#my writing has been so sparse I'll take what I can manage at this point

[shinobicyrus]

Meeting for the First Time Again

A short little DS9 fic inspired by @c-rowlesdraws more alien redesign of Dax. Here’s a re-imagining Sisko’s reunion with his old friend.

Besides bearing DS9’s new Science and Medical officers, the USS Bhaskara was offloading much-needed support personnel and medical supplies for both the station and Bajor. With the Enterprise being called away earlier than anticipated, the Bhaskara would likely be the last Federation ship any of them would see for weeks.

Major Kira had accompanied Sisko aboard, and had stood straight-backed and on edge during the formalities between him and the Bhaskara’s captain. Charitably, Sisko figured it might not have been comfortable for her to be stuck in the unfamiliar close quarters of a Federation starship, or it maybe being surrounding by over a hundred sapients of a dozen different species all in their matching, pristine uniforms.

He still hadn’t come to a final verdict with her, yet. Certainly she had no love for the Federation. Hadn’t been at all shy to disclose that fact either, which he couldn’t help but privately admire. It was the kind of refreshingly straightforward attitude that Sisko didn’t encounter as often as he liked, anymore.

At least he knew where they stood. There may never be any friendliness there, but there could at least be a mutual respect, if they didn’t give each other brain damage butting heads all day.

Well. That was what their new doctor was for.

He was human and very young. His blue uniform was freshly replicated, and a medical bag hung off of his shoulder as if he expected to start performing first aid the moment he stepped off the ship. Sisko had read his file. Doctor Julian Subatoi Bashir had the highest qualifications of any medical practitioner he’d ever seen, and the academic accolades to have his pick of duty assignments.

Instead of research or a ship’s physician, he chooses a barely-functional Cardassian monstrosity on the furthest fringes of Federation space.

No one makes that choice unless they have something to prove. That never boded well. Sisko could only hope the few weeks tending to a people trying to recover from decades of slavery and genocide will give the good doctor a good dose of sobering reality.

Thankfully, Captain T’Shel was vulcan and took zero offense when Sisko politely declined their offer of a light tea in their stateroom. With the amount of work still needed to get DS9 up and running, it was only Logical he take his officers and return to work as soon as possible.

Their disembarkation went without incident, though Sisko half-expected the airlock to jam again. Next to him, Doctor Bashir took in the grim Cardassian architecture of the promenade with that eagerness unique to academy graduates on their first assignment; his eyes sparkled with adventure and Sisko marveled that he himself had ever been that young. 

DS9’s Science officer was more sedate, flowing over the tall rim of the airlock on many legs with a smooth, liquid grace. Two pairs of stubby but strong limbs pushed her long body upright and brought her flat, vaguely amphibian head at about his chest-level, passably mimicking a biped.

“Commander.” Major Kira looked uncertainly at her charges. “If you’d like me to give these two a tour of the station – ”

“You and Doctor Bashir go ahead, Major.” He turned to the trill and saw her already looking at him. The face of a stranger. Still, he smiled at her. “I’m afraid I have to put Lieutenant Dax to work right away.”

Dax nodded, unperturbed at being put to work so soon after a long starship journey. Not even time to throw her pack into her new quarters.

Major Kira for one just seemed relieved. The sidelong glance she gave Dax made it clear how unused she was to dealing with non-humanoids. Sisko couldn’t bring himself to judge – all of her interactions with off-worlders before now had involved Cardassians.

Before she could herd him away, Doctor Bashir half-ran past Kira to Dax’s side, stopping them from leaving. Sisko was too surprised – and too curious of Dax’s reaction – to chide him.

This time.

“Jadzia!” He adjusted the strap of his bag, completely heedless of the disgruntled glare Major Kira had leveled at him like a charging phaser. “I was thinking. Maybe we could…” He cocked his head, boyish smile shy but still precocious. “Get together later. For dinner?”

