Jdot's blog

What do you always say you will do but never actually get around to doing?
Submitted by Beautifully Broken.

Update my VOX and Twitter accounts.  Really.

...Let's see if I can continue posting?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Only time will tell!

What do you usually do on Sunday?

Sunday is a pretty brutal day for me.  Now, don't get me wrong.  Sunday starts out nice and mellow and relaxing.  I sleep in (read as "I sleep until 7:30 or 8:00 if the cats will let me.") and when I wake up I make some breakfast, play some games on the computer, and generally have as relaxing a morning as I can.  Things go well until about 3:00pm when I start to get ready for work.  I then work from 4:00pm until midnight.  Work itself isn't that stressful, it's just pretty crappy timing all told.  I get home at around 12:30am and attempt to pass out as quickly as possible since I have to be up by 6:15am at the latest to get to work at 7:00am.

I can't complain about it too much, though.  That second job has kept us afloat in a nice apartment with some little luxuries for a good long time now.

I've always been fascinated by the way Monday works.  Everyone is always moaning that it is once again Monday and the work week has started.  Of course, I've never had a job with a traditional work week attached, so I have no experience with that.  I've never really had weekends off, so I don't have a day that feels like I'm going back to something dreadful from a fabulous weekend away.  In the industry I'm in (retail), there really aren't that many people who have work weeks like that in general.  And so this nebulous dislike of Mondays still happens, but doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Of course, a lot happens on Mondays.  Because it is the beginning of the week for so many people, there is always a lot to do.  Today is no exception to this rule.  As long as the work is engaging it's fine.  Of course, working the tech support side of retail means that for every issue I deal with that actually makes me think, there are two that make me slam my head into my desk due to the enormous case of the stupids involved.  But then, every job has that.  People just always feel that their particular case of it is special.

I suppose if I were to try to adopt the standard Monday mentality, I would need to rename it to "The Saturdays".  My work "week" starts on Saturday, after all, and goes until Thursday.  Unfortunately, there really isn't anyone else to complain to about it on Saturday.  They're all busy enjoying their weekend!

Yesterday, I posted about how Thursday is my Friday in regards to my work week.  I then segued into talking about the fact that my weekend is woefully short due to working two jobs.  I'll expand upon that a little bit this morning.

My typical friday for the past few years has been a day to relaxe, do grocery shopping, and watch movies.  At some point, I would need to go take a nap, because I had to be at work at 12am Saturday morning for the weekend job, which I work from 12am to 8am on Saturday and Sunday mornings.  Today is the last time I will have to do that.  You see, my schedule is changing at the weekend job and I will no longer be working midnights.  i'm definitely looking forward to this change, although it adds some new wrinkles into my work week. 

My new shift at the weekend job is going to be 4pm to midnight on Saturday and Sunday.  One week a month I will work the same shift on Friday.  I only agreed to that part because I desperately need the money at this point.  The weeks that I work on Friday, I won't really have much of a weekend to speak of, but the other three weeks a month I will have a nice, relaxing Friday with no need to take a random nap since I won't have to be at work that evening.  Of course, this change doesn't come without a cost;  Sundays and Mondays will now be hell.  I will work 4pm to 12am Sunday night and then have to be at work at the full time job at 7am on Monday morning.  I have a roughly 15 to 30 minute commute from both jobs, so that severely limits how much sleep I'll be able to get on Sunday nights.

Overall, this change is a good thing.  My sleep schedule will be much more regular than it is now and I'll be able to spend more awake time with my boyfriend.  Hopefully the extra day per month will help me get to a point financially where I will finally be able to afford quitting the second job.  Time will only tell.

I have a rather unusual work week, according to most forms of wholesome entertainment.  I work four days a week with a ten hour shift each day.  This comes out to 11 hours at work, including my one hour of unpaid lunch time, and an hour commute total per day, which means I spend very little time at home.  The upside of this little arrangement is that Thursday is my Friday.  I have nowhere to be tomorrow.  Well, other than possibly going to see a movie tomorrow morning with my boyfriend and later going to Red Robin with my friend Diana.  I'll be able to sleep in, sleeping in being sleeping past 7am, of course.  I have two cats who are on a schedule, there is no way I'm ever going to really sleep in again.

