Mightier Productions

Bitches!!! Several co-workers and I all just left a very unhealthy job (at least 5 of us all left lol). I sent your article ‘The Resignation Checklist’ around to everyone before we did. This is a message my co-worker sent me- she went over the checklist and realized she had PTO that wouldn’t have paid out and used it before she left!!! I used the checklist myself and before I left: quit at the beginning of the month to get an extra month of insurance, am going for a physical and dental cleaning, went and got an eye exam and new glasses through my vision insurance, made sure my 401k was vested, and redeemed some company rewards points for a gift card! I especially would never have thought about new glasses without your list and am so excited for them. Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate you and that your article was a hit with my work friends- thank you!!! <3

OH HONEY!!!! Damn this brings tears to our eyes. We're so thrilled for you and your coworkers!!! It's a huge honor to know that we helped you guys out in your quitting journey.

For everyone who still needs it, here's our resignation checklist:

The Resignation Checklist: 25 Sneaky Ways To Bleed Your Employer Dry Before Quitting

Hmm. I can't speak for others, but I don't go in for the cackling too much, as a rule.

I may be kind of an outlier in this regard, admittedly... but once you've been doing this work more or less constantly for twenty or thirty or forty years (and I'm coming up on fifty years of this, now), you'll increasingly have it borne in on you—if you're at all observant—that what pain you inflict on your characters, you yourself (if you're doing your characters and their experiences justice) are going to have to experience inside your own head. Briefly, maybe, sure. But often repeatedly. Often excruciatingly. ...And the more universes you're working in, the more pain you're going to have to "live" through in order to describe it adequately.

Got sufficient skin in this game to play the game well? Then that skin's gonna bleed in ways that sometimes subtly, but unavoidably, affect you personally. Do this for long enough, and you may find you don't have a whole lot of cackling on tap when you shove one or another much-loved (or even much-hated!) character headfirst into the grinder. (And shouting "Trust me, this is for your own good!" after them is only going to get you so far. It's way too easy to imagine a level or so of reality more central, further inwards toward the white-hot Core of things, from which someone's yelling that at you.)

What does make me snicker, though—and pretty frequently—is the thought of how one or another of my readerships is going to take one or another piece of character or plotline-event business. "Oh cripes, they're gonna want to kill me when they see this." (grin) That I absolutely do do, repeatedly.

And you know what? What I usually tell myself at such times (regarding the readership in question), if the subject comes up for reflection, is "And if they're cranky about it, well, they brought it on themselves." People who read my work at all regularly know by now that I won't shy away from the pain—for the readers or the characters—when the drama requires it. Certainly I am in service to great Thalia, on and off: but by and large, mighty Melpomene commands more of my attention. Draumaturgically speaking, joy does often come after katharsis. But the pain has to happen first, or there's no contrast to make the cathartic content do what it's meant to. And that's where my primary loyalty lies: the core of Drama, and what it was invented for.

“college is absolutely nothing like this” “why are we writing four people on the team scoring a hat trick in one game” “so tech work is nothing like this, hope that helps!”

back in the day, yeah, people would post links to fics in forums or on LJ communities dedicated to "sporking" "bad" fanfics; but I would compare that to your average tumblr user posting a link and going "lol this thing is weird" and maybe 1 or 2 people like the post. or it gets posted in a private discord where a circle of friends is snickering about it. no big deal.

posting things on modern social media like twitter/tiktok/insta with tags and links on the other hand, is like going out to your street with a megaphone to critique your coworker's latest visit to the bathroom. no one gives a fuck except for the freaks who are just sitting around waiting for something to point and laugh at. maybe, MAYBE other people get roped in because misery loves company--

BEHOLD my latest alchemical monstrosity!

they’re pretty straightforward, but they definitely take practice. and I think an aspect of slab building (and hand building in general) is that it’s not going to be perfect. I had to learn to accept that and to love it for what it is

I use two tools to get my slab-built mugs nice and round:

1. a turntable/banding wheel. spinning it as I’m refining the shape helps keep it round, just like wheel-thrown pottery

and

2. The Cone

The Cone can be any cylinder that’s narrower at the bottom at wider at the top, and the right size to fit in your mug. just press it in and shape the rim to it, don’t leave it in the mug as the clay shrinks

but here’s the whole slab-building process!

under the cut

This one was an early attempt and came out hilariously large. I have since decided to make my mugs about four inches tall and four inches around at the top (smaller at the bottom), which makes each hexagonal side two inches wide and a bit over four tall (due to the curve). That shrinks down to about 3.5, which is what most of the mugs in our cupboard measure at.