Essays

Writing Prompt: “What’s Your Dream Job?”

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What’s your dream job?

I don’t dream of jobs. That being said, I do dream of positions in terms of direction and how I contribute to society. I’ve always felt fulfilled in roles that allow me to solve problems and be helpful. I seek those kind of jobs that have enough structure and clear systems to make sense, but offer room for creative thinking. I need the job that allows me space and refills my cup so that I can create on my own terms outside of work.

I dream of jobs that do not take without giving, and that can stop at the end of the workday. I like to work hard but I want energy to still play hard at the end of the day, so that I have a life outside of the hours I’ve sold to my employer. I had dreams when I was younger to work under my own terms, write and paint at home, with only my adventures to new places while traveling to drag me away from the artist’s single-minded devotion to craft.

As an adult, I definitely need stability for contribution outside my own worlds, many of which were born out of trauma and bad events. I get mental sunshine with every problem I solve, or the person I help. I craft moon shine (or moonshine) out of my thoughts put to paper or canvas. There has to be balance. I don’t think I’d be satisfied with a full-time writer or artist position, however, there’s a part of me that still would like the chance to try. I think I would need to know that what I was doing offered something essential for society. I’d be volunteering more if I felt that wasn’t the case.

The day job that funds my life and my creative investments without taking everything else is the dream job these days. Retirement one day might be nice, but I know that’s asking for a lot. I dream of not dying at work, for an employer, who gives perhaps two shits about me, and that’s only if they’re a halfway decent company. I dream of not leaving with regrets. But I am no longer in my twenties, even if I can’t quantify the two decades that passed between 21 and 41. Wisdom I can pass on, however, is that we work to live; we do not live to work. Don’t lose sight of that, even if the years fly by faster than you’re anticipating.

2023 is a Whirlwind So Far

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I’ve honestly never been one to think New Year’s resolutions are all that useful, so I’ve been focusing more on sustainability and what’s healthy for me this time around. My household has been a bit of an anomaly – those rare individuals who haven’t had the virus of the pandemic hour once, let alone multiple times as many Seattleites have.

My day job, I’d hardly call it a career at this point, is in flux. I feel both liberated and in limbo. I’m stepping into a new roll in February, I’m just not sure what it’s going to look like. I know already that I’ll be happier than I am now. I’ve taken back my creativity and I’m writing more.

I’m 9 poems and a few paragraphs into the New Year. I’m smiling more often, and engaging in true conversation with the people I care about. I feel whole again. Never stay in a position where your cup isn’t being refilled. I’ve told it to so many people; it just took me forever to figure out that this was happening to me. I’m seeking out chances to be happy and to be at a table of my own choosing.

If I can dream big impossible goals into life, can this also be the year that no bigot is given quarter or a measure of power? Literally anywhere? I don’t care if they solved the cure to cancer, made the most amazing company in the world, or wrote songs to make angels weep at their beauty. Put them back in isolated romper rooms where the only damage they can cause is to a lego structure of their own making.

I started in poetry so I suppose it’s fitting I am circling back to it while I get my breath and writing cadence for fiction back. How about the rest of you? How is the price of eggs in your corner of the world? I’m too exhausted to want to panic about what may happen with our supposed faulty supply chains. If this continues, I may look and sound more vegetarian by summer whether I want to or not. I’ll do what I can and not worry about the rest. I guess that’s all any of us really can do.

Spooky Season at Read Cat Bounce

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We’re well into October and I’ve been remiss about speaking much about my favorite time of year – the launch of autumn into winter that happens in Seattle around this time of year. Right now, we are looking at a La Nina winter starting early.

Today’s air had a crisp chill to it and that particular clean, cold, scent that I can only prescribe to winter. It’s one of my favorite smells, heralding the time of the year that I feel most alive. I’m considering pumpkins, red leaves, and what all will look like, dusted in snow.

Right now, I’m also preparing to hunker down for NaNoWriMo next month. I will be announcing the project on November 1st with a write up and more information both here and on Patreon. You will need to become a patron to read any of the work in progress during the month of November, but a preview and some basic information about the project will be posted starting November 1st.

Currently, I am watching through Twin Peaks with the spouse (and sometimes the cats) as part of our Spooky Season celebrations. We’ve also been indulging in some horror films of the milder variety as the other Mihulec is less inclined toward *most* horror films or television. Supernatural and creepy vibes have been a good compromise there, allowing for some compromise.

Depending on schedules, I think we might indulge in one of the Seattle Underground ghost tours that we didn’t manage during our first October here in the city and that definitely wasn’t an option during the time warp that was 2020. If so, I’ll let you know how that goes and which of us had a conversation with any of the many no doubt irate, confused, or annoyed ghosts who fell to their death due to poor city planning. (It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed about Seattle, eh? *bah dum tss*)

We’ve definitely got our eyes set on a small concert with The Heebie Jeebies this week, accompanied by pizza and beer at one of our favorite neighborhood haunts. Probably with a Stephen King novel each in hand, since we’ve been both been indulging in his fiction as part of our seasonal motifs.

