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I had a strangely good day in terms of unexpected events.

I awakened to find an email from Dreamwidth Studios that I had been randomly selected to receive a donated Paid Account for a year! That's great, because I have been using the website more often lately. I've been trying to be more present with... well, anything, and it seems to help to be on these more Internet 1.5 websites... I had a paid account for a few years now, but right now anything other than food or something that will have a direct impact on my material existence seems like a stupid frivolity. I had planned to purchase a paid account again, but I just... hadn't made myself. I'm really thankful, kind strangers on Dreamwidth! I almost never win random odds ANYTHING, so it's really nice.

Then, when I got to work, I received an email to request a direct interview with an international school in another part of Tokyo! This application is really satisfying to get a response to, because I had to pay a platform to be allowed to put in yet another application... So, here's hoping that I might get it. It would be a significant pay bump, and I would just enjoy the work as much or more than anything I've ever done, I think. I'll be interviewing with them next week.

Finally, I was scheduled to have 10 classes today. It's manageable but hectic. However, I ended up with only 6 due to several absences. It was nice. Very breezy and let me get lesson plans done through next Tuesday which means that for the last two days this week, I can dedicate office time to curriculum adoption instead of lesson planning, if my boss doesn't give me something else to do.

When I started in June and for the first couple months, Mondays were trial by fire for everyone. In the 5:00 PM slot, there's this group of five very difficult to manage elementary school boys that, every time I think I'm getting some cooperation, it's two steps forward and one step back. At least one step back. This past Monday was Respect for the Elderly Day in Japan, so it's a public holiday for most things. Our schedule doesn't take into account public holidays and has separate holidays instead, so my boss invited the boys' parents to come see their behavior. A few showed up but mostly stayed outside the room and talked with my boss. They observed for a little while. It was chaotic but not terrible chaotic. We'll see if any of the progress sticks next Monday...

Anyway, until a couple weeks ago, there were 11 classes on Mondays, the most I had all week, and it included 2 of about 3 classes that have members who ever give me a really difficult or disrespectful time. Some Mondays, I would come out of it feeling really emotionally battered by a couple of 8 or 9 year old boys! It was awful.

Recently, however, there have been some schedule shifts. This means there will usually be only 8-10 classes on Monday, still getting a good chunk of the difficult stuff over with at the beginning of the week, but with a couple of more cooperative students moved to different days of the week. Now, Tuesday or Wednesday will be the technically busiest day usually, but those include both more one-on-one classes and more mature students, whether they be elementary school kids or older kids and adults. It's more balanced, and I'm grateful for that.

Plus, I think that will be better for whoever replaces me, in the end.

Right now, I think I am doing a good job most days. My boss offers genuine thanks and praise sometimes. However, I am still having problems with her anxiety cloud casting this dreadful glow over me.

I work 1:30 PM to 9:00 or so most days. Technically, my hours are until 9:30, but if my boss has decided we're done for the day, we leave a bit before that. She's eager to go home, and I think she basically schedules that buffer for if something went wrong? But anyway, I am supposed to have an hour break in there. It's actually required by law. However, my break is usually broken up into two half-hour chunks. However, what's actually happening is that most of the time I'm not actually getting a break that long during any time period. If I get a half hour break, I'm usually doing paperwork to make stuff easier for the next day for at least 20 minutes of that break. It's somewhat a choice, but it's one of those things where I'm always trying to keep on top of things such that my job feels more steady instead of boom and bust.

However, my boss is this anxious church mouse who is obviously a bit nervous and judgmental anytime I'm sitting there doing nothing or on my phone or whatever. Even though I'm doing volumes of work that are sometimes working ahead into the next week.

It frustrates me, but I'm also trying to get brave enough that at a certain point, when it's officially my break time, I will just sit there and read my phone right in front of her no matter what it does to her aura.

I hate the nitpicky supervision, though it isn't constant. I put up with so much crap. Like, her four year old grandson is there pretty often because she helps out when her daughter and son-in-law need a pinch-hit for looking after him. I don't mind! I find him somewhat charming. But yesterday, some of their other family members were there for a little bit, and he ran into the office where I was working, came up to me, kicked me in the thigh (medium pressure, non injurious but not very comfortable either) and ran off again. I didn't say a word about it. I think he was being playful/giving me attention in his own way. He sometimes comes up and tickles me and it's, like, obviously friendly. This was less easy to read, but I think it was still that kind of thing. That said, if I have to sometimes (not at that moment) impromptu babysit, and you ask forgiveness and not permission while you stop looking after your grandson and just leave him in my general vicinity, then you can fuck off about whether or not you like my smartphone habits.

Anyway, I'm venting. It's not a terrible job. She's not a terrible person. But sometimes, she's a crappy boss.

