blah blah emotional dumping

Hello! I'm donewithitdani. I like to write, crochet, read, game (ttrpg & video), and be an all around nerd. I also have four silly cats, and a husband that I adore. Although, from time to time, you'll hear me lamenting about all of the above.

However, the biggest thing you should probably know is that I'm unapologetic. I'll talk about what I want to and my opinion is my own. If you don't like it, that is not my problem nor my fault. The internet is a huge, wide world, and if my small corner of it offends you, I implore you to ask why instead of immediately dismissing me. Unlike the rest of the world, I want to encourage people to broaden their way of thinking instead of narrowing it. We've done that enough and it's time for the echo chamber to be shattered.

On this blog, I'll be talking about everything. Work, life, fandoms, what I'm reading, what I'm writing, and lastly, what I'm making. I'll even spare no detail.

not that, in this particular instance, I would want to.

Even though I'm a little late to the party (only by two weeks, shhh) I finally splurged on Pokopia and I'm so enamored already.

It's such a cute game!

Usually Pokemon isn't something I'm into. Trust me, I've tried over the years. I own multiple games, but after about 2-4 hours in I usually drop them. So far, I'd say I've spent less than 20 hours in game but there's no sign of drop off on this one. Discovering all the Pokemon and creating their habitats is really cathartic. I don't have any huge structures yet, but breaking down parts of the terrain makes me feel really creative. I'm trying not to look up guides, but I keep finding tip ideas and one really blew my mind.

The best thing is knowing you can put your items in a storage box adjacent to your crafting bench.

Holy. Crap. Game changing mechanic.

I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but to someone who's really bad with "where's that item again?!" in other games, it's going to make my life so much easier. I can't be more happy for it.

In Pokopia you get to know the Pokemon and they'll ask you to do things for them. Interacting with those critters is soooo cute! I know this sounds silly, but I feel like I'm making friends. Game Freak and Koei have done such a fabulous job making this little world feel alive and lovable. Charmander is my Fire Red starter every time, and I genuinely felt anxious for him during this one part of the game. Which I won't spoil, because I'm not an asshole like that, but if you know you know.

On one last pokemon note... I did also get Fire Red for the switch. Yes, I am enjoying that too. It's not my first time playing either Fire Red or Leaf Green, it's just been a long time and I was scared off shortly into the game when I did start the first time. Adulthood sometimes means you don't give a fuck about others opinions, though, so I'll continue to enjoy myself. XP

the whole purpose of this blog has been to vent about the stupidity of life. I feel like that's been a smashing success, but it's also like a double edged sword. Vomiting all of my negativity onto the internet has honestly made me realize just how exhausted I am. I sit down to think about all that's happened, and instead of it being therapeutic I realize just how much I don't have the mental fortitude for.

In today's episode of donewithitdani...

I need to wash my hands of being the one responsible for our in-home specialists at work. First of all, I'm not management. Second, the specialists are paid more than I am. Third, and this is going to be the hardest for me to swallow; we are not a family at work. I would never have met any of who I work with organically. Which is not to say that I don't like my coworkers. I have come to care for them, genuinely, but more to say that I'm paid to be around them 8+ hours a day.

I guess I'm just tired of being the only one that will listen to our specialists. When they're overloaded, I'm the first to hear it. When they have issues, I'm the first to pick up the phone. When something goes wrong at a client's home, I'm the first one to get an ear full from an irate person.

Last week they backed the truck into a client's vehicle. It was very cathartic for me to step back and let the manager on duty handle the situation. All I had to do was repeat information from one person to another, and it's the first time in a while I felt relaxed at work.

Of course the next day made up for it. Both them and I were pretty livid all day long. But a little backstory needs told first: We have a client that has come to us numerous times for various products. It's one of those "I've lost count" situations. Well, she had a delivery scheduled a couple weeks ago that went very wrong. Our specialists damaged her property trying to install something, and the general manager promised that it would be him and another manager doing the delivery next time. It was then scheduled for this past Saturday. I'd asked about it on Friday, because I KNEW our specialists were never supposed to go to that client's house after everything. He waved me off, saying the product would fit and it would be easy, all they had to do was leave it in the box. Against my better judgement, I walked away shaking my head and left it be.