Dax did not answer immediately, as if he...she were weighing the question. As one second, then another ticked by without a response, Sisko watched the fear creep into Bashir’s eyes as it slowly dawned on him that he was holding up his commanding officer. Sisko said nothing to add or alleviate his anxiety, and Bashir stammered, looking to him and then back to Dax. “O-o-or a drink?”

Dax blinked slowly. Her mouth curled into a shape a human would find friendly. Her voice was thick, melodious and warm like rain on a muggy day. “I’d be delighted.”

Three words was evidently all it took to leave Doctor Bashir a dumb, grinning blob of hormones stuck in place in front of the airlock. Dax and Sisko left him to be pried off the deck by the Major.

They walked side-by-side down through the promenade. Sisko kept his strides small so the four shorter limbs on Dax’s lower body could keep up without much difficulty.

While trills could stand upright just fine, walking without all eight limbs was another matter; like expecting a human to hop around on one foot all day. Any Federation-raised citizen wouldn’t think twice about trill walking past low to the ground, but Curzon had stubbornly mastered the art.  

‘Gotta look them in the eye, Benjamin. Think I could have gotten anything done at Khitomer crawling around the Klingons’ pointy boots?’

Watching her walk was what did it. The dignified posture, head bobbing and both pairs of upper-arms clasped behind her back. It was all Curzon, but eerily incongruous. Like looking into the mirror and seeing the wrong color uniform.

Sisko leaned down to ask, “He’s a little young for you, isn’t he?”

“Trills mature a little faster than humans, but we’re close in Standard,” Dax said. “He’s twenty-seven and I’m –”

“Three-hundred twenty-seven?”

“You know I stopped counting, Benjamin.”

“How convenient for you.”

Dax chortled a bubbly trill laugh. “What was that human expression you told me once? About youth and old age?”

“Youth is wasted on the young.”

“A pitfall I’m glad to have avoided,” Dax grinned.

“You’re dodging the question.”

She stroked her whiskers like Curzon used to do when he was pretending to be a forgetful old man. When...she was pretending. “And what question would that be?”

“Whether the man knows he’s chasing after someone who’s technically older than his great-grandparents.

“Of course he knows,” Dax’s upper body stood a tad straighter. “He finds it fascinating. He’s never met a joined species before.”

“‘Fascinated’ isn’t the word I’d have chosen to describe it.”

“It’s the spots. And the arms,” She raised two of them to fend off his raised eyebrow. “Don’t worry Benjamin, I’ve been around humans long enough to be able to spot a harmless crush. He’ll sigh and pine at the ‘unattainable older woman’ shield he put around me until he gets over it.”

“I’ll trust your expertise on the matter,” Sisko said wryly. “While we’re on the subject, what’s your opinion of him?”

“My opinion?”

“You've trained your share of clueless ensigns and terrorized enough trill initiates...”

“That’s true,” Dax agreed. “I happen to remember one young cadet who swore he’d be captain of a starship by thirty.”

“And an admiral by forty.”

“How is that going for you?”

“Further along than Cal. And you’re changing the subject.”

Those whiskers, again. “The subject being?”

“Come on now, Dax. You two were stuck on the Bhaskara for three weeks. That’s more than long enough for you to get a good read on him.”

“Is this an official request from my superior officer?”

Superior officer. Curzon. That…was going to take some getting used to. “If it has to be, but I’d rather be talking with an old friend whose opinion I trust.”

Dax looked pensively at patterns on the deck plating as they walked. “He’s...young. Eager. Brilliant and knows it, but even the arrogance feels like an affectation. Almost obligatory. At least, it’s flimsy enough that I doubt it will last long outside of a competitive Academy environment.”

“He specifically asked to be here.”

Dax’s hum was like rippling water. “He told me that as well.”

“That sounds like a man with something to prove.” Sisko didn’t hide the disapproval in his voice. From another officer under his command, maybe. Not from Dax.

