Heyo, it’s me, ya boy, coping and seething on the internet again.

Breaking Dal News: I Lost My Job

So, I’ve lost my job. I’ve got two minds about it. On the one hand, its just Walmart. I hated working there. They paid me well and had a lot of really decent benefits, and it didn’t hurt that I liked the day to day work. But that didn’t change the fact that management was fickle, I had experiences where I just wouldn’t be put on the schedule for no rhyme or reason for weeks at a time. They dramatically changed my schedule several times without warning, where I went to working 5a-2p to 11a-8p. When I was responsible for taking my sick grandfather to chemo appointments, I told them I couldn’t work in the evenings and they reverted it back to the original schedule. The second I told them that he had passed away due to the cancer, they moved me again to working evenings. I told them it still wouldn’t work due to other obligations (which was a lie, I was just so angry they did this I didn’t want to work it on principal) and it took them 6 weeks to make the change. This is on top of management and corporate not treating me like a human in the best of times. And this isn’t even getting into the hell it is to work with the general public.

All this to say, I didn’t lose out on a dream job or anything. From an emotional standpoint, I couldn’t be happier. It feels freeing and losing this job feels like the last thing I needed to light a fire under my ass to apply for more jobs. I think the perceived stability I had with Walmart lulled me into a place where I felt just secure enough to keep coasting on. Like, obviously I knew I didn’t want to work there forever. Hell, my new year’s resolution this year and last year were to work somewhere that’s not Walmart. But I didn’t put in the real, actionable effort to make a change. I coasted, making enough money to live, with some room for savings and fun. I had lost sight of where I wanted be and grew overly content with where I was. I’ve applied to more jobs in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 6 months and I’ve started writing actual cover letters.. Yeah, I didn’t write cover letters before this. If I saw a cover letter field was required on a job application, I would skip the job. Which uh.. now that I’m thinking about it, probably explains why I’ve gotten so few interviews.

Now, on the financial side. This shit sucks super hard. Luckily, I’ve got savings to fall back on. Assuming I never spend money on bullshit things I don’t need and no emergencies or surprises come up, I can comfortably live for the next 6 months. But obviously, sitting around and just hoping something bad doesn’t happen isn’t a very good financial plan. I’ve cancelled all subscriptions (besides Adobe, unfortunately) and I’m cutting out expensive shit I don’t need. Like soda, energy drinks, or alcohol. Man, apparently most of my vices are related to liquids. Anyway, I’m gonna be scrappy and eating a lot of spaghetti, ramen, and rice for awhile. But that’s not all I’m planning on doing from here on out.

Currently, I do still technically have a part time job with Cass working for Non-Descript-Local-Tech-Event. If you know you know, I don’t feel like doxxing my work lol. But I’m still on board until the event in February, so I have work to do until then. I’m also getting my payout for the job within the next few weeks, so I have some bigger checks to look forward to. My goal is to put a lot of my effort into finishing this contract strong so they’ll hopefully renew it, but also in applying to more graphic design jobs like my life depends on it. I’m going to apply to anything and everything, regardless of if I think they’ll accept me or not, regardless of if they ask me to do unpaid labor and make some test designs for them, regardless of if they ask for a 1,000 word essay on how much I love bootlicking. I gotta do what I gotta do at this point, and I don’t want to find myself content at another dead end job that doesn’t fulfill me beyond paying my bills and funding my LEGO addiction. But, after this contract is fulfilled and I get my last check from them, that’s when I’m going to allow myself to become desperate. That’s when I’m going to start applying for the jobs that don’t care who I am, they just need someone to sweep floors, or fry chicken nuggets, or answer phone calls. I’m praying that one of the applications I’ve sent in now will be able to save me from having to do that, but I’m not above doing menial jobs obviously. Anyway, some other actually fun stuff happened!

LEGOs

I’ve completed two LEGO sets in the last month! I finished the Kingfisher set Cass got for me last Valentine’s Day, as well as a the tiny plants botanical set. The Kingfisher took me a straight year to complete, I had made a mistake early in building it that made completing the set difficult so I put it off for a long time. But after strapping down and actually finishing it, it didn’t take too long! It feels really nice for it to finally be finished and sitting on display.

Image of the LEGO Kingfisher set. It is sitting atop a white printer. The kingfisher is in an action pose with its wings outstretched and a fish in its mouth.

I completed the tiny botanical set in one sitting, its a much simpler set that I think was meant to be able to be completed by multiple people at once. But it was a lot of fun, I loved finishing them off. I can’t wait to get more cute sets to decorate the house with.

Image of three LEGO flowers sitting on a glass table. The flowers are all in brown pots and are of varying sizes. The tallest one is two red flowers with wide leaves and a ladybug sitting in the dirt. The medium sized flower is pink surrounded by a maroon bush. The smallest is a small bush of lilac flowers.

Image of three LEGO flowers sitting on a counter in front of Tetris blocks. The flowers are all cacti or succulents in pots and are of varying sizes. The largest is a wide cactus with pink flowers on the top and spikes all over. The medium sized plant is a tall cactus in three circular sections and a yellow flower at the top. The smallest plant is a purple and blue succulent. Image of two LEGO flowers sitting on a bookshelf. They are in matching brown pots. The larger, medium sized on is a tall bush with large round leaves. The smaller plant is a venus fly trap.

Image of a LEGO flower sitting on a shelf among various game controllers. It is in a brown pot and is a light green, tall flower with small coverings on the top.

I’m Da Creaker, Baby

I didn’t write about this in previous updates, because this was during my sad December spell, but I made a cursed Minecraft texture pack that gave the creaking mob Joker make up and turned him purple. It’s really stupid, lol, but it got 40 downloads over the last couple months and I figured I might as well write about it here just to say it exists. You can download it here if you want, but you probably shouldn’t.

