Re: Summer plans  was: shinies and sickies
  By: Nancy Backus to Damon A. Getsman on Sat Jul 25 2015 23:14:02

 NB> Ah, so that's how it happened... I might have guessed... :)  Being so
 NB> far behind, though, I can hope that things are starting to resolve
 NB> themselves by now...  :)   I'd guess that it wasn't an intentional
 NB> error, though, some people just aren't good at careful accounting... :|

  Yeah there might be enough to start Aikido now...  I got paid back a
significant portion and some more pay ran through.  Problem is that we had both
gotten chopped back to 5hrs/wk/head, so it's not nearly what it should be. 
That being said, I hate to wait any longer to get him into Aikido.  That was
supposed to be part of what was good, or at least regular/consistent, about
summer, and there's only like a month of that left.  I think I'm gonna take him
on Monday and try to get that finally caught up.  I've been working on reducing
any unnecessary spending as much as possible in order to be able to do this. 
Balancing future needs with present needs is always a little difficult for me
in tight circumstances, though.

 NB> Sounds to me as though perhaps you are expecting both too much of the
 NB> library and too much trouble from the inner city... Starting small with
 NB> the miniscule branch might not be the worst thing, and perhaps the inner
 NB> city isn't quite as bad as you fear...?  Of course, true, I don't know
 NB> the particulars of your town... but I do have some experience in
 NB> actually living in the "bad part" of town, and finding it not as scary
 NB> as purported...  :) 

  Well okay I'm gonna go ahead and rephrase this in terms of my agoraphobia. 
When things aren't going the absolute best for me, I have some serious terms in
going out into any place where I can't avoid other people, unless it's people
that I already know well.  I'm trying not to just pull this out of my ass as an
excuse; at times it can be an excuse, but lately I haven't been doing too well
with the combination of that, being stuck in a quagmire that was making me
unable to produce anything decently while work was paying me significantly per
hour, then hours were cut, my money was lost, and a bit of self-esteem
temporarily went out the window with all of that.  It's that kind of situation
that makes my agoraphobic tendencies flare up.  It gets bad enough so that I
can't even go out for my daily run and do the things that I need to for
personal maintenance and coping unless I do them early or late enough (and
lately I haven't been able to do it late at all) to avoid almost all people
along the way.
  It's not so much the 'bad part of town' aspect, it's simple population
density.  I hate driving there, the bus to get there is hell for me if I don't
have a couple of xanax under my tongue, and I know that place is beautiful and
expansive, precisely what we're looking for, but I need to be able to deal with
it first at this phase.  It sucks when I know that my own issues are holding
back my son's abilities like this at times.  At least his ability to get out
and socialize a little bit more.  That being said, with the fiscal situation
getting back together, my coping mechanisms back in place, and the hours cap
being restored (though only to halfway of the max that it'd gone to before), my
esteem is rising a bit again towards the point where I might be able to
consider this soon.
  If nothing else there's a knitting class that's free if you bring your own
supplies at the library branch that we go to (miniscule) that I want to try out
at some point even if I'm all agoraphobic just for more practice working
through it.  Seems like a calm enough setting to start with.

 NB> As long as it's only temporary, it's best to not get too upset by it...
 NB> and hopefully, it won't happen again.... 

  Finances are separate from our employer now.  I made sure of that.  I won't
be losing money to something like this again.  Heh.

 NB>>> For sure it gets easier when you have a more settled environment...
 NB> True... there's training for yourself there, too... training yourself to
 NB> keep your balance despite the vagaries of life... so as to be able to
 NB> help him keep his balance...  :)

  I've got my balancing pole and I'm tryin' to use it.  ;)

 NB> Hope things have gotten more back to normal by now...  :)

  It took awhile, but they're definitely doing better as of the last week. 
Hell, just yesterday I finally got through the quagmire on that coding project.
I mean I've billed these guys for over a hundred hours on this stuff and they
haven't been able to see any result at all.  Until yesterday.  I finally got it
working.  That was the deepest delve I've gone into on this code so far and the
fact that I got out successfully and with their feature implemented, even after
so long, makes me feel great.  Plus now I know how everything is structured in
there, so anything that I might have to do after this point is going to take a
fraction of the time of this particular job.  God that had me feeling out,
exposed, and like doom was coming for me for awhile.  I am definitely not
secure in my feelings/experience as a developer yet.

 NB> Doesn't hurt to have someone to tell them to...  ;)  And correspondence
 NB> can help you keep your perspective... :)

  Well thank you for helping me with that.  ;)
  I'm out to find some more messages to reply to, since I've actually got some
time to get to it today.  I'm sure you'll get more in your inbox from me soon. 
Best wishes!

  -D
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