Monday 11/28/2022: Work and Wandering Village

I wrote this on Monday night but didn't post it. I am posting it now. Dangit.

One of the things I often forget about my old journaling habits was that in the early days -- especially back on OpenDiary -- I often posted even if I didn't have much to say. Sure, sometimes I wrote about significant events, or issues that were on my mind, or some thought prompted by someone else's post. But many days, it was trivial things -- "work was annoying, I'm running a game for Brenna tonight, this weekend Lut and I will see the sf movie that just came out, no spoilers please."

Some of that sort of thing ends up on my mastodon.art account, but I feel that it's more that I don't write it, or that if I do write it, I don't post it.

But right now, I just want to talk to myself for a little bit, like I used to do. Hey Rowyn, how's it going?

All right. I just got off work, yay! Work remains incredibly annoying. I don't know why I let work annoy me so much. I feel like I should just point and laugh whenever something irritating happens. "Ha ha, you think you can make this my problem, but little do you realize that I don't care."

Like sure, I will show up, I will work, but if there's not enough time to complete a task -- so what? Guess it's gonna be late. Did you need this done by the end of today? Should've sent it sooner. What are you gonna do, fire me? Don't threaten me with my daydream.

And yet somehow, I still get stressed when people don't bother to read the message they're replying to, or ask for something ridiculously overcomplicated because they assume it will be easy. Or when technology is obnoxious and interrupts my concentration with pointless pop-ups, or a query throws a conversion error except not if you make this one meaningless change just before you run it (and which you will have to revert and then change again for the next time because it only works when made just before you run it. Not if you save the meaningless change and re-open and run. Nope. Still broken. Conversion errors are the worst.)

And it's like, none of it matters? Everyone knows I'm good at my job. I have nothing left to prove. My official career goals are "become expendable and, at last, be expended." (I literally said these exact words to my boss when she asked about my career goals. She laughed and said, "we will never, ever get rid of you. You are stuck with us forever.") I stay less because I need a job and more out of a combination of "abundance of caution" and "willingness to help these people who say they don't know what to do without me."

I need some short version of this to be like a mantra every hour while I work, just to remind me that it's fine if I chill. Nothing gets done better or faster because I'm stressed or upset about it.

But the good part is: it's evening! I can sit in Pretend Coffee Shop and relax and talk to myself now. ♥ I want to play some more Wandering Village tonight. I started a new game last night, on Veteran again. I thought I was going to lose it, because Onbu found Zero Food in the early game. They were almost to "starving", and I hit two successive heatwaves (during which I could not grow food for Onbu). And then Onbu decided to nap in the path of a light thunderstorm so my village got swept over by the thunderstorm like seven successive times. Because we'd not yet done anything for Onbu so why would they listen when we asked them to please sleep literally anywhere else?

But my village managed to survive the barrage somehow. For several game days, I was scouring all available areas in search of wild mushrooms to harvest to supplement the meager growth I could eke out of my heat-beset mushroom farm. I got an Onbu-snack ready and then hit two cold snaps so I couldn't grow more. x_x

Then later, Onbu decided to saunter slowly through the hot sand, burning their feet, because they didn't trust us when we told them to run. Look, Onbu, it's your feet getting toasted, I don't feel like 'do not linger in the scorching sand' should be a tough call for you.

Still, Onbu and the village got past that too! We finally found some more villagers (for ages we were stuck with the starting 16), and I got everyone moved in to huts. I feel like the game may be turning the corner now.

I have lost one villager: a scavenger who died in the line of duty. Pour one out for Nicholle. She was trying to save a group of strangers her team found in a mine, fighting a creature. Her companion scavenged 30 iron from that battle (not iron ore, but iron), which will come in super handy if the village survives to the endgame. So at least something good came of it. Scavenging is dangerous work. (I generally have my scavengers take the cautious approach when they have a choice ... except when someone else is in danger, in which case they are always brave. pats them gently.

Anyway, before I play more Wandering Village, I wanted to do a little writing. And not just writing this. Although it was nice to write about my day for a little bit. On to A Dragonling's Family!