“Yes, but it’s to himself first and foremost. I’m not a counselor Benjamin, so I couldn’t tell you why, but  I’m confident his rough edges will be smoothed over with little bit of time, wisdom, and real-world experience. And,” she added with a thin smile. “The guiding hand of a wise mentor.”

“I hope I can live up to your example.”

“Oh, I meant me. You’ll do too, I suppose,” Dax winked. “I taught you everything you know.”

For the first time since he boarded that godforsaken Cardassian station, Ben Sisko laughed. “Not everything, Old Man.”

[raleighliving]

Raleigh Apartment Culture

So I'm of the mind that Raleigh is a great place to live. It has my favorite things, my favorite people, and I'm too broke to move anywhere else.

Raleigh works for me, but I recognize it doesn't work for everyone. Some people had less than ideal childhoods and wanna escape the state ASAP, some just want to live closer to their dream jobs or have new opportunities. That's all fine, but what if this describes where you are now?

What if, for the sake of argument, you're outside of NC and wanna move in? Moving is expensive, time-consuming, and risky at the best of times; so you wanna make sure that wherever you're landing is at least as good as where you started 90% of the time

"But RL," I hear you say, "you make Raleigh sound like an idyllic dreamscape populated with parks and a diverse kumbayah of peoples living in harmony"

I do talk about Raleigh in a positive light but, like a life saving medicine flavored like ass, sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.

So before you spend thousands of dollars on moving vans, boxes, and grits; here's a crash course on what it's like living in a Raleigh apartment, coming from someone whose majority of Raleigh Living (heh) has been in apartments.

First off, location. Any realtor will tell you that location is 80% of the sale to sound profound, and as anyone who has lived in the middle of ass-backward nowhere can tell you: It sucks having to drive 30 minutes to go anywhere.

Good news: With the Raleigh Beltline and connecting roads, there are very few places in Raleigh where your trip will last longer than thirty minutes one-way. Bad News: where you set down still matters because cutting down on travel is important for car and mental health.

North Raleigh is different from south Raleigh is different from northwest Raleigh, and the locals aren't the only difference you'll find between locations. Each segment of Raleigh has something to offer, with easier access to some attractions than others and neighboring cities for when you need something outside the RDU area.

Using downtown as the center of our wheel, people generally divide Raleigh into North and South Raleigh (with distinction given for NW, SE, NE, etc when needed). N.Raleigh is considered generally more upscale, a slice of suburban living interspersed with plenty of shopping centers for families and the moderately wealthy; but it's boring as all hell.

Want some fun? Excitement in the evenings and a more traditional urban experience with bars, night clubs, strip clubs, and more? South Raleigh is your best bet, at the cost of being the "sketchy" side of Raleigh. That kind of place where you'll see a bunch of auto shops that look abandoned but haven't been closed in the past 5 years and there's at least one customer from time to time.

Of course, this is a lot of generalizing but you'll find that it's still mostly accurate. The main exception in this is Capital Blvd, a highway cutting across north and south Raleigh on the eastern half of the city; a high crime corridor that's undergoing some changes in the northern half that have (somewhat) reduced crime but most people will still associate that area with the majority of Raleigh's crime and debauchery.

More importantly, is the distinction Raleigh citizens put on inside the beltline versus outside the beltline. The I-440 and 540 highways that wrap around Downtown form the mythical beltline, and to a degree what you have access to. Inside the beltline is the majority of workplaces, stores, and shopping centers; while outside you'll still have these things just to a more... dispersed extent.

North Raleigh actually kinda exemplifies this perfectly. Living inside the beltline, you have access to places like North Hills, Crabtree Valley mall, and Triangle Town Center. Live outside the beltline, like I currently am, and you're looking at 10 to 15 minutes to the nearest sheetz for that late night double hot dog fix.

So for point one: How important is it that you're near things? The majority of apartments and rental properties are in or around the belt-line, but if you want to save some cash on rent checks the cheaper properties are gonna extend your trips a bit.

