blog

here's just a dump of all my blog posts i guess? i don't think i'll make these often, but sometimes i feel like i have things to say and no one to say those things to.

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why i'm a custodian
26.11.10

(i would rather this be titled like "how i became a custodian" or something like that but i want blog titles to take up one line lol)

when i was 18 i just got out of high school and i was completely lost, i had no idea what i wanted to do. i had never had a job before, i had my drivers license but i didn't have a car, school was.. fine i guess? it smoothed out toward the end, so college could have been an option. i had things i enjoyed doing, sure, but i felt like i didn't want to do anything. i didn't understand why other people wanted to work, other than the fact that they needed to make money to survive.

at the time, i was living in my parents basement and i was given some time to just kinda.. coast i guess. considering college.. losing interest.. feeling anxiety. time passed and parents started to put pressure on me, but i still had absolutely no direction. then, some time in november, my aunts let me know there was a custodial part time job that was within walking distance from my house at a school they used to work at. i (reluctantly) took up the offer and my aunt drove me down there.

at first it was.. fine. at least it was something new and some weight was taken off my shoulders, even though i was only working 3-4 hours per day. i was paying $500 in rent every month and basically everything else was saved. but daily custodial work is quite repetitive... same classrooms, same bathrooms, same route, every day, the same exact thing. i fell into this groove and i stayed there for years, and i hated the work. summers would roll around and that was nice, new things to do and you were usually working with other people. i was even going out of my way to work more hours than i was before. but then summers ended, and it was back to the daily routine. i think without the summers to look forward to, i would have quit. i started to feel lost again, the same way i felt when i had no job.

looking back now, my boss clearly saw that i did not enjoy this at all. i would try to get all my work done as quickly as possible so i could go home, and my quality of work clearly was deteriorating. it was at the end of my 3rd year working there when my boss mentioned a new position opened up. i would be working roughly the same hours, it was earlier in the day, my pay was the same, but i wouldn't be cleaning up bathrooms or classrooms or anything, i would be in the lunch room cleaning up after students when they left.

i thought about it (kinda funny that i didn't immediately take it), then the next day i told my boss i'd like to take the new position.

i got to meet students and teachers for the first time, since i had never worked during school hours before, and it was the first time i had heard people thank me for the work i've been doing. it feels silly to think back at this now, but at the time i genuinely never really thought about how the work i was doing was actually making a direct positive impact on the school. i just thought of my work as work and that was it.

coming to this realization, that i've been making a positive impact on my local community all along, it really changed everything about how i thought about work in general, and i finally realized what i wanted to get out of the work that i do in my life. i felt lost, then i realized i had been where i needed to be all along, as cheesy as that sounds.

i now work full time as a custodian, and i would recommend this career to anyone else who feels lost like i did. i'm really happy i didn't go into college so i could waste 4 years to become a database programmer or something, just for me to never have the opportunity to realize that it's incredibly fulfilling and motivating to make a direct positive impact on my local community.

whatever career path you decide to go down, i hope you find something similar to what i found.

make a site
26.11.03

if you don't have your own website, i really think you should make one! it is way easier than you think, and no social media will give you the level of control, freedom, and self expression that raw html and css grants you.

(it's also wayyy cooler to introduce yourself to someone with your own website url, rather than a twitter handle or whatever...)

there are many ways to make and host your own site. some easy, some complex, and each way of making and hosting will give you varying levels of control over your own site. this site you're looking at now is about as bare bones as it gets. it's made with html and css in notepad++, hosted on github pages, yet i still have a ton of control and freedom. make your own site today, it can be done completely for free!

to get started, i'd recommend reading melankorin's blogpost: "how to design a personal website", cause everything i have to say about this is there in that blogpost already (i also recommend checking out the rest of melankorin's site, it's really nice). and after you learn html and css, i recommend you eventually read this blog post by jeff huang, it's about stuff you should think about when making a site to make it last.

if you want some more inspiration for your site, i have a list of some personal fav sites here, specifically in the "neat" column.

tacklebox
26.10.30

the big catch tacklebox means a lot to me. it's my favorite game ever (and technically, it's only a demo). it's an open world 3rd person platformer made by an incredibly passionate and skilled team.

i can confidently say this game (it's community) changed my life. it was the first game i've written a steam review for (lol), it's the first game i've really gotten into speedrunning, it's the first game i've (attempted) to mod, and it's community is the first i've ever really joined and been a part of. members of it's community were some of the first people i came out as bi and trans to. i've met a lot of cool people through this game, and through one of these people, i met my girlfriend jam, who i drove halfway across america to live with.

i wouldn't have said i was a big fan of 3d platformers before playing this game (and i still probably wouldn't, even after playing tacklebox for a total of 2000+ hours), yet this game is my favorite game of all time. i think this platformer in particular has stuck out to me because- well it's artwork, animations, and music are beautiful- but also because nothing else i've played feels quite as good as this game. both in how it actually feels to control, but also how it's atmosphere feels. i really really love everything about this game.

even if you aren't a big fan of 3d platformers like i was/am, i still highly recommend giving this game a try. it's free! and it's community is amazing. i hope you enjoy it too.

if you aren't really sold yet, maybe check out the kickstarter trailer for the full game. i hope you like it!