Come time for delivery, and I get a phone call from a very frustrated specialist telling me that he's stuck. "What do you mean you're stuck, stuck how?" I asked, and got the response of the product being wedged in their stairwell with him behind it and no room for movement. We eventually came to the conclusion that the item needed cut out of the box, though the client specified it NEEDED to stay in the box so neither product nor property were damaged this time. Cue my sales manager talking to the client's husband, letting him know that if they're stuck, there's no way it could stay in the box for delivery. It needed cut out. He was very blunt about it, and then the line went dead so he hung up. I got an angry text message from the specialist saying he was beyond angry and embarrassed about the situation. Then I got an angry phone call from the client saying she didn't appreciate how her husband was spoken to, how she was lied to, and that her property had been damaged AGAIN. She sent pictures to our email, and said she was going to call and talk to my sale's manager and give him an ear full as well. Which she was calm when she spoke to me, and it sounded like she was also calm when she spoke to my sales manager.

Problem is, it shouldn't have happened in the first place and those of us angry about it knew that.

When I go back in tomorrow, I need to sit down with the general manager and tell him that I can't be the one to deal with any of this anymore. I already feel burnt out from the job. I take on too many of the worries that aren't mine to begin with, and I can't be doing that anymore. It's how I save my sanity. It's how I keep from giving my two weeks without anywhere else to go.

Other than that, I am genuinely tired of clients who think they're better than I am. I had one on Wednesday tell me that her bill was paid until June, so she didn't understand why we were trying to auto draft her payment. She didn't like the explanation that it was set up like that, and got combative with me, calling me rude for offering to turn it off. Apparently we are not a big girl bill, and she pays her "adult bills" (her exact words) and none of them try to take their payment before they're due. Sorry to tell you, lady, but your recurring payment was set up BY YOU when you ordered the product. We have no control over it. Like a dog with a bone, she kept trying to explain how "adult bills" work, and I was hung up on mid-sentence. "I don't contest what you're telling me--" the second half of the sentence is "I'm trying to offer you a solution to the problem, and turning off your auto pay is that solution."

genuinely, they say that for a reason. I live in the area of the US that got the snow storm and single digit and below weather at the beginning of February. Well, we had a water main break in the neighborhood to deal with just before Valentine's Day, when the weather started thawing. It left us unable to use our water for a bit. Between them fixing the break and the boil water advisory, I had to get creative with bathing. But let's just say, I discovered some things about myself that I didn't expect.

I for sure need to buy a camping shower kit. we have enough water issues every year that it's become a necessity at this point.

Mental health can be impacted drastically by bathing habits. I was the most upsetty spaghetti until I felt somewhat clean again, having washed my hair in the mop sink in our warehouse at work and micro bathing in the bathroom.

I DO have the best boss for allowing me to freshen up before work AT work. Not that he had a choice. Neither did I, honestly. While I appreciate my mother letting me use her shower, she unfortunately suffered the city working on the water line on her street not long after I bathed at her house.

digressing back to work. My previous post had been about being annoyed with my company. Well, joke's on me because they provided almost 400 leads Thursday morning for me to work on. All of which they wanted done before the weekend was through. I had help, thankfully, but between the three of us, none of us want to pick the phone up again for at least a solid week.

progressing past work, I started on a cardigan for myself. It 's loud and obnoxious, and I really genuinely love it so far. It's a hexagon granny square cardigan. No pictures yet, I'm not even half way through, I just love the color choices. I'm using Purple and Blue by Loops & Threads and two different Smash Cakes by Caron: Jelly Filled and Blackberry. There are a mix of purples, blues, hot pinks, and greens. When I expressed to friends that I wanted to make my own cardigan, they laughingly told me they knew it was going to be black because I wear a lot of it. I told them that no, it was indeed going to be an eyesore because I love color. I'm hoping to wear it when we meet up next week.

