Where to even start? Since my last “life update” post, here are the Big Things that have happened:
had to drop out of grad school
moved cross country (again)
re-entered the job market (cries)
lost my beloved familiar
lost my dad
just waves at everything
So let’s get into it. Content Warning: pet death, parental death, angst.
The last time I did a post like this, it’s clear that I was not in a good place. Hindsight is a bitch like that. I’m trying to wrap my head around just how much has happened in the last year, and phew. PHEW.
Grad School Drop Out
I know I’m not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last. That doesn’t lessen my ire and rage at the whole situation, which is beyond fucked. The cuts to the Department of Education, the change of how much aid PLUS loans would cover, the uncertainty of regular hours to cover even the basics, it was all fucked. After my continuation exam bombed, my self-confidence was at an all-time low, and then? Then when all of my financial aid was denied?
It was right after I visited a relative, too. (I have no idea if said relative was a good person or not. I hope they were, but I am not naïve enough to think that they were. Just because someone fought for the North in the Civil War does not mean that they were not a racist POS.)
I had just kind of settled into the mindset of making the most of living in the Rochester area. There’s a lot of history in the area (family history too, as mentioned), and I have a fond memory of driving along a strip of road that was right next to a railroad that was right next to the Erie Canal. All those transportation methods in one area–SO COOL. (Yes, I am neurodivergent, why do you ask?) So I’m trying to get into the local things, the favorite spots, what makes a place unique from the others (there’s always something), actually try to live and enjoy the area I’m in.
Then to have the ground fall out from under my feet. Again. I have gotten really, really good at pivoting when things don’t go to plan, both professionally and personally–because what are the alternatives, am I right? Crisis mode engaged, ADHD powers activate, hyperfocus go, all that. To no avail. My only options were to get someone to co-sign a loan (HAH), or…drop out.
How much could one semester cost?
There are some other factors going into this decision, to be certain. At the deepest level, higher education, particularly grad school, is not accessible in a lot of ways. It should be, but it’s not. Grad school amplifies the class difference to an absurd degree. To have the time to devote your full attention to your classes, adequate study time, homework, and sleep? Yeah, good fucking luck trying to do that with needing a job, or without an at-home support system.
The fact that the College of Art and Design was trying to push generative AI into the curriculum absolutely did not help my outlook, either. Talk about a slap in the face. Why would I use this tool when I am spending $85k a year to learn how to use my brain and my hands to do it myself? Why would I shit on my peers, my colleagues, and in more than a few instances, my friends, by using gen AI tools? Seriously. Go fuck yourselves. (I will be bitter about this for a Very Long Time.)
I’m fully aware that I did this to myself, by choosing to go to grad school, but damn. I can’t help but think that if we had a Democratic president in office, things would have turned out differently, and I would have graduated with my cohort a month ago.
Hindsight and all that. Shoulda coulda woulda.
Cascadia or Bust
Loss, grief, and anger are a heady brew, a maelstrom of emotion that could have watered a small garden with the tears that I shed. I don’t like crying, because it has been used as a weapon against me far too often. Domino’s fur was very absorbent during this time, but I finally said, “Enough. I long for home.” (The angry tears happened when I had to toss some of my art that I had made, and just in the process of cleaning out my studio. Also dealing wth shitty air conditioning and hot flashes. So angy.)
In the first of a series of auspicious events, my departure also coincided with Gen Con in Indianapolis. I had to take a step back from the gaming industry in general when I left Paizo in 2016, and fully step back from freelancing work when I started going back to school in 2021. I already knew I was going to be in the area, so taking time to make it a networking thing was a smart move. Catching up with folk was a bonus, and in the same tradition as my very first Gen Con, meeting people that I have only known online in-person.
Criss-crossing the continental United States does grant you an interesting sort of perspective on what makes you feel “home.” Is home a place? A person? The smell of food on the air? That thick summer-heavy wet heat, the sound of cicadas echoing long into the night? It’s different for every person, and by no means static and unchanging in a lifetime. For me, I know it’s water. Crossing over the Mississippi? Stunning. Seeing the Great Lakes? Deeply moving (especially after New Mexico). On the return trip? When the wide plains of North Dakota and Montana started to shift into the high desert scrubs and pine trees of my youth. The air smells different at those altitudes, alternating between the crisp night and the warmer days.
