my blog has unintentionally gone from being a place where i can talk about weird shit that i'm thinking about and stuff ive been doing to this strangely strict self-imposed monthly responsibility that wears on me when it doesnt get done in time. i'd like to get back to talking about thoughts when these kinds of posts feel "done" and doing my monthly three albums as their own thing, maybe with attached media reviews from other areas of the media world. basically, make my blog a fun experimentation zone instead of a second, unpaid job (but still one whose results appear to be better appreciated. yikes) (thank you to everyone who comments in my guestbook it is always so lovely and amazing). also, im maybe a bit hasty getting things out rather than properly letting them stew and come to some real conclusions, but i also suspect that im not like those people who can blast out those 5000 word essays - probably because those are on these people's areas of unique expertise and interest, and my areas of interest are computers and bicycles and my areas of expertise are nothing

bon voyage hair (removal(ist))

my laser tech finished up at her current clinic this week! she's about ten years older than me and started doing beautician work in usamerica, where i gather you need basically a nurse's accreditation to do it? in australia we basically just run someone through how the laser gun works and let them go wild. as a result she was really good at it, but also clearly poachable by an actual beautician's office who can pay her like twice as much. good for her! does kind of suck for me though, partially because again, she was pretty good at her job, but also id grown kind of attached to our weird friendship that was blissfully separated from our other friends, allowing us to be weirdly honest with each other without fear of it muddying waters elsewhere. we both went through pretty large scale breakups at about the same time, which was kind of therapeutic, and they were always keen to heard what i'd been up to, as well as tell me about their life. this moment of moving on is surprisingly profound and definitely a little heartbreaking, which feels kind of ridiculous when you remember it was a lady who zapped my buttcrack with a laser multiple times. i hope to see her again soon

my job is pissing me off

due to a cartoonishly large corporate fuckup, my (programming consulting) company had to let go all of our contractors. this means that full time employees like myself have to pick up the slack, and such i have been thrown into a big deal project with a piece of software that i don't know in the slightest, which led to me getting chewed out by a representative for "misrepresenting myself as an expert" because i couldn't fix a problem (we later found that the problem was caused by him missing an email with a login code, something that i told him to check for). i also had the displeasure of having an it manager tell me off for using aforementioned piece of software on unprivileged devices. this one was caused by a licence update and nothing that i had done. the short of it is i've become a bit of a punching bag at work, having to put on my best retail worker smile while being told that i'm dishonest, unskilled etc, while trying to baby these assholes who have got it in their head that i'm incompetent while i stress myself to all hell trying to figure out how to solve these very new problems that have been dropped in my lap. this is all on top of my increasing fear that im going to be made redundant by ai and that i'm going to need to find a new career far sooner than i intended. i'm trying to get a job in the government, as that would provide me with a better guarantee of stability in the inevitable stock market crash and depression to come, but the job market is being tricky. i dont dream of labour but i sure dont appreciate the extra level of unnecessary stress

weird things about bodies

i'm an ex-christian, so i feel like i have a weird relationship with my body, and especially the places where the concept of the self intercepts with perception and features inherent to the brain (probably a lot of these feelings arent that unique, but are definitely impacted by how the soul is considered this magical, intangible and unmeasurable thing, rather than this really interesting side effect of the way that our brains are put together). eyesight is neat right? i think so! do you ever think about what's outside of your field of vision? do you think about how you cant see the things that you cant see? your brain gives you a bit of a mental shortcut that means you cant even perceive what you can't perceive outside of your weird vision rectangle. i'm equally wigged by how you can't preceive that you can't perceive that you're asleep or generally unconscious, or how i completely disconnect the thinking part of my brain when i'm climbing or doing yoga and am basically just a sack of meat working mindlessly towards a physical goal. i remember a meditation teacher from uni telling me about how the brain seamlessly moves between active and passive mind states depending on the task - driving or doing repetitive work or the like, but i spent fifteen minutes trying to find the actual term for it and came up short. but that shit happens all the time! it's kind of freaky! anyway i don't have any grand conclusions on these feelings but i think it's fun to share them - maybe you'll have your own thoughts you can share (in my guestbook!) or maybe i just sent you down an existential rabbithole

blog ideas

finally, heres a couple of blogposts that i want to make in the near future

• a post about my favourite garments
• a post with my short thoughts on every game i can think of - could do a similar thing for movies
• more recipes (i just made arayas again and they were awesome)
• an actual blog post talking about how i set up my home server
• a big post about all of the computer stuff i got from my friend's dad's house
• games i've actually played in the last 12 months and what i actually thought of them
• big masterlist of all the software and computer tools i use