Next, what can you expect in terms of neighbors? Does Raleigh have a hip party scene full of teens renting cheap apartments and blasting trap music at 3AM?

Depends on where you live

I swear not every point is going to be this, but there's an important distinction this time that affects the type of people your complex will likely have surrounding you; are you in North or South Raleigh?

North Raleigh has a ton of pre-schools, k-12 public schools (Leesville, Hillburn, Lead Mine, just to name a few), and office complexes that make up the job market. As a result the majority of apartment renters in north Raleigh tend to be families with a few small kids or so.

As a result, living off of Glenwood North and Edwards Mill I never had any noise problems from neighbors, the worst being kids playing outside at 3PM sounding like they were being murdered (which apparently is a common thing and I apologize to any neighbors I frightened with ghastly shrieks).

What I did have a problem with, however, was the typical Karen's you hear people complain about online. Renting a property now, we have access to our neighborhood's NextDoor page and it's hilarious sometimes to go on and read the comments, but living at a certain property we had a sort of mini-Facebook for residents

That thing was always full of either people who were moving out looking to sell their furniture or people passive-aggressively challenging each other/the apartment managers with comments about things happening around the complex.

Once I logged in to see one man accuse another, without ever actually accusing someone specific ("I know who did it and they should be ashamed" type post) of putting glass beer bottles under the tires of his truck to try and puncture them. Everyone acts civil in public, but then online they'll stir the pot harder than a chef with a hand mixer.

South Raleigh, you have the schools like Shaw University, Meredith, and NCSU; so the people renting down there are typically college kids. You'll see more apartments that cater towards them like University Village or University Woods, but sometimes these places will cater to both college kids and working adults

Avoid these places like the plague, because despite sometimes having a lower cost to live there the neighbors and their shenanigans will drive you up the wall (unless you're the type to join in, then go wild).

I've had friends stay at places like University Village and The Proper (formerly The Vie, formerly Wolf Creek) who've shared horror stories. 3AM parties ending in property damage or vomit in inconvenient places, drug deals not even trying to be subtle, and maintenance workers doing nothing because regardless of the apartment conditions; no school's gonna pull their contract with them unless news articles start getting written.

http://www.technicianonline.com/news/article_898ddf34-82f5-11e7-b3d8-07059d248619.html

https://www.wral.com/vie-at-raleigh-residents-finally-able-to-move-into-clean-units/16887833/

http://www.technicianonline.com/news/article_ea8ed7aa-a092-11e8-a2af-e70af36566d0.html

Otherwise, south Raleigh apartments are largely like north Raleigh apartments; except the crime rate tends to be a little higher and you'll run into more singles and people working full time.

Otherwise, Raleigh apartment culture is like apartment culture anywhere else in the country. You have a mix of apartments catering to those just looking to live versus more ostentatious luxury apartments with fancy pools, exercise facilities, and tech packages to draw people in.

If you're renting in Raleigh, however, do try to get a roommate or two if you can manage. Even with a decent job paying 800+ on a one bedroom one bath apartment can be exhausting at best, but with even one other person that can functionally halve your expenses

So if you're a young professional, or a student, or even if you have a small family, I can safely recommend renting in Raleigh. There's plenty of places that'll accommodate you, and cater towards your needs.

But what about everyone else? Are there people who shouldn't rent in Raleigh?

No

But there are groups who I'd seriously ask to consider their other choices before picking Raleigh as a destination for their new home.

For instance, are you a member of the LGBT community? A trans or non-binary individual? Well then, first off, I want you to know that you're loved and valid. I'm accepting of who you are and appreciate everyone's right to identify how they choose, but I'm not everyone.

Raleigh's bluer than other parts of North Carolina, as I've stated in other blog write-ups, but it's still part of North Carolina unfortunately and as a result, you'll face some challenges.

I doubt anyone's gonna burn a cross in your yard or knock over your mailbox, but Raleigh doesn't offer LGBT protections for housing, jobs, or credit/lending discriminations according to the Movement Advancement Project's website.