In the interest of full disclosure, it's probably important to point out that I actually work two jobs, so this nice little arrangement gets derailed by the schedule for my second job.  Currently, that schedule is 12am to 8am on Saturday and Sunday mornings.  Yes, the shift really is as bad as it sounds.  I've been working it for six or seven years now.  This is the last weekend that I'll be working it, however.  My shift has changed to 4pm to 12am on Saturday and Sunday evenings, instead, with the occaisional Friday shift for good measure.  Fortunately, the job is very very simple and boring and I'm allowed to bring in my laptop to do things on that or read books during the shift.  I've got about 15 minutes of work to do every hour, and as long as it all gets done nobody cares.

So, Thursday is my Friday.  Of course, I only have a one-day weekend, so that four day work week from the main job isn't as helpful as one would hope.  It still beats the old schedule, which included a double shift on Sundays between both jobs.  Of course, Sundays will be a new kind of bad with the new schedule, since I'll have exactly 7 hours from the time I get out of the weekend job until I have to be in the office for my full time job.

Since this service, unlike LiveJournal, actually has a "Neighborhood" level that doesn't require you to be a "Friend" as well, I'm limiting who I tag as "Friend" when I add them to the Neighborhood.  I use a bazillion custom filters over at LJ anyway, so it's not going to be much different here.  Of course, with all of, what, four people in my Neighborhood at the moment, it's not like there's much distinction. 

Y'all will probably rarely see an Admin style post in here.  I just figured I'd toss this out there at the beginning while I'm a newbie.  :-p

And, of course, I reserve the right to randomly and arbitrarily change my mind at any time.  Just so y'all are forewarned.

I first heard of VOX ages ago, and wasn't particularly interested in it.  Of course, back when I joined LiveJournal I hadn't been particularly interested in it, either.  A few people I knew had gotten into it, which helped to get me interested, and so here I am.  On first glance, it's the SixApart version of MySpace.  On second glance, well it hasn't gotten that far yet.  I'm interested if only for a clean slate more than anything else.

I'm hoping to use this a bit differently than I use LiveJournal.  LJ has become something of a dumping ground for any random thing that crosses my mind.  The irony that my first post on VOX was something of a meme is not lost on me, trust me on this one.  I used to post them all the time on LJ, but quickly became bored with them.  The fact that the QotD actually prompts you for your own input makes it less annoying, though.

So, what am I going to post here?  I'm not sure.  Maybe I'll post about my life.  Maybe I'll write some in-depth explorations of characters that pop into my head.  Maybe I'll lose my mind and become the next hot slashfic writer on the web.  Okay that last one won't happen, but we can pretend.

One thing is certain, it's time for me to get a new online persona.  One that is more "me" than the ones that have been put forth thus far.

--JD

Play any instrument or speak any language, which do you choose?
Question submitted by cruftbox.vox.com.

Interesting way to pop my VOX cherry, I suppose. 

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I actually am a musician.  Not in the "write my own angsty crap and pretend to be relevant to modern life because my boyfriend of three hours dumped me" sense, but in the "Hi, I've been classically trained in voice and clarinet.  Yes, I can shatter your eardrums without a microphone" sense.

Ultimately, I wish I could play the piano.  Don't get me wrong, I can fake simple things and sight-read music like there's no tomorrow, but I can't play.  And if I could play piano, I could spend all my time singing, and life would be good.

 Edit to add:  I almost forgot to talk about languages!  I'd love to be fluent in German.  There is so much beautiful music written in German, and I love singing it.

In an unrelated note, this edit page has a girl-power themed ad on the side of it.  There is something really wrong about that.  :-p

--JD