I've been with the company I'm at for almost five years and multiple times over those years, I've felt like the only brainiac in the room. People in higher paid positions than even my direct boss have told everyone in our store "this is what the company wants you to do." It's getting hard to bite my tongue and not piss them off, because what the company wants us to do doesn't work.

What's worse, they know it doesn't work. They don't care that it doesn't work. They just want you to adhere to it and grow grow grow.

Contextually speaking, I work in sales for a rental company. My job is to sell the products we have to clients, whether they have something with us currently or not. Part of that job involves "warm calling," which is just fancy speak for sales calls to clients that have already paid off a product with us. This particular part of the job doesn't work. My company spent a lot of money on a way to track and enforce these calls. They've even just hired positions to monitor this program to make sure we're using it to the fullest. More money down the drain, in my opinion, because let's just say out of hundreds of customers in our current client base, I only ever make 8-15 calls a day. We've had thousands of possible past clients that just isn't reflected in the pool of this program.

Do I think this program has potential? Maybe if the algorithm was properly utilized, probably. There's just so many things we're disallowed to do with this line that feels like they're purposefully holding us back.

Which, I'll be honest, is something I feel more and more with my company. They change tactics on us every couple of months, always changing the rules of engagement with clients and the tools we use to secure them. They give us arbitrary promotions that are expected and aren't special, so why would a client get it through us if it's an all the time promotion? It's not special enough to catch their eye. They tell us to grow but the pool isn't there to grow because our collections department is piss poor at their job, so we can't keep the clients we manage to get or compensate for the ones we lose. Their dereliction of a bill means their debts get sold to collectors and we don't see a penny of it because it goes to corporate, and not our store's profit. We're hemorrhaging clients, sales calls don't work, we're in a bad location so we don't get foot traffic, and more often than not we sit in the store trying to keep ourselves from being bored while we're waiting for someone to call or walk in.

I feel like I'm in a sinking ship.

All I keep thinking of is the corporate schlubs that throw it in our face in the monthly meetings of who's doing better than everyone else, what their numbers are, and great job to them let's pat their asses. I think that these people don't help the struggling stores. That they're not being motivational or giving them tools to do better. We don't even control our own advertisements or who they go to. We can't represent ourselves in our community because unless we pay for it ourselves, there's no money for it.

Instead, we're told to rely on the ads corporate creates.

Instead, we're made to use a program that doesn't gain us clients and told to do better.

I'm sorry, but when you tie the hands of the people on the ground floor making your money and then don't listen when they speak... you deserve to go under.

I'm done trying.

I'm just going to collect my paycheck, wait for my fifth year anniversary, and find a better paying job. $15.69 isn't worth this stress and doesn't pay most of my bills. I should not have to care this much.

What makes this extra sad is that my take home paycheck after taxes and medical insurance is only around $950, give or take a few dollars. Back in 2016 when I lived in another state working in a department store making $9.50 an hour, I was bringing home over $600 a paycheck for part time work. I work full time now and that's only $350 difference.

first and foremost, an update on the shawl; my sister in law loved it. of all the crochet gifts I've made, hers was not only the nicest but the most appreciated. I make no bones about being newer to crochet, so all the gifts I've been giving have thus far been hand made. I gifted my mother an entire winter set that she never uses. (I shouldn't have expected otherwise, honestly.) So, to have this particular one fawned over was nice. Of course I won't be posting pictures of my sister in law, but I will at least let you know that she looked stunning in it, and even added a broach to keep it closed. She's such a sweet person and I adore her to bits.

second is the true purpose of the post; inspiration and motivation.

I thoroughly hate that I'm a "mood writer" because it means once the mood passes, I'm basically done with the project. It's difficult to recapture that same mood, although I've no problem going in to edit. I'm a fabulous editor. I think I need to start thinking of whole scenes as one mood? No idea if that would fix my problem.