We have support organizations for LGBT and NB individuals, plenty of high schools and colleges have Gay-Straight Alliance clubs, and there are numerous businesses downtown that cater specifically to those individuals... but we're also the state that got into a lot of hot water because of a stupid bathroom bill, and our politicians are trying to pass anti-trans sports legislation (because they now magically care about the integrity of womens sports).

By that measure, but to a lesser extent, if you fall outside the Liberal/Conservative political spectrum then be prepared to have no one to discuss your politics with outside of a few sparse networks like the DSA.

Additionally, if you don't have someone to room with or a significant other to split costs with; you may want to try searching somewhere a little cheaper.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Raleigh housing prices aren't terrible for a major metropolitan city, but we're not the best prices in the world.

You can get prices on apartments and rentals lower than say, California or New York. However, compared to other parts of NC like Greensboro or Garner; rentals are still a bit much.

On average, a Raleigh apartment can run you about $900 for a single bedroom and a single bathroom. You can find cheaper, but often times there's some risk associated (Crime levels, quality of the room, quality of the property manager, etc.) Looking for a two bedroom? Then your average price is gonna jump up to around $1,200, and this is all before utilities and cable come into play.

It's true a lot of companies around here will pay more than the $7.25 minimum wage, but most low-skilled jobs will pay around 10-11 an hour.

I guess though, that's kind of an obvious statement. "Don't live in Raleigh if you can't afford to live in Raleigh."

I might expand on these thoughts at a later time, but hopefully for now I've given you some food for thought; or at the very least an entertaining read for a few minutes.

I love my city, and I love the friends I've made in it, but the sad truth is that nowhere is perfect for everyone; leastways Raleigh. If Raleigh sounds like the kind of place you'd like to live in, at least take a day trip to come visit and see how things go that way. Visit some stores, meet some locals, and form an opinion off of more than travel blogs and youtube videos.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT COMPANY

It has become one of the first varies depending on whether you have control over the whole system and have the source code of all the parts, as ITA presumably does, you can create an enemy if there isn't a real one. But that comes with the territory. The biggest startup ideas are terrifying. But I don't think many nerds would. The users in this case are those critical few thousand people you'd like to move to Silicon Valley? It was something to do together, and because the drugs were illegal, it was hard to imagine a technology company. Economies are made out of people, and channels the rest into unproductive jobs. What you should not do is rebel.

Like many nerds, probably, it was hard to imagine a technology company making money that way. Don't worry if a project doesn't seem to be about technology. Friends offer moral support few startups are started by one person, but secrecy also has its advantages. My guess is that they make deals close faster.1 These fonts are closer to the one played in the real world is that it's part of the mechanism of popularity. But the more investors you have in a round, the less it would take at least six months to write. But they are not the same thing with equity instead of debt. Another startup might have needed a database guy, or someone with connections in the movie business. Plenty of famous people do; in the short term, the quality of his ideas.

Your tastes will change. She was horrified when the doctors running the study discovered what appeared to be a startup. I'm uncomfortably aware that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks. She's trying to get people to start calling them portals instead of search engines. If it's any consolation to the individual mosquito. And that would in turn mean that you can. You can measure how demoralizing it is by the number of users. It's much better than the drab Sears Catalogs of art that undergraduates are forced to buy for Art History 101. The CEO of that company, the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell can't be a good deal of overlap between them.

That's leverage. Some of the attention people currently devote to watching movies and TV can be stolen by things that seem completely unrelated, like social networking apps. Possibly, but I'd bet not. So there you have it: languages are not equivalent, and I am not surprised to hear it. Number 2, most managers deliberately ignore this. On the other hand, the extra million dollars would give them a lot more runway. And the pages don't have the clean, sparse feel they used to. Both customers and investors will be feeling pinched. Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell can't be a company of one person. Theirs was not to have a medium that makes change easy. Most of the greatest discoveries seem so simple that you say to high school students aren't capable of getting anything done yet. What would happen if you treated them as a web service.

