Emmy Update!
A little update on life stuff, blog stuff, and more!
2023 has been an interesting year so far. I started this year off with a lot of optimism, particularly when it came to my blog here on Medium and content creation in general — something that I really enjoy is branching out to the online communities of my interests, because this is something I often find I am lacking in person. While I am simply lacking friends in general, I am also even more severely lacking when it comes to friends with mutual interests; in particular, programming. Although I occassionally do work with other programmers, I often find that this is a very work-exclusive relationship and the myriad of things that I am super passionate about often do not come to light in our conversations. This is why I like writing on Medium so much, and have continued to do it for about four years now.
Wow, it seriously has been that long …
This year was going to be my year on Medium, the optimism I was holding is well demonstrated by the article I wrote on New Year’s about what I wanted to accomplish:
This is not, however, how things went. I kind of let myself down; honestly maybe my goals at that time were also a bit ridiculous, but I definitely did not adhere to them. I wanted to make a lot more articles, a lot more videos, and do a lot more open-source programming in this period of time. I am certainly disappointed with myself, but I don’t think it is such a good idea to hold such emotions instead of doubling down and just doing the best I can going forward to fulfill myself as much as possible. At certain times work got in the way, at certain times life got in the way, and at certain times depression got in the way. Similar to the time when this New Year’s post was created, right now is yet another crucial point in my life… It seems like we have been having a lot of these lately. I also hit what I would describe as probably my lowest, at least the lowest I have been in years, in February. Coming out of this, a lot of things are about to change for me and I am both excited and anxious for my future, so as usual I wanted to type in what exactly this is.
i am leaving alabama
I am finally going to be leaving Alabama in the early throws of April. This was actually my original plan; I had been planning to leave in April for around six months now. I have been so invested in this plan that when a few things with the plan went astray I seriously freaked out and the result was the following article …
As the title suggests, I was going completely off the rails when I wrote this. Not only in my Medium writing, but also in my personal life. I honestly do not know exactly what was going on, but I was absurdly bipolar. I was having intense bouts of sadness and anger what felt like over and over again in a vicious cycle. I am almost certain I was completely insufferable to be around during this time period, I was seriously out of control — and there were moments where I did not think I was going to make it to see the next day. This time period in my life was brought into fruition by how I am treated socially here in Alabama, and catalyzed by my plans to leave in April kind of falling apart before my eyes. All in all, the feeling that ended up manifesting was one of complete and utter hopelessness. I needed to get away, and it was just seeming more and more impossible by the day. At a certain point, leaving in early April felt like a figment of my imagination more than anything else.
As April got closer, things actually got better, particularly in late February. In all honesty, I am not really sure what happened at all. I might just be one of those people that gets super depressed in the winter — I mean I do hate the cold because I weigh two pounds. Along with this, I also began planning things better and pulling myself back up so to speak. At this point, however, I adjusted my plans a little bit to reflect something a little closer to reality; I was going to leave in June. I simply had way too many things to finish and did not want to deal with any interruptions, or worse, changes to my situation be it work or residence.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, I was recently called the T word and “ a prude” by my landlord — the catalyst for this being me not saying hi to her loud enough ( she did not hear it, I speak very softly. ) when she said hello to me. Yes, seriously. The strangest part of that is that I was called a prude — I am a transgender socialist, there is nothing prude really about me…? I don’t think she knows what the word means… If anything, wouldn’t it be prude to get mad at someone for not saying hello back to you (or not hearing it?) but that’s an aside, this is the second landlord that has showed up and called me the T word like this and I am tired of this always happening to me. I originally thought she was going to try to evict me (you can evict people for being transgender here, because we don’t have civil rights,) but she actually wrote me an apology note and gave me some chocolate.
So that was nice — but yeah, I still want to move and not much is going to change this. I needed to move before and this has only furthered that need. Anyway, around April 14th I will be heading to Albuquerque New Mexico to finally begin my life as a free woman outside of the South! I cannot speak to the excitement that I have. It really feels a lot more like an escape than a move, and I am completely exhilarated — I know it is only two weeks but I want to be there now! This is going to be so much better for my mental-health. I cannot even describe what it is like being here for me, it has been really hard and in general I really do not like living here.
what this means for us
So of course, the fact that I am moving is going to have a substantial impact on all of my open-source work, my videos, my Medium, and whatever else I keep up with. In addition to taking a break from daily work during this time, I am also planning to take a small hiatus from Medium and other stuff — not that it will be extremely long, or anything… I am planning to take these few days off starting on the 28th, which will give me adequate time to
- Gather my thoughts!
- Organize myself and get back into my groove.
- Pack my stuff.
- Visit all of the places in Alabama I still want to visit; There are a good bit of archeological sights, and a lot of interesting historic sites littered all throughout this area. I do not see myself coming back here anytime soon, probably ever, so I might as well go ahead and try to explore all of the things I am interested in while I am here.
To make up for this, over the course of the next three days leading up to the 28th I am going to try and write about three articles a day. I think this will also be continued when I come back. I really want to be on top of this blog as it is really important to me; I also do not want to be annoying by publishing all of the time, but it is important to me to share my thoughts and projects as well as meet new people and grow new connections… Which by the way, thank you all for your kind responses on a lot of my articles. You all have been helpful when I was in my darkest spot, it cannot be stated just how much my Medium community helped me through my issues; and to this effect I feel I am forever in debt, I appreciate you all — the little community I have fostered on here is pretty amazing. I would like to give individual shout-outs, but that might be a little weird so I won’t, just know I read your responses and I consider what you say.
Anyway, what I want to go for is three articles each weekday, I think this is actually a pretty achievable goal. I will be coming back from my small break sometime in early April — around the 4th-14th, it kind of depends on when I end up buying a ticket out of here for because I plan to stay with my friends in the city for a bit anyway starting on the 1st. I also hope to start getting more videos out to you on my neglected Youtube channel. I know I happen to say that a lot, the videos just take a lot of work — editing.
Aside from these content goals, I also have some software goals. I am not really going to structure this as much, just know that Olive is going to be at 0.1.0 here in a few months and is probably going to be pretty awesome. As discussed in my Grand Vision post, there will be even more coming after this; an entire ecosystem of packages to enjoy!
Thank you all for being there for me through the good and bad, hopefully things will get a lot better once I finally get out of here. Please do me the greatest favor you can do me and have a wonderful day. Stay safe everyone, I will talk to you soon. ❤