Two or three friends have suggested that these "behaviors" are why other people in my position have left before. It could be. I wish I could find out what exactly were the tenures of my predecessors...

Anyway, I am currently looking not just out of resentment. There have been days when I have the slightly petty thought of, like, "the smaller you make the bullseye to make you happy, the further my foot is out the door and you don't even know it yet." On other days, I feel kind of bad that I will leave her given the opportunity before a year is up. My contract says I can voluntarily retire with 90 days notice, and I will do it if the opportunity comes up.

I dread what might happen next with regard to my comfort levels in my own home, since my rent is played through my work as is common in these situations, but I will get through it by the grace of God. This woman claims to be a Christian. Let her show it.

Earlier, I opened instagram and happened across a reel by the "antiworkgirlboss" account where she was talking about "Performance Improvement Plans," which are typically used as a way for a job that has to give reasons to fire you to start the process of firing you. I don't think my job is anywhere near that point. I think she likes me most of the time. I think I'm doing a good job most of the time. However, one thing this reel said really resonated with me. Basically, when you've been given forewarning that a job is about to end, you need to start looking for another and emotionally disassociate from your current job.

I definitely get emotionally wrapped up in my jobs. I think most teachers do. I still, every day, go in wanting the best outcomes for students.

And, for example, my boss currently has me learning about a different curriculum to phase into using over the next several level changes for sme students.

I'm doing it. I'm learning a skill. And I'm also writing up a doc and sharing it with her, which I'll make a copy of after I'm doing and unattach my version wen I leave the job. I am consciously doing things that will make it easier for whoever she has to train next. But, it's going to be someone if I am blessed with the opportunity to take a job where I am in my skillset and being treated with the level of professional dignity I have earned.

She gives me some professional dignity and treats me well especially when I'm working with the age group I'm licensed to teach. However, working with the younger kids is a challenge for me. I'm learning, but I don't want to feel looked down upon for not being a perfect natural mother who speaks Japanese all the time. I know some of it is my rejection sensitivity, too.

Still, I think it's even a responsible thing to try and move into a position where I am best utilizing my skill set.

And, now that I have written all that down... I'm trying to let it go until tomorrow.

I'm still having a lot of trouble letting my work live at work. Not making it my whole personality, even when I am compartmentalizing it.

I've been wanting to write more lately. You might have noticed with the bingo card. I also signed up for a ficathon. The two might overlap. But I am also worried about whether or not I can even focus on any of them.

I can't decide if I want to work on WIPs in fandoms I've been in for a while or if I want to start new things, one-shots or potential WIPs. I want to make myself happy with writing, but I am human and also want community and attention, and the latter is really, really hard to come by as a writer these days.

Hmmm... either dreamwidth had a hiccup or I accidentally clicked something when reading a comment notification email when half-asleep. It seems that I had somehow turned off email notifications for comments, and it wasn't intentional.

I seem to have fixed it now?

I just marked all my inbox stuff read after answering all the stuff that I hadn't attended to on the first two pages. Hard to believe it piles up like that. If I didn't get to your message, please forgive past-me for not having the presence of mind to get back to you in a more timely manner.

My good friend beamu_97 caved to pressure and got a dreamwidth account a few weeks ago. So far, she has only used it a couple of times, but I am trying to persuade her that this form of blogging would be a good sometimes-alternative to the exhaustion that comes with twitter-style social media. Anyway, she knows that I have been hemhawing about whether or not to get a paid account here for some time, so for Christmas she bought me enough kofis to cover the cost of a paid account, so I bought one today!

I just hope that I actually continue to use my account enough to make it feel like a justified expense. It is, at least, encouraging on the icon-making/collecting front.

Popping an acetaminophen before we begin.

I am suffering menstrually today - face hurts, back hurts, don't like it. I came home and took a long nap, took a shower, and have been antisocial about getting on Discord this evening. Not that I'm ever actually off Discord, but it's a matter of paying attention to it, isn't it?

I've been bopping around on the first few posts of addme_fandom and finding that a lot of tumblr refugees who are new to this format of website don't know what the difference in subscribe and access are, so I wrote an explanation that I gave to a couple of people. I'm gonna copy-paste it here and probably over on the community I made for similar resources: tumblrmigration. I don't know why, but I'm really enthusiastic about helping people get on-board with this type of fandom and internet participation as I can. Here is the blurb:

Dreamwidth lets you control what is on your "Reading Page" (which is the closest thing to a 'dash' you have here - it shows the most recent 1000 entries from the last 14 days, so it DOES eventually end) and who gets to read what you post with a few different settings you can learn to manage.

You can subscribe which means that you get to read all the public posts on that journal on your Reading Page.

You can grant access which means that you are giving that journal permission to read journal entries which you mark as Access List Only (I think, something like that) on the privacy setting down near the post button. This was an update of an old LJ thing where you could make stuff "Friends Only."

