I’m kind of **** atm.

I love my job, but I’m miserable outside of work due to living so far away from friends and family.

My work is 100% capable of supporting me working from remote, bc I’ve spent less than 10 days not working from remote since the pandemic started. They just choose not to let me relocate for no good reason bc of bureaucracy.

So my options are to stay miserable in my personal life or to potentially **** up my career trying to fix this. It is unlikely I’ll find another position this good; but I can’t stay deeply unhappy forever right?

…. **** sucks.

you could find new friends and potentially family
since moving I've met two people in the near vicinity that also enjoys board games, and I wasn't even looking for them

Yeah, there will usually be people who share at least some of your interests nearby, is just a matter of finding them. Look around for venues where hobbyists gather, hopefully you can find some kindred spirits somewhere.

I apologize. I realize I was not fully clear enough.

It’s very hard to replace relationships built up over more than a decade. There’s **** where you can make due with new people; and then there’s **** where you only feel okay sharing-with/relying-on close family/friends that you’ve known since you were yea high.

This is a malleable range; but given certain anxiety/social disorders I’ve got it’s extremely unlikely I’m going to form the kind of support I need right now from scratch.

Tbfh, I don’t even know how long I’d need to wait to drop certain bombs on people. Your brand new drinking buddy really doesn’t intend to sign up for certain **** you know?

Oh, definitely. Feel free to drop the heavy stuff on us whenever you need to. I know it's not quite the same, but it's better than nothing.

I concur.

On totally unrelated news, I wrote smut for the first time last week. VERY distracting for my plotting habits, but also really fun

Things are tense at work again on my end, though for different reasons than before. I'm starting to feel like things are overly compartmentalized to the point I'm starting to get paranoid and stir crazy. There's so little overlap that I'm questioning if I'm being singled out in some capacity despite academically knowing that's more likely to be my own insecurities manifesting than any genuine likelihood.

You could just try asking your boss. That could set your mind at ease. Just find a way to phrase it like you're worried about how the company's being run, or like trying to learn more about the corporate environment.

That just reminded me of this:

I love it!

Venom 2 came out, which should be good business for us. We watched it tonight and I'll say I have some thoughts.

blaaaaaaaargh

Sorry that I haven't been around. Just... overwhelmed. Mostly with work, which I won't go into here, but also with other stuff. Like, my garbage bin, of all things, got stolen like 10 days ago and I still haven't gotten a replacement from the city, and just Monday I had someone drive around and plainly steal something from the back of my property (probably a 25-year-old dead battery by the look of it) and when I showed the security camera to the police, I was told in so many words that "since they didn't steal 'something of value', they can't do anything".

So... yeah. I haven't had the best time of it lately.

And I'm sorry that even through all that I haven't been around. I've been trying to get back into keeping in contact with people, and pretty much all week I've been staying up too late playing online games with friends to get my mind off of things. It's something I haven't felt up to doing for the longest time, but it's also the worst circumstances that got me back into it, you know? And I feel like I should also apologize for just not being in the headspace to really give the people around here the support they deserve, either.

If I can gather up the gumption, I'll try posting some "progress notes" on a world I'm building sometime this weekend.


Would that make you the second, or I have a feeling I may have vastly underestimated how clean our little group is? Either way, coolio, glad you had fun with it.

I may or may not have taken a commission or three to write something dirty here or there before

To quote the Tom Lehrer song I posted, "When correctly viewed, everything is lewd..."

Well, so long as we're sharing, there are a few "highlights" that have come out of my idle lewd writings over the last year-and-change (mostly from last year):

• A dragon -- of the DnD shape-shifting kind -- who gave up terrorizing the countryside after befriending one of the virgins sacrificed to him, now lives as a close family with like seven "wives" who were all offered up as sacrifices. He treats them well and they're bitter at their old families/villages for abandoning them like that. The surrounding villages are a headache to deal with because they won't stop fearing him and offering him new sacrifices every few years.
• A vampire who runs a "witch doctor" clinic for non-humans, occasionally asks for intimacy and a small snack from customers.
• After a "bad end", where the woman gives birth to monsters, but simply revels in the madness, eventually being "rescued" (by a powerful witch with dreams of world domination) and living a "normal" life with her half-human children. The eldest even went off on an airship with an adventuring party.
• What was supposed to be a smutty story of a mermaid slave and a visitor who was kind to her, which turned into an aromantic/asexual plot despite these characters living only in my head and fully at my mercy. I still laugh at this one because I couldn't force the sex scene somehow and instead it just became this plot of "once a week, he relaxes in these opulent hot springs that her master owns and she gets a night of relief in which she can keep to herself". (I think they both had trauma to work through.)

I believe I mentioned the minotaur family dynamics thing at one point as well, though I still want to integrate that somewhere because fantastical social structures are really interesting to explore.

tfw no dragon sugar daddy

I feel ya...

(that sounds the most fun by far btw, though the vampire one is a close second )

I think the "bad end" one is the one I ended up sticking with the longest, though I had several goes at it, including a "time skip" taking place years after the main character's "rescue".

didn't mention, but there was also a more trope-y adventure I tried a few times with a... animal-centric witch? Basically a kind of Simic-like mage who could Awaken animals and had an entire retinue of different creatures which took care of her household, gorilla butler and all. Turned out her powers were gifted by some demon and it expected results like having her destabalize the throne, though she was just interested in her own selfish pleasure. I could never get too far along because the actual plot seemed kind of generic while also not being clear.

--------

Took today off because it felt like a day which I could without my co-workers being swamped by my absence. Tiring myself out a bit trying to "make use of my time", though still interspersing gaming and such throughout. Still just feeling kind of bluh overall but trying to make it work.

Happy birthday, Barinellos! I hope you have a great day!

Big thanks Raven.
Had to work, but it wasn't really a bad day.