expect the shipment. And, oh, what the luck (sarcasm), it arrived at their facility on Friday! So, they were going to send it to me on Wednesday, but Aki and I are going to the SF Imaginarium (I’ve never been!!!!) on Wednesday as a final little vacation outing. So, it will arrive on Thursday morning. So I have today to take care of the crap from Utah. Luckily it is not that much stuff. :) I want to limit the “stuff” I have and I do not need. :) I’ll handle my wall ornaments at a later date. :)
Tucker is doing well……he really likes catnip.
He likes it so much, he fell asleep in it.
I have been trying new recipes. This one is from Pick Up Limes. I fucking LOVE Sadia’s recipes. So far each one has been spot on. There are some complicated ones, but in general, they are easy to make and quite flavorful! This was Miso Rice with lightly cooked beans and red pepper. I also added in tomatoes and chives. This went REALLY well with fish and chicken. I also made steamed eggplant (saw from a Japanese program) with bonito flakes, soy sauce and sesame oil. We had Tilapia too….but the fish is so bland. I don’t really like it.
I am enjoying trying new recipes, especially from Pick Up Limes. Vegan food always looked so bland because it was all white to brown colored food…..just roast the fuck out of things. Any food that is just on a white to brown scale of coloring, I do not find visually appetizing, and usually will not eat. Like really dark gravy. However, if there are tons of vibrant colors, I IMMEDIATELY crave it. I love colors…and Pick Up Limes has the most appetizing food. OH SHIT! Another recipe to try is the Tofu Cream “cheese” Spread. Oh dear god…..it is ridiculously good. I had it on lavish bread with some sprouts, tomato, red onion, and cucumber. I could have this for every day of my life and I’d be happy.
Aki and I watch some TV in the evenings since he has been off. This will only be a weekend thing when he starts up work. I wanted to experiment with needle painting. So I just did some simple color gradient. It is ok, but I see why short strokes are better. I am going to try that out next with some gradient color changes.
I have been taking walks to check out around me more. It is definitely not nearly as exciting as Tokyo was. I could walk the same street over and over and it would be interesting. Shit load of people, but interesting. I am trying to keep my mind open about this neighborhood. The bright side is that there are not a lot of people…..but it is just not interesting to me right now. I do feel pretty sad about that. I kind of feel like this tree at times.
Sometimes when I am on a walk, Aki goes out a little later and meets up with me. We ended up finding a huge dragonfly on the sidewalk. We were worried that someone would step on it, so we moved it to the grass. It was so pretty and chill.
Chiyo still hisses at Tucker now and again, and as mentioned before, Tucker is getting a little tougher. Though, last night Chiyo kept coming down and sleeping with me. At one point, I woke up to Chiyo taking up 4/5 of my pillow as Aki was coming into the kitchen to get a drink. He took her upstairs, because I did not want a fight between Chiyo and Tucker right at my face.
I went back to bed, and she was back at my feet. I knew Tucker was at the window, and he usually jumps on the arm rest of the couch…..by my feet. …..where Chiyo is at. She knew this too. I started to pet her so she would make some noise and it worked, as she jumped down and they were about to attack each other. So I pet them both and took Chiyo upstairs….this was 4am. Tucker noisily ran after Chiyo and I up the stairs as some sort of “warning”….like “I’ll get you if you come back down.”
4:20 I hear a hiss….and she is back down stairs. I put Tucker in the bathroom and took Chiyo up to the bedroom where Aki was at and shut the door. Took Tucker out of the bath room and went to bed until 5:30. This shit is going to get old really quickly. I need to figure out what to do, because when they fight at night, Tucker does this horrible screaming….I can’t take it, and I know my neighbors won’t either.
Chiyo, though, still finds Tucker’s favorite toy……
Tucker still thinks he owns my desk and is cramping my working.
I am still having this self-imposed pressure of feeling like I need to get a job right now. I talked to my best friend about it, because I had an interview where I am not sure how I feel about it. It seems that the job is really interesting, a killer game, and a cool location (even though it is pretty far from where I live currently). There were just some red flags with the interview that made me uneasy. I mean, I am not looking for “power”….I am looking for growth. I am looking for the ability to work with a team and make changes when needed.
During the interview, I was told…first thing….that “nothing is below a producer. You are not above everyone else.” So, this should be an obvious thing, hands down. It is an absolutely true statement that I agree with 100%. HOWEVER…..if this is the first thing out of someone’s mouth in an interview, that either states to me 1 of 3 things:
This has been a problem or is a current problem.
There is an assumption that this person thinks I expect to be “god”.
This person currently does this and does not want “competition”.
Now, there is no way for me to say which it is and it is a waste of my time to do so. However, that is a red flag to me. The second question was “what were your teams like?” Pretty harmless question. However, this person noted that I have much experience with different studios, different companies, different games, and this question coming from a senior staff member, was worrying. This person had been at the same company for many years, but this was their first gaming job. I had asked, “which team?” to just get clarity, and her response was “all of them”. This was alarming because a senior staff member should know that each studio, each company, each team is different. Different culture, different needs, etc. I responded with, “well, none are the same structure. They are all different….” and went into some examples.
There was another person on the call that had an extensive gaming career as a designer, but moved to producer at the company and had been for 2.5 years. This other person went from QA to Sr. Producer by being promoted every 2 years or so. This producer kept saying she is “new”…..which I thought was really odd. She seemed really cool though. Smart head on her shoulders.
After talking to my friend, I am thinking I may just write back to the recruiter and say that I do not want to continue. That is a fucking huge step for me. I don’t want to put out the people interviewing me, but I do feel they need to know. I still have this feeling of “you’ll never find another job”….which I assume is natural…but I just have to power through it.
In the meantime, I am going to be scheduling myself. I am doing a method where I schedule every moment of my day. Right now, the scheduling fields are too many, but as I hone in on what works best for me, I will keep it as it is. I am already seeing that I want to be a little more flexible to be able to go to a cafe and do some stuff. I am finding that sometimes my creativity won’t flow unless I have other people around me. So I need to adjust a little right now. I am not scheduling myself booked-up for a full week….I am doing it the day before hand. This is kind of going hand-in-hand with my tracking finances and tracking health and fitness. Because I have found that when I schedule myself (so far) I am not thinking about snacking. Also I get to use my time cube. That is super helpful. I really like that thing.
Also, doing the scheduling will help me in focusing and writing this book. Once Aki goes back to teaching in the Autumn Semester, I will have more quiet time in the day. :) I hope he has good students this semester!
Anyway, this is about all the time I have for the blog….5 min left. So I will leave it here. Not going to be doing the blog daily as that is really time consuming for me…..and things are not nearly as exciting as they were in Japan….so…..