You can make even more strange access filters if you like over time. Like, I dunno, "only friends with an unhealthy obsession with cheese" or "friends who aren't afraid of spiders."

In the case of communities, like this one, tat have open membership, you can join without subscribing, which is what I did, so that my Reading Page won't be just posts from this community even though I want to be associated with it and easily access it.

You can see a bunch of helpful stuff on your own profile page that might help you understand this stuff further!

Now on to other things...

Yesterday, the school I'm working for was out for "snow" which was nowhere to be seen except in the mountains. I live in the American South, so this just happens sometimes, though apparently we are actually getting a winter storm that might impact more than a few hundred people this weekend. I'm good with that for a few days as long as the power stays on. While I was off for a random day, I drove over to try an Indian restaurant in another city over. I'd had Indian food in Toronto before and also from frozen dinner boxes, but I'd never eaten at the particular restaurant I went to. It was nice, but I found that I later had a headache and that my hair smelled of the spices so much that I had to shower for a second time in a day. It's not even that it was an unpleasant smell, but I get migraines, and I'm especially sensitive at this time of the month. I'm actually wondering if that's why I still have a headache.

Some things are tasty but disagree with me.

Today I meant to take it easy on food, but my dad convinced me to meet him for barbecue, oops.

I like food a little more than I would like to like food.

I finally put an icon to use as a default here. I picked Skye|Daisy because I love her very much, she is wonderful to look at, and I liked the color scheme and doodles the iconmaker chose. (It is credited on my icons page.) I like Agents of SHIELD, but I am only just now watching Season 2 without giving up on it. I watched the first season not long after it had aired, and I loved it. Then, when that fall season of TV shows came up, I tried to keep up week by week with those that were airing on channels I had access to. It drove me insane, though. I couldn't always get unfettered access to the television, living with my parents, and I found that the anticipation and schedule-holding and wrangling always made for disappointment. I can't quite explain it, but being on the clock for something like a tv show just made it... worse. My second-time attempting to watch Season 2, I understand more what they were going for, and when I watch I enjoy it a lot more. At the time, though, I didn't catch every moment or detail that I needed to, there was always some sense that I was watching a stupid show and hogging the television, tumblr was literally NEVER happy with the outcome, and I felt like a lot of the decisions that were being made either came out of left-field or denied foreshadowing just for the sake of being disappointing.

I was a SkyeWard shipper who was having my hopes of redemption and resolution dashed every single week. At first, the fans I followed were hopeful and insistent. Then, over time, thy became disillusioned. Some left the fandom. Some switched sides entirely and reacted by insisting the SkyeWard was abusive now and that they wanted no part of it, per the burgeoning tumblr-purity-culture requirements. For a while, I fell into the latter category to an extent, but I'm not even sure I ever fully believed it? There certainly is a complicated relationship I have with the SkyeWard type dynamic. There are complex reasons that things like it and Reylo appeal to me, and I grapple with the stuff that sort of bothers me about the very thing I love so much. But I don't see it as like a moral flaw? More than anything, I think that I was still swept up in the current of wanting to be a conscientious and critical viewer, and more and more tumblr was dictating what opinions one had to form as a result of doing that. It created a sense of anxiety and shame associated with still liking suddenly problematic thing, as if catharsis hasn't always been a part of things. (This is not to say that there aren't still things I distance myself from because of their being genuinely "problematic," but I think the tumblr purity culture bar is set too high and in the wrong places a lot of the time.)

I was embarrassed, and so I espoused what felt like the only way to really cope with how disappointed, let-down, upset, and whatever else I was.

Revisiting it, I honestly don't see what exactly I was reacting so negatively to, even though it certainly didn't go the way I had hoped (and still vainly hope at the screen). I became amenable to the idea of revisiting AOS at my best friend's suggestion almost entirely because of seeing gifs of Season 4 existing. I still greatly anticipate watching Framework!Skyeward even though it is going to break my heart.

Transitional non-sequitur: Did you know that teachers often use a program called Skyward (no e) to keep attendance and grades online? Well now you do. It results in many, many typos for me. I literally just did it again when trying to tell you about it.

Anyway, I don't really have room to talk about every one of my main fandom interests in this one post. As you can see, I'm not always the most concise person (though I do have a twitter! - here: prixofheroes). My other big thing that I don't seem to be able to talk enough about to anyone who is remotely interested (or even tolerant) is YuGiOh. Specifically, the original anime/story/manga which has, in the wake of there being others, been titled YuGiOh Duel Monsters for clarity.