But when I dropped over onto the west side of the Cascades, into the fir trees and rivers, through Snoqualmie Pass? Tears. So many tears. Seven years gone, and I was finally back. As the first time I moved here, my friends opened their hearts and their home to me. Another auspicious event.
Rule-of-Three
In my third auspicious event, I managed to secure part-time work at Push/Pull. Prior to moving to New Mexico, I volunteered there as a means to get out of the house as well as to start networking with local artists. Previously, Push/Pull was just an art gallery, but now it’s expanded to be an art supply store and classroom space. One of the members was moving out of the area just as I moved back, and hey, guess who also has a background in operations, community management, and now, education?
The timing was wonderful, and yeah, retail work is not my favorite thing. I did my time, damn it, and as more than a few people can attest, I am really good at selling things to people. Turns out, I am excellent at selling art supplies to people, but having to be “on” is just mentally exhausting. When I’m not slinging art supplies, I am teaching classes, mostly watercolor and drawing classes (check ’em out here), expanding into teaching at corporate events and now one-on-one mentoring.
I am doing the thing that I wanted to do after school, which is pretty fucking dope, not gonna lie. But there is a tenuousness in everything arts-related right now, in the looming recession, and the general state of things. My overwhelming sense since November 2024 is that same feeing that I had post-9/11: things have changed, and getting through it will scar all of us in ways we haven’t imagined.
I often believe that things come in threes, both good and bad: a desire for order and reason in a chaotic universe, pattern recognition in effect, whatever the reason. My bad thing happened, followed by three good things. The clock was ticking on the Bad Thing, and it came in swinging.
Domino
The first time that I moved to the Seattle area, it was after a very messy breakup. It was a 0/10 situation, do not recommend, and in case you need reminding, not all abuse is physical. My cat at the time had left and decided not to return. I have my theories as to why, but a part of me has always suspected my ex had a hand in that. (Do not waste energy or tears hating this man, he passed during the COVID-19 lockdown. I spent enough tears on him.) Does the Cat Distribution System work in reverse?
I told myself that once I got my life settled and recalibrated, I would get myself a cat. Enter Domino. That was the name she had at the Humane Society, and it fit: half-harlequin masked cat with green eyes and pink toe beans. Twenty pounds of fierce in a nine pound bag of noodles that could seemingly turn off gravity at will. A terror to local bird and rodent life (I have a longer story about this that I need to rehydrate for, because I will cry the entire time).
She was with me for a month shy of fourteen years. Seattle to Albuquerque, Albuquerque to San Antonio, San Antonio to Rochester, Rochester to Seattle. My familiar in every sense of the word, with me through the highs and lows, a resting bitch face that often expressed every mood I hid, my reminder to go to bed and take care of myself, a reason to get out of bed on the days when I wanted to just hide under the covers.
If you’ve ever been graced with the love of a pet, particularly a cat’s, there is a hollowness when they leave us. We never have enough time with them. Watching them slowly fade, watching my Domino struggle to walk and function, to have her curl up in my arms with no energy to do anything else, hurt so much. It still hurts. Making the choice to have in-home euthanasia for her, to have her be able to pass peacefully away in my arms, was a blessing. If our ends are a choice, I hope that we can all choose to leave painlessly and peacefully, with dignity. I know it’s what she would have wanted. She was a dignified little thing, truly my bound creature.
Fuck.
Domino passed away on November 7th (woo, N7 Day), and my sleep schedule has not been the same since. When you’re used to sleeping with another living thing, adjusting to the lack of warmth is hard. The soothing purrs were gone, and nothing else fills the Absence quite the same way. The roommates’ corgi tries though, bless her.
