busybee fluffy rambles

Health stuff

My knees are still crap, and getting worse by the day. My vertigo is still pretty bad too, although I’ve been able to drive to the grocery store and to choir at least.

I think I’ve figured out that the GERD was being caused by drinking diet soda, which I’ve been having rather a lot of lately. I’d gone without my usual knockoff Diet Dr. Pepper for a few days and my stomach was feeling a lot better, then I drank some last night and, huh, the GERD came right back. I don’t know whether it’s the ace K, the sucralose, or the other flavors in the knockoff Diet Dr. Pepper, but whatever it is, I think it’d be wise to just like. Not drink more of this.

I also forgot to go to my ADHD support group this week. Oops. Oh well.

Job/disability stuff

Today I did my taxes and found that I’d made a pretty decent amount of income even just on investments. Not enough to live off of on its own, but combined with disability payments I’d be in really good shape. And I’ve made peace with how I’m likely to never have a full-time job ever again, and That’s Okay.

So of course it’s pretty annoying how yesterday, a potential employer I’d applied to a year ago finally got back to me and wants to move forward with an interview. This employer is one who I’d have done anything to work at a few years ago, too. But in recent years they’ve gotten pretty notorious as actually being a pretty bad place to work.

I still gave their recruiter some times for a potential talk next week because even though I don’t want to work full-time and definitely don’t want to work as a programmer anymore (which seems to be what they’re interested in me doing) it’s possible that something else might come of it. It’d still be great to do contract work for them, especially on the sound design or music composition side of things. This company at least has a reputation for not prescribing specific roles for people and wants people with broad skills and interests.

But most likely nothing will come of this and that’s okay, and at most this will probably just confirm what I already know regarding needing to be on disability.

I am, incidentally, still in considerable pain all the time.

Also, I have a large carryover credit from my solar panels, which can only be deferred for one year. I think that if I get on disability this year that’ll give me enough income (with back pay) to end up consuming the carryover credit.

Music

I’ve submitted three tracks to the 1000th Song Fight!, and am trying to coalesce lyrics and musical ideas for one from my actual current music presence. But if I don’t manage to do that, I’m okay with it.

I have gotten surprisingly little feedback on Instrumental, having only gotten one person saying anything at all and the negative points were things that weren’t actionable and would have required, like, making a totally different album. I’ve been tweaking the final track ordering a bit and I think I’m as happy with it as I’m ever going to be. But I’ll hold to the April 1 release date anyway.

Also! STANCE is having a talent show very soon. I’ll be performing a couple of songs at it, and I hope to see some of you there!

Trans Academy

We’re short on video editors and so I reminded my team lead that I have video editing skills and some availability for using it. Hopefully this means I’ll have a more active role in producing content.

Also I might be participating in an upcoming panel on Trans Day of Visibility (March 31) about transition experiences.

Other creative stuff

I’ve made a bunch more tweaks to my critter avatar and should probably do another release.

Also my pottery is coming along slowly. The glazed calibration pots came back and they turned out really good. Now I have a few more molds made for various coffee cups and hopefully I’ll be able to get some of those fired soon.