I’ve recently started a reread of Christine, it was my mother’s favorite Stephen King novel and frankly, she is the reason I love all things creepy from Poe to Barker. I miss her, but I like to think she knows she’s not forgotten either. Not sure what things she would have preferred to be remembered for, but I grasp on to the little things that we had in common.

And you know, in the end, Mom was right about me getting into healthcare, just not in the way she might have envisioned. Clinic management is a good career fit for me and I think she’d be proud anyway, even if I didn’t wind up doing the hands-on side of healthcare where she thought I might go. She was also right that I’m still here, plugging away at a keyboard, writing. She probably would still be equally annoyed at how many unfinished manuscripts lie in my literary graveyard, awaiting revival and completion.

Finally, a Halloween/Samhain playthrough of Dead Space is tentatively in the works, in the dark for full jump scare enjoyment. I’ll be honest, Valentine’s Day was the original holiday that those playthroughs happened, but we’re trying to swap up some of our old traditions.

What are your favorite Spooky season must-dos for the next couple of weeks? And for anyone who celebrates the remembrance of lost loved ones during this time of year, what stories are you going to tell between now and November 1st? Please feel free to comment below – I really appreciate hearing from readers.

Arthritis

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Not entirely unexpected, but developing arthritis in a joint in my left hand has forced me to slow down a bit sooner than I expected with my usual tasks. I work on computers, I create on computers. I’m learning the art of slower, more gentle, typing (and gaming!) while finding new ways to function / interact.

I’m still pressing on with planning for my yearly novel project in November, although I am looking into different methods for writing while dealing with this. I may get back to some writing by hand and have it transcribed to limit the intense hours of typing after full days of typing with the day job. While braces for the joint in question help, they can’t stop what’s already happened.

For me, this all sounds less like a setback and more novel approach this way, at least to my finicky brain. If anyone has recommendations for speech-to-type software, I’m all ears and grateful for the recommendations.

Summer 2021

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Photo by Georgie Devlin on Pexels.com

We all thought 2020 was going to be the worse of it, didn’t we? How wrong we were. Since February 2020, we’ve had a long list of events that belong in a dystopian thriller loudly hammering home an anti-fascist sermon to young adult readers. I’m still numb about all of it.

We have too many Americans who never learned how to function in part of a community or a society. A self-centered cancerous mass of outright villainy and narcissistic exceptionalism. I am tired. I’m sure you are too. I had to drop, at least temporarily, some of my recent writing projects due to a distaste at addressing certain topics that, after the past year and a half, cease to bring me joy.

I’ve lost a parent. I’ve gained a great-nephew. There are more promises of life on the way, and the family grows while it wanes. There’s hope and trauma and confusion all bundled up in a tapestry of exhaustion. Somehow, we’re reaching out hands to each other and rebuilding bridges.

Smoke season is insidious and deceptive this year, in more ways than one. Be careful out there.

Leadership Goals

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I obviously don’t know what company Tim Bray is going to go to next, but I think I might like to work there and learn from him. At the very least, I think I might try my best to support them if he’s got any leeway with the company’s operations given his own ethics. Moral ethics in business are, I promise you, supposed to be the norm and not the exception.

Even so, I greatly appreciate that he referred to evil (perhaps idiocy is more likely but… it still sounds pretty evil to just fire protesting workers at this time) from Amazon’s upper leadership during this pandemic as ‘chickenshit.’ He used other, more eloquent, phrases, but honestly – they don’t deserve them. These horrible individuals deserve to be shrunk down as small as possible in the public eye. Why should we ever reward these people with our money? We might not be able to do much for controlling our taxes going toward these bloated and greedy MNCs but we definitely can vote with where we spend our own money and time.

2020 has brought with it some awful events, but we can start to move toward more mindfulness and purpose with our next steps. That’s where I find myself, at least. I don’t have answers yet, but I’m learning to be at peace with taking each day as a new experience. I hope you’re all being as safe as you can and enjoying each breath with some measure of ease. If not, I hope you’re at least being able to be gentle with yourself when the fear or the isolation is too much.

Early April 2020 Update

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Yesterday meant the end of shared work for me while on standby. I had the option to remain on standby to collect emergency unemployment due to COVID and so I took it as did many of my fellow co-workers. I have been assured that there will be no negative penalty for this, but should that prove not to be the case, I am going to assume I still made the right choice. I think there has been a shift in consciousness in the world now – the power is not at the top, and it never has been.

It should matter to all of us that the wealth in this country is created at the bottom and that is where the power really resides – we just need to leverage it. The ivory towers need to fall and businesses that can’t or won’t compensate their workers properly especially in a crisis need to crumble into memory. They don’t deserve our labor or our dollars. There are other options. The fact that it has taken Amazon this long to stop being tone deaf in Seattle and New York means they deserve to see a severe drop in revenue. That’s one example, and I’m sure many have others. We need to listen to them all.