Dad
The Bad Things were not done yet. Three months later (early February of this year), I get a phone call from an unknown number (which I ignore, because unknown number), but if it keeps calling…
It’s hard, watching your parents grow older. If I could sum up my feelings towards my dad, it would be “complicated.” He lived in the area (like an hour away), but I never could get a commitment to meet up after I moved back. At some point, when you keep reaching out and getting rebuffed, you stop reaching out. I keep telling myself that I should not feel guilty for that, that Dad was an adult and capable of making his own decisions (or not). I wonder if he ever felt bad about our lack of communication, or if, as he had done before, did nothing because he didn’t know how to start that conversation. I will never know.
A month later, at his (surprise open casket) funeral, where I had to give a (surprise) eulogy, looking at the people gathered, and realizing that I was from a completely different chapter of his life hit me hard. Aside from maybe ten people, I knew none of them. How many of his coworkers knew that he had two other kids in their 40s? Did he actually talk about us at all? I will never know.
It was surreal. The whole day was surreal. I can still hear the sounds of the gun salute from the Air Force honor guard, see the soldier in his dress uniform kneel and hand over the flag (previously draped over his coffin, now folded through crisp, precise, ceremonial movement) to his widow.
The morning of the funeral, three deer wandered through the city streets of Duvall where I live–carefree, but alert. My dad was the youngest of three sons, the last to die after losing his younger brother, his father, his mother, and his eldest brother. Looking at those deer, I immediately thought about deer hunting with my grandpa, uncle, and Dad–moments of camaraderie overshadowed by the looming presence of the family patriarch. I wonder if my dad chose to flee his childhood home and into the military as soon as he could, to be as free as those deer I saw. (Freer than being at home, at any rate.) There are things I wished I could have asked him about, but my own hurt and the distance that grew over the 29 years since I walked out of my dad’s house and into my own life was never bridged.
Hindsight.
I think about Dad in those small moments: when I poke around and do some programming, when I tackle a big snarled organizational nightmare and parse it out into smaller and smaller tasks, when I ride the light rail.
The Shape of Grief
“We won’t know the shape of grief until it consumes us.”
“Three Griefs”, stoneware, 2023.
I wrote that as a response to three sculptures I made. Art has always been a way to process my feelings, big and small, but that’s not dealing with it: it’s a means to package and compartmentalize it. To truly feel our grief, we have to sit with it: offer it a drink (Canadian Mist and Diet Pepsi), maybe something to eat (queso and tortilla chips), a warm blanket (handmade quilt). Healing is not linear, though. Grief stops, moves forward, stops, steps back, expands, collapses in on itself. Its boundaries change and shift over time, scabs and scars, subsumes into the fabric of our self-identity, but always there.
What a luxury it is, then, to be able to fully feel our feelings and grieve. To feel the complexities of our grief, to love someone for what they have done, but also hate for what they didn’t. To sit with the hollowness of loss, and attempt to rebuild with soft memories and the harsh edges of truth.
How many of us can actually afford to do that, though? How many of us have to spackle over the breaks in our hearts to the point of numbness? Labor traded for stagnant wages, wages traded for ever-increasing costs to feed, house, and clothe. Modern society has no room for the trivialities of a broken heart, no compassion for loss, no grace for the bereaved.
No room for the luxury of grief.
Looking Forward
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I would not have made it this far without my friends. I would not have been able to pay my bills without my Patreon. “Thanks” feels wildly insufficient, but you have them. I believe in paying it forward whenever I can, in the means that I can. Trust me when I say: I will not forget those who helped.
My crystal ball was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel.
So what’s next?
The idea of re-entering the corporate world fills me with dread. Age discrimination is a thing, and I often think about that when I’m applying to entry level positions. The sheer amount of “go fuck yourself” that I have when facing the microaggressions of office life is enormous, and the whole perimenopause thing has all but flatlined my patience. But, healthcare is needed, and that’s not going to change the older I get. I’m still struggling with the whole ADHD thing, so getting back on my medication is a top priority for me (maybe I can open commissions back up again once I do that).
In case I haven’t made it clear: I love the work that I am doing. Legitimately. (It just doesn’t pay what I need it to.) The reason (one of, at any rate) I went to grad school was so that I could teach at the college and university level. It was a fall-back for my Plan A, which remains: to open up my own makerspace. Step One: a wide-format printer.
