busybee fluffy rambles

Working really hard on this VRChat avatar and pulling multiple late-night texturing-and-modeling-and-shader-development sessions has not been good for my pain levels. I was doing so well until a few days ago, when somehow I got fired up about working on this stuff some more!

On the plus side, at least this is self-directed stuff and so I’m not angry at the pain like I am whenever it comes from a day job. But it’s still unfortunate, since it’s getting in the way of a bunch of other things I want to be doing.

For example, chronic pain brings a level of fatigue which makes it difficult for me to travel to in-person choir practice. The last two weeks I attended via Zoom, but there’s something about being in-person that makes things go much more smoothly and improves my ability to focus on stuff. I also find it really hard to keep up when I can’t see where other people are in the songbook, and when my audio is at some random point in the room (rather than within my section). This week it was especially difficult because the person who ran the Zoom forgot to turn on “original audio” so all the “background noise” (i.e. piano and other singers) kept on getting muted out.

Oh yeah, I joined a choir! It’s pretty fun. But also overwhelming. When I auditioned they placed me in the Alto 2 section but that’s a little high for me to do for a few hours straight so I switched to Tenor 1, which is much more fitting for my voice.

In other music news, I’m trying to work up the whatever-it-is to finally record this year’s Song Fight! “Live” set, but I’m having trouble finding motivation for that. I really wish we were back to doing that in-person, but the pandemic is meh and overall enthusiasm for travel is pretty low right now.

On that note, yesterday I got my bivariant COVID booster. So far my side effects aren’t as bad as they have been for prior boosters, although I am sore all over. But that should only last a few days.

Also! My condo is finally nearly sold! The transaction closes in a week, after which time I’ll have a crapton of savings. According to my financial planning spreadsheet it means I’ll have enough to hold out until approximately 2035 assuming I have no other income (including interest/investments on the money). Of course that’s immediately going to go down a little bit because I’m getting a solar system installed in January (which will cut my monthly energy expenses and raise the value of my house significantly), and soon after it’ll drop a bit further because my house really needs a new kitchen, but gosh, it’s nice to have all this weight off my shoulders, and not having to worry about money so much anymore.

This means I can also go back to working with Spud, because now he can afford me (because my price went way down). And of course I can focus on my joy-bringing hobbies and see if any of those turn into an income source. Like, VRChat avatars are pretty big right now (although not really that huge of a source of income, despite how much they cost to commission), and of course if I can get myself to work on music more, gosh I have two albums in progress right now and Novembeat is coming up soon too.

Oh, also, I have yet another 3D printer on the way. Yes, I have a problem. (I will be selling some of my other printers when I get this one set up.) It should be here in a week or so, in any case.

I also backed a robotic litter box on Kickstarter, and that arrived on the 12th. Fiona took to it right away, but Tyler was quite concerned by it. I ended up acclimating him to it by putting the smaller conventional litter box next to it, and his watching-in-fear slowly gave way to watching-in-curiosity, and last night I finally put away the conventional litter box and he’s been using it. After he uses it he hangs out around it for a few minutes to see it do its thing. Anyway, I’ll be happy to not have to scoop the litter boxes anymore.

And today my Keyboardio model 100 is set to finally arrive. Hopefully the slightly-tweaked layout and much nicer key switches will make my typing experience way more comfortable. (I will probably be selling one of my Model 01s, accordingly.)

I also need to get back into pottery. I was making some good progress on that, but then I had a pain flareup at around the same time that I had a bit of a setback with the studio I was firing it at. The setback has been resolved but it’s hard for me to get my momentum back. But I have so much other stuff going on right now that it doesn’t really feel like I have time for it anyway. Maybe when my VRChat avatar is finally finished I’ll be back on a pottery kick for a while.

So, yeah, lots going on, feeling pretty good in general (aside from various pain).