It's honestly a bit strange how I came back into it and what a blessing it's been in terms of its overall impact on my recent state of being. I was at the peak target demographic, turning 13 not too long after YuGiOh (the card game) hit its stride in my peer group. (I remember this because a friend invited me to come with him to a YuGiOh card tournament on my thirteenth birthday.) However, despite trying to learn the card game, I found that I wasn't able to devote all the time I needed to in order to "get it" without giving up something else that was important to me (writing, mostly, but also drama classes I took at a community center and stuff.) However, I was super into the anime and the manga (published in the American Shounen Jump) and the story. I got this illicit thrill by going to the card shop even when I didn't play to see the boys I was friends with and to call their "YuGiOh cards" "Duel Monsters" cards because it gave me this sort of lowkey LARPing vibe.

My childhood best friend (who is still a friend, though we've been more reconnecting lately over YuGiOh - one of those blessings - than consistently in contact and distinguishing her from best friend made as an adult) and I were mutual story-rather-than-card-liking oddballs, but during that part of our lives, she moved to California with her family. Life rolled on, and I got into other fandoms bit by bit. YuGiOh stuck around in the forefront for a while, but as my card-playing friends cared less and less about the anime, I had fewer and fewer ways to remain engaged. The investment began to just feel frustrating. Then some other shiny thing caught my eye, and it just sort of fell into dormancy in the back of my mind.

Then sometime when I was in high school, LittleKuriboh (CardGamesFTW) came along with his YuGiOh: The Abridged Series. Now, I'm not exactly sure how I watched it or when I first watched it, because I had dial-up internet at home all the way through moving at 18. I think I did leech some neighbors' wifi on my first laptop, but it worked only intermittently and I had to be sitting in this VERY SPECIFIC SPOT on my bed and the weather had to be right for it to work. Sorry neighbor of the past, if it bothered you, but I was just trying to read message boards and watch early YouTube...

Anyway, YGOTAS was magical. It made me laugh and laugh and laugh. The thing is, it absolutely rips this little story apart, but it puts it back together again without taking away any of the love that LK obviously feels for it. It is merciless parody, but it has a genuine affection at its soul that positively impacted (I hope) my sense of humor forever at that very formative time in my life.

I also have struggled with depression since 13-14 in particular if not before. Again, I can sort of date it because I remember sort of hitting this wall with depression at one point in my early teens where I remember just lying in bed crying and crying and crying without knowing why. I think I'd been sick for a while with some normal cold or flu kind of deal, but the increased lethargy and silence and boredom all sort of ate through my tolerance of whatever building depression I had, and I just broke for a bit. I remember trying to console myself, trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and one of the ways that I tried to do this was by listening to music. I turned on the CD player by my bed, I filtered through radio stations. I had the "Music to Duel By" YuGiOh soundtrack thing, and in the jewel case there were these stickers that I refused to use but neatly kept inside. The largest one was a sticker of Yami Yugi, whom I had the biggest crush in the universe on, and I remember looking at this sticker and trying to get myself to lapse into comforting maladaptive fandom daydreaming (my habit of composing fic in my head I've had forever and ever). And there I was, staring at my emo hair anime husband as a teenager, and he did nothing for me! I put him away again and started bawling.

But YGOTAS took something that has that sort of catalyst moment for me and made it into something comforting, positive, and bright all over again. Of course, some of the jokes haven't aged well. (There are a couple of trans-related jokes that make me wince early on.) However, I think that it is obvious from his continued contributions to and presence inf andom and internet culture in general that LK is willing to learn and grow and has only helpful and kind intentions. I don't know him personally or anything. (He did like a tweet I made @ him the other day and it made my day, because I am a small peon who thrives on validation.) But I just... really admire him.

Anyway, I kept watching YGOTAS for a while, but sometime around the point when I had stopped watching the dubbed anime as a child, I also stopped watching the Abridged Series for some reason? I honestly don't know how or why that happened. Maybe I lost interest because I thought I would no longer have context. Maybe I was too busy/depressed/obsessed with something else. Whatever the case was, I recently picked it up about where I remembered leaving off. Then I was reminded at how much strange, earnest investment that LK manages to elicit from me about these parody-versions of these characters. I genuinely want to read and write about them! I want to think about how they're doing when they're not on screen. And they're JOKES. So bit by bit, I got sucked into trying to remember the actual lore, the actual story, and the actual characterizations that these simplified and sillier versions represent. So that's how I ended up back into YuGiOh. I'm currently working on a fic series that is based on a lot of things including my memory and growing understanding of the actual canon and upon things the Abridged Series has made me think and feel while also working through the subbed anime to see what exactly was lost in translation.

I really want to read the manga too if I can find an stomach it. (It's a lot more dark and even gory at times.)

Anyway, YuGiOh the Abridged Series is fantastic and joy-inducing, badly-aged jokes disclaimer withstanding. Whether you love YuGiOh already or have never seen it, you might enjoy giving it a chance. It'll make you laugh, probably, and if you like it but never watched YuGiOh, maybe you could check out the real thing!