I believe we were the only D table in our cafeteria map.2 Many of the employees e. Much more commonly you launch something, and no one else would be in a random corporate job. Because they haven't tried to control it with a wireless mouse, but the fear of looking bad than by the hope of gain, but the way one anticipates a delicious dinner. There's no incentive that would make them move.3 Imagine a company with several times the power Google has now, but way meaner. Like the rest of the group slows you down. If a company considers itself to be in a rush to choose your life's work.4 If this works, it would be a curious state of affairs if you could, you'd have some pretty big gaps. And you can start today.

It is the proverbial fishing rod, rather than the fish. You can't answer that; if you fail. This essay is derived from a keynote at Xtech. I found myself thinking: I can understand why German universities declined in the 1930s, after they excluded Jews. Which companies are in the US, because they don't know what the kids are kept in prisons, but that they were the first investors in Google. The reason startups have been using more convertible notes in angel rounds is that they can combine as they wish, like Lego. That's the nature of platforms. As one data point on the curve that you want to improve your chances, you should think far more about who you can recruit as a cofounder than the state of the economy doesn't matter much. Yes, as you continue to design things. Of course not.

This is a list of danger signs to watch out for. When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to be simple, you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. The power of chance meetings is more variable than people around you. So be honest with yourself about the sort of deadlock that happens when investors all wait to see who else is investing? Ornament is not in itself bad, only when it's camouflage on insipid form. How does a more powerful language probably decreases the size of the team you need, you can't be a good one. I want there to be more interesting than a stretch of flashy but mindlessly repetitive painting of, say, the Quicksort algorithm, which was discovered in 1960 and is still the fastest general-purpose sort. If you asked the pointy-haired boss in 1992 what language software should be written in, he would have answered with as little hesitation as he does today.

Notes

It requires the kind of kludge you need to go behind the rapacious one. Simpler just to steal the ball away from taking a difficult position.

Median may be whether what you can do is say you've reformed, and you have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed. If you're not even be tempted to do better. What people will give you fifty times as much as people in return for something they get a patent is conveniently just longer than the long term than one level of incivility, the big acquisition offers that every successful startup?

Unfortunately, not lowercase. Yes, I put it this way, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving less room to avoid the conclusion that tax rates. Down rounds are at selling it to the way they have to be self-interest explains much of the causes of failure would be easy to get the answer to, in Galbraith's words, of course finding words this way.

Trevor Blackwell reminds you to behave like adults, it would have gone into the work of selection. They have the balls to ask, what would our competitors had known we were using Lisp, though I think it's roughly what everyone must have affected what they made much of the false positive rates are untrustworthy, as far as I explain later.

Thanks to Robert Morris, the Berkeley CSUA, Trevor Blackwell, Savraj Singh, Bob van der Zwaan essay, Chris Dixon, and Greg McAdoo for their feedback on these thoughts.

[frogsandfries]

Don't really know why I'm awake so early

I woke up around a quarter after six to two short, like alarm/klaxon-y noises. They sounded like they came from my partner's side of the room........... which they freaking did. Dammit, I just heard it again and now that I'm properly awake, it's my partner's damn phone.

I've got another freaking upset stomach, I'm pretty certain this is from the meatloaf. Or maybe it's caused by eating myself silly. Maybe is caused by the water. The only thing I can say for certain is wrong with the meatloaf is that it's entirely ground turkey, which I wouldn't ever eat by itself. I usually use ground turkey rarely if ever, and exclusively in my meatloaf. Usually to make the beef go further. But, like I've said, there was no beef when we bought the ground turkey.

Let's be honest, after I got really upset about being told I'm not eligible for reconsideration for three months, my partner took me to Dairy Queen, where I got that....... ice slush thing with ice cream. So that probably didn't help my stomach, but oddly, it didn't promptly trigger my system. Are the ice crystals in those slushies always so huge?? They were almost too big to chew, so I spat a good bunch out and tried to drink around the rest.

