Hello ovo update Journal time, cause it's been a friggen WHILE since I did one of these.

I'm sure it's been rather noticeable (at least, perhaps) that I haven't really been nearly as active as I normally am the past year. This isn't because I haven't wanted to be...this is entirely due to life circumstance.

I was on a year long contract last year for my Software Dev position (yes that's where all my money for all this comes from xD), that ended in January. In December last year, a mass amount of tech companies laid off a bunch of their workers. This created what I can only be described as 'pure hell' for the job tech space, as positions closed left and right as companies prepared for a projected recession, and more companies looked at their respective jobs and went about making sure that now that we are in the process of 'exiting covid times' that their massive gains that they received because everyone was coped up in doors don't drop so much that they have to go about laying off people too.

Needless to say, that hasn't gone well, and tech companies left and right are laying off more and more staff as the year has gone on with more and more people filling up a market that can't house them. There's at least 2-3 people that need a job per job opening (per linkedin statistics among others) and considering at least 60-80% of those job openings are fake jobs looking to simply scalp your email and personal information, or worse, it's created the absolute worst experience that I no doubt think has given me a good nice bit of trauma that I get to keep with me the rest of my days.

Now, this isn't to say I haven't had an income, if the fact I still have kept up DinoGoat patreon busts isn't any indication. My state has a pretty good unemployment package, and I was able to utilize the full 6 months of it that was allowed.

But I've been unemployed for 9 months in total, paying for Feb from my savings, March-August unemployment, and then having to start a night custodial job for a month in September through start of October to keep the lights on. It hasn't been, terrible all things considered, but what's absolutely royally FUCKED me is the stress. The stress of not knowing what the future holds, not knowing if I'll get back to making the money that made me feel so comfortable. The stress of wondering if I'd have to just live with 'barely making it by' the rest of my life as the tech industry imploded in on itself and I was left 'out to dry'. I'm already a massively anxious person by trade, but this just, completely killed my ability to write. It almost killed my ability to function on numerous occasions...I wouldn't be surprised if I gained heart problems from all this, if not many other fun things I get to work my way through. I got past it a time or two and wrote a few things in this time, but, it hasn't been good. Video games my eternal coping mechanism, but even that was starting to only barely keep me from 'generally breaking down'.

But, I now am thankfully 5 weeks in to a software development gig that I can only describe as 'idealistic'. A great work environment (so far), incredibly smart people working around me, and I'm hired on as a direct hire employee and not a contractor. This coming from my previous tech positions which have been nothing short of useless and garbage in equal measure (as hell as my last year has been I would not have stayed at my previous position even if they did want to hire me off contract cause holy hell that manager was so bad that I was the 'oldest member' by the time I let my contract run dry as everyone else got the fu%$ out of there before me) has been nothing short of 'rejuvenating', and I can only hope to stay here as long as the people here last because this culture is insanely unlikely to find in the corporate world and I don't want to go back into that hell anytime soon.

So yeah, I did a posting spree before, but did another one now, and probably plan to use November as an attempt to 'catch up' with the various things that have come my way through out the year. Perhaps start that 'image a day' thing again I've done before since I got 11 out and feel I could probably get two more out tomorrow depending XD but we'll see. Either way, absolutely keeping up with doing a posting spree on Sundays until I'm 'caught up', or at least posting a big image every Sunday I can manage it, if not any other day of the week.

But yeah, I figured now that I'm letting myself 'feel ok' now that I haven't randomly been let go/I have actually started doing Software work for this fine company and been making BANK again/received a few paychecks, I'd let people know in Journal form what's been up and were I've been =v= .

But yeah! Expect 'regularly scheduled program' from me going forward baring any future unexpected pain points. Hope you all have been doing better than me and here's to things improving!