I never want to hear the talk again about people working “certain jobs” deserving not to make enough to live. Not when those are the very industries we’re relying on for survival as. a. species. If a job exists, the wage should be livable for the locality. The fact that minimum wage or even above minimum wage is not enough at full-time wages to support a house, a family, and investments as well as shopping in the marketing means that capitalism has become debt-dependent and is going to continue to fail under such a weight. It is also ethically unconscionable. We all deserve better than to be fed to the Dow-Jones.

Burn the yachts in the harbors. Raid the corporate coffers. Cut the oligarchy with their shiny crowns off at the knees. Be Americans again, like we were at the start. And let’s start caring for each other as communities rather than using warm bodies for rungs on a ladder to one day kiss those blood-stained jeweled hands.

Plague concerns

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I didn’t sleep much last night and the morning came too early. Last day of work before my employer is closed under the state requirements. I’ve been becoming increasingly numb the past two months. I knew what we had awaiting us if it hit here. I have a friend stationed in South Korea – and they’re the only country who seems to be handling this particularly well. Certainly better than what happened in Italy, at least.

I’m giving myself a couple of days after I clock out this afternoon to decompress, to apply to whatever aid I’m allowed that the city may be offering. I may be considering any of the needed open positions at grocery stores right now. It’s money and it’s a needed service to my community. As long as I’m well, I can help. But the numbers of the infected are going to keep growing especially if we aren’t able to keep things reasonable and keep social distancing as a practice.

The buses are going to be a little more empty today and the days following, I’ve no doubt, and it’s eerie. Empty streets of Seattle and no one should enter the city if they don’t need to be here. I am glad for people what’s best for all of us, and sad for the effects this virus outbreak is having on this city that I love. For those who are still working essential jobs, I raise my coffee tankard to you today.

Stay safe and be well.

Eight Months Later

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I realize I’ve not been the best with keeping up with this blog after I started it to be a writing portfolio (of sorts). I’m still not sure where I’m going with Dead Cat Bounce ultimately, but here’s the run down of how the bulk of my first year in Seattle has gone:

I had three weeks of panic upon my first arrival here, because my spouse had lost the job that had gotten us through the move and into an apartment on my first day in the city. I took the first job that I was offered, grateful, albeit a little daunted, but it turned out to be the best decision I’ve made in a long time. I was promoted to an assistant manager position after six months.

My mental and physical health had taken a dive back in Kansas and it had worsened since I wound up in a position of shouldering the bulk of the household expenses in a city notorious for its high cost of living. Enter company health insurance and actually taking care of my own health for the first time in probably twenty years. For the first time in a long time, I’m living with a thought on the future, instead of bare-bones survival running on nothing but adrenaline, caffeine, top-notch fiction, and cheap whiskey. At the end of this journey, I hope to ease the nightmares and start to appreciate myself as a person, as well as hopefully survive my next decade without wearing down my organs anymore than is necessary.

In short, I stopped writing and creating for a while. I no longer had a taste for it, so this is a move back toward making art (or something in that general direction) and growing as a person. I’m not sticking to a regular writing schedule yet, but it is happening again. I’ve been working on my programming skills and I have a game concept that I’ve been poking at when inspiration strikes. Baby steps, as they say.

At this point, I can’t honestly promise I’ll keep up with the site like I originally intended, or that it won’t take on a new direction in the future, but thanks for popping in on occasion to read! I hope to have more to share in the coming weeks. Let me know in the comments if you have any places in Seattle you want me to review, photograph, and/or mention. Or anything that strikes your mind on what you’d like see next on readcatbounce.

Some Like It Hot

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A Seattle summer may not hold a light to the humid, triple-digit, nightmare that was Kansas but for a city that doesn’t have air conditioning as a norm, it’s been too hot the past few days for this cat.

Our lovely high-speed fan died last night – a casualty to several years of heavy usage – so it was a sweaty evening filled with strange dreams and a yearning for ice cream around my humble abode. At least the sun doesn’t burn as cruelly here. I can tolerate a hot day here and I have endured worse. Make no mistake – I am much happier to be here in summer instead.

Perhaps some really do like it hot, but I reserve that feeling for spicy food rather than the daily temps. I intend to burn my tongue to cool my skin as I used to as a kid, growing up first just shy of southern Appalachia and then in the Midwest – both of which offered oppressive weather and rhetoric thinly veiled in hospitality and friendliness that occasionally slashed like a dual-edged paper blade.

I find the genuine attitudes refreshing, perhaps enough to blot out any unexpected discomfort here. Even so, I find myself clinging to old traditions and expectations even if I choose to employ them in new ways.

I’m hardly going to be managing a spicy seafood boil on the apartment complex’s rooftop for hours drinking cheap beer and shooting the shit with folks until night fall when everyone shows up to eat. But there are always better options – at least better suited for this city and my current circumstances.