Screenshot of the creaking in MineCraft. Its body is purple and is wearing joker make up on its face.

Another Car Accident

I do not know what’s wrong with me, but there’s something about me and my car that just makes other drivers on the road want to smash right into me. At this point, I’ve been in four accidents. Only one was my fault, this was when I broke my arm in 2021. But I got in a new one, about two weeks ago now. We had a huge snow storm blowing through my area where we got a FREAKISH 17in (43cm) of snow. This also caused a lot of ice to form, and while I was driving to Walmart at 4 in the morning, a car slid into my car on the back driver’s side. It was a pretty nasty hit, but his giant ass Ford pickup had nary a scratch, of course. Waiting on insurance to get back to me, but the guy admitted fault and ideally it should be a simple fix but.. I have no idea. I got rear ended in this car before, and while to me it looked like a simple fix, the car nearly had to be totaled. The only reason it wasn’t was because this was in 2021 when used car prices had skyrocketed, so it was worth fixing. Hoping and praying everything will be fine.

Image of a grey car from the back driver's side. The panel connecting the rear bumper to the side panel of the car are dented in by several inches. The inside of the car can be seen and there are multiple scratches.

New Year’s Resolutions

Originally I had set out to write a longer, dedicated blogpost to my resolutions, but then I realized I’ve been waiting for too long and its almost February. I also spent too long yapping about how Walmart isn’t that bad actually, and while I do want to work somewhere else, the stability of the job is worth considering and uh.. well, that’s all out the window now. So, I’m going to quickly talk about my current resolutions.

Get Another Graphic Design Job

Originally this resolution was just “Work somewhere that’s not Walmart”, but now I think that’ll be too easy lol. My goal is to get a full time graphic design job, or at least get another part time one. I do think its possible I’ll be able to work at the previously mentioned Non-Descript-Local-Tech-Event again, but I really want something with more consistent work. Contracts are rough because you only get paid at the end, so while I’ve got a decent lump sum coming, I would have preferred getting little chunks along the way. So ideally I wouldn’t want to rely on contracts, but jobs with consistent 30-40 hour work weeks.

Write In My Diary, And Update Malice Monthly

Probably to the surprise of no one considering this blog is effectively a public diary, but I’ve kept one since about 2015. There are long stretches of time where I didn’t update it, but I’ve always found myself coming back to it. Writing is the way I interface most with the world, so much so I’ve been investigating using text to speech in my daily life. I don’t like speaking much and I’ve always felt I could more clearly communicate what I want to say when I write. It has helped me process a lot of emotions and get through some bad times. I also appreciate it as a resource to reflect. I find myself fairly often reading old entries and seeing where I was a few years ago. It helps me appreciate where I am even more, which means a lot when I’m not particularly happy about my current situation. Malice has also been helpful as a way of updating people on how I’m doing and to be able to indirectly spam what I’ve been up to.

I’m excited to expand the site more, Cass and I have overhauled the home page! Check it out once you’re done reading this by clicking the malice.site link in the top left corner! I have other random plans and ideas for how to change the site, I have a lot of things cookin in my noggin. Another idea I have is to overhaul the Terrafirma and possibly Arret sections to function closer to wikis rather than a blog. Especially for Terrafirma where I have a lot of content and plan on having a lot of things linking and referencing each other, it’ll make sense once its expanded. I expect this change to be a much later thing, though, as I don’t feel I’ve written quite enough there yet to justify overhauling the code.

Improve My Self Discipline

This one is kinda vague, but I overall just want to work on finishing what I say I’ll finish and keeping closer to my word. It’s a bad habit of mine that I’ll start something, and never put in the work or effort to see it through. Not even for reasons that would make sense, just out of sheer laziness. I want to stop doing that and to make my word mean something. I want to experience the feeling of pride and accomplishment more. One of the things I’m currently working on is to quit drinking energy drinks and soda in general. I had said earlier I’m going to stop buying that stuff for financial reasons, and that also definitely helps, but this has been something I’ve wanted to do for awhile. I don’t like how reliant I am on caffeine and I do want to take some small steps to being healthier. I don’t think there ever will be a version of Dal where I know everything about nutrition and fitness, but I do think if I take some smaller baby steps by doing the obvious things, I’ll feel better about it. I don’t need to measure out the exact amounts of protein or sugar in my diet, but I can say no to objectively bad things for me. I want to keep self discipline in mind this year, so once it becomes easy for me to not drink soda/energy drinks, I’ll pick something else to work on! Maybe that’s working on a new skill, or further honing ones I already have. I’m not sure yet! I’m ready to go with the flow and see what will be most helpful to me at any given time.

Rapid Fire Resolutions

Here’s some more goals I have for this year that don’t need much explanation.

  • Complete (or at least regularly play) another Terrafirma campaign with me as the DM
  • Get Tetr.io 40 lines sprint PB down to sub :45. (I’m at :51.100 currently)
  • Text first more often
  • Begin the process of starting HRT. Whether that’s big steps, or baby steps, doesn’t matter.
  • Watch more movies, listen to more albums, and read more books. One of the three a week, perhaps?

Conclusion

That’s all I’ve got for this update. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about where things are going. I’ve put a lot on my plate, but I think I can manage it. Here’s some Cupcake pics until next time.

Image of a tabby cat sitting on the back of a couch. He is loafing, with her hands folded under her neatly.

Image of a tabby cat laying on someone's lap. She is sticking her leg out FAR, in such a way it looks like a long chicken leg. She is relaxed and looks cunty.

Image of a tabby cat peeking over a table. Only her eyes are visible. Image of a tabby cat flopping around on the floor. She is in motion, so the photo is blurry. Her eyes are bright white, as the photo was taken with flash on.