I also hate that I'm so easily disturbed once I'm in any sort of zone. A gnat could fart three miles away and it would break my concentration. Imagine living in an incredibly small house with someone who has horrible ADHD. My husband currently has the tv on in the living room at a reasonable volume but it feels like I'm in the room with him because I can hear it so clearly. It's worse when he watches videos on his phone while gaming. It's far too much input for my fragile brain to handle, especially when I'm writing.

Lately, though, I've been looking into the one world I created a very, very long time ago. I have most of the elements to it already, I just need to narrow the scope and stop moving so fast with my plot points. I think the inspiration on this one in particular was my wanting to add two characters to it. Brothers, both inspired by kpop artists that look incredibly similar to each other. I'm kind of excited, because I'd already had the one and expanded his storyline to include the other as his sibling. Or perhaps I'll break away from urban fantasy on that one and do a mafia thing? It gives incredible mafia vibes.

I still consider myself a novice at crochet but this shawl I made for my sister in law is gorgeous. However, if I had to do it again I probably would have used lighter weight yarn so it wasn't bulky. It gives off a bit of "Granny" vibes, but I know she'll love it. Though even if she didn't, I would never know. She's such a wonderful human being that builds people up with such enthusiasm. The shawl is definitely not a warmer weather item, though. Thankfully I live in the band of the US that got well over a foot of snow in a day, so it was cold enough that making the shawl kept my lap warm while I made it.

There are a few things I would change about it, other than the weight of the yarn if I were to recreate it. Smaller popcorn stitches, more dark blue at the bottom, a more pronounced border, less gray/blue... But it was a learning experience and I'm glad I made it.

I definitely want one for myself at some point.

It's just a shame I haven't been able to give her the gift yet. I will definitely do an update next weekend after her party.

If you're interested in also following the tutorial that I followed, I got it from Bag-O-Day Crochet. Her tutorials are very easy to understand and repeat even while the video isn't up. As a note, though, it looks like I followed the tutorial with intent to completely recreate her finished work when I did not. My sister in law chose LA Dodgers colors (baby blue and white) and it was my choice to add the darker ones. I bought the yarn and then I chose the tutorial I wanted to follow. There were a few contenders from other content creators, but over all I liked the style of this one the most.

So, I found myself doom scrolling the other day. I came across an actor from a sci-fi show I used to watch, where he was saying he taught acting classes. They were, of course, not something I'll ever take. I'm not even remotely interested in acting and know that I would be awful at it. That said, it somehow got the wheels turning in my head. Other people have passions, so what was mine? After some time, I came to the answer.

Writing.

That's my passion. It's the one thing I always go back to with enthusiasm and excitement. It kept me sane for so, so many years. However, it's something I rarely did by myself because I always managed to find a scene partner. I think that's the problem to finishing any of my current works. I'm doing it alone.

That same day, I picked my husband's brain. He's never really listened to any of my stories, and I usually feel silly telling him. Not because he'll judge me, because he's actually awesome and won't, but because it's fairly unknown territory telling anyone about what I'm writing. It's just... as I was telling him pieces of my novel, things started to click more. It's been so long since I've had anyone to blather on about my stories to, that I forgot how cathartic and helpful it truly was from the few times I told anyone.

Which also lead me to doing research on the best methods to plotting. The way I've always wrote is very much from a role player perspective. Character does thing, thing gets response, story unfolds. It's genuinely hard to shift from that perspective and start writing on your own, and relying on everything coming from your own brain instead of a mutual decision. And, boy howdy do you need all the help you can get. It's like learning how to write for the first time. I found "plan your book" templates with step by step instructions on how best to structure your book.

And I feel absolutely silly admitting that, but you know what? It's been incredibly helpful. My strong suit has always been character building. Now, I have to flex my muscles on world building and story crafting.