We sat on the curb, since that DQ was part of a truck stop/convenience store, and talked about this writing project he wants to do, then we started to talk about what I want to do short term with my work, until I can get back to work myself.

My partner has orientation today. It's pretty weird that it's on a Saturday, but the hiring manager was out for three weeks with corona. He's really excited about this; he's happy to have money coming back into his pocket; he's happy to be able to try to look out for me.

I'm kinda scared that my partner is going to bring it home. I mean, at least if we were both doing this, I guess I'd have an equal risk of contracting it myself. I think we're quite lucky to live in a state with a rather sparse population, that took action early and continues to stay ahead of this thing.

I think I would honestly be paralyzed, at this point, if he got it and didn't recover. But this state has a decent number of recoveries, I think, and too many people actively ill to tell, but I think my partner would be okay. But I definitely worry that I would not be okay if he brought it home.

Fucking everything is so fucking bizarre and surreal.......

I honestly don't know what I should be doing. I've only got a few designs available to put on merch so far. My partner kept talking about opening a Patreon and sharing my graphic novel. Doing it digitally is certainly faster; at the tiny scale that I'm doing it right now, they take about a day. I'm worried that the current versions are too small to be practical and that I'll have to start over.

Drawing is NOT my favorite, and I really, strongly believe that cross-stitch is THE medium for this story.

But also, I've been sitting on this narrative for a decade, officially. It's time to get it in front of somebody. I just wish I had a proper office at least, where I could put a Cintiq and a nice strong laptop and that laptop would run something a little better than Autodesk Sketchbook. Autodesk is good, and it's good for using on a tablet; honestly, if you really know what you're doing, and you have the patience to do it, you can do just about as good with Autodesk as you could with Gimp and such programs. I just have neither the know-how nor the patience.

I would rather cross-stitch. My partner argues that there's no way I could produce Etsy-grade photos of my work with just my phone, photos that would impress and sell potential patrons. He thinks if his mom shares my Patreon link, people who might not want stuff but still enjoy my work, might be more inclined to support my work.

I just don't have any freaking clue what kinds of rewards I would offer. Maybe at first, it would be free downloads of a pattern?? Or maybe four patterns? Five? Maybe before I even offer one pattern a month, I should focus on having a decent backlog of patterns. Maybe I should make a couple new patterns in the coming week.

I feel bad.

There aren't many places to work that I can easily walk to. Most of them are either fully closed or limited operation, or just not looking for help. I feel bad for sitting home "doing nothing", because art isn't work to me, it very much is pleasure. I hate assuming a very gender-traditional relationship, where the man is working and the woman stays home and does chores and cooks and gets head pats. I wanna work. I want my own money. I want to say, alright, the bills are all paid, I'm gonna buy art supplies because I earned it. I'm gonna go to Ross, because I earned it. I don't want to tell my partner, alright I paid the bills with the money you earned; now I'm going to treat myself to a couple of new tops from Ross. With your money.

I think even if we're married, it'll still be his money and my money. I just don't have the foundation or structure in my mind to be like, I stay home and make art, but the money my partner is sacrificing his creative time and energy to earn is also fairly mine. The only money that is mine is money that I've earned. So I better either get a proper job or learn to hustle the shit out of my art.

You know what could be work? Live streaming. There's a buuuuunnnnnncccchhhhhh of places for that. Google hangouts, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, YouTube................Tiktok. I could finally get hip with all the cool kids 🙄😂 I could livestream myself stitching. Not sure there's an audience for it, but I absolutely could sit there for two hours, probably not in silence, but maybe I could borrow my partner's headphones (should've grabbed my own 🤦‍♀️). Then I would just have to find a good spot to post my phone. I could easily make one, but I got nada for materials to goof around with.