2024 Week 51: Please Do Not Throw Coins at the Sacred Turtle

Every time I talk to regular people with jobs, like at Meetups or during Nonviolent Communication class, I am embarrassed by the lack of stress and rigor in my life. On Tuesday night after a party I stupidly asked someone "so, what are you up to tomorrow?" and she was like "work (duh)". My major stressors are things like being unhappy with my own writing (lol) or technical issues with my domain - I really have to laugh at that.

Well, my unfettered, unworried, unemployed life will probably end soon, since I have been job hunting (for real this time). So not much philosophising this week. Just savouring the days while I still have them:

I went on a long walk one beautiful morning. The air was cool and fresh from the night's rain but the sun was out, and so were the children and dogs and pickleball-playing seniors. I met a cat guarding the footpath and was reassured to find the Very Big Tree at AMK still standing.

Joelle from HRSS came over and groomed the bunnies. She is apparently a full-time groomer and has been doing this for 10 years!? I love it. No wonder she has both the free time and network (important and underrated!!) to do animal charity work.

Other social things this week: catching up with Van (sitting at the park talking about relationships and Ghost World); the aforementioned BBQ party (I can never believe my luck when I meet likeable people at Meetups - you mean you're in the market for new friends!?); the last NVC lesson of the year.

Swimming and hanging out with Jon, buying $3 wedding rings on Shopee for our upcoming belated wedding. We chose a Lin Yutang quote for the engraving cuz we're so ~intellectual~.

We visited Yuen Hai Ching Temple on Saturday (Winter Solstice) and found the most adorable temple guardian:

I've been on a Thomas Hardy book binge. This week I finished Far From the Madding Crowd and now I'm starting Under the Greenwood Tree. I'll admit, the 2 latter books (which are early Hardy) have the same schtick: "bunch of rustics going nuts over a pretty girl". And although he writes amazingly, the plot can be tiresome. 

I prefer Hardy's tragedies, I think: books to cut yourself to. Tess of the d'Urbervilles was perfect. I really want to read Jude the Obscure (everyone dies or kills themselves) and The Mayor of Casterbridge (village drunk accidentally auctions off his wife and daughter and repents for the rest of his life) next.

Okay, I wasn't completely unproductive this week. I did set up my personal website and migrate my Substack to Beehiiv. (Beehiiv has fewer features than Substack, but the lack of Subscribe CTAs and social noise is exactly what I wanted.) Both came in handy for an editor job interview I had on Thursday. We'll see how that goes.