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edenfalling1. If you worked as a secretary at "the local grain company" in Kansas in the late 1980s, would your company be likely to have a computer? If so, what kind and what would its capabilities be? If not, what office technology would you have instead?
I ask because I was only about six or seven year old at the time in question (and also, I grew up about 25 miles from Manhattan), and I am therefore very, very unclear on the intermediate steps in office technology between, say, typewriter-with-carbon-paper and PC-hooked-to-internet. Internal networks like I think IBM used to do are a complete mystery to me, and I don't know if a modestly sized grain company would either have been interested in or been able to afford such a system anyway.
(This is in reference to the Mysterious Skin fic I am trying to write for Femgenficathon. The character in question is Avalyn Friesen, and the setting is the rural vicinity of Hutchinson, which is about 40 miles northwest of Wichita.)
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2. I have been thinking, once again, that I really should go back to college (by which I mean, take one or two online courses a semester for several years) and finish a degree in something, if only so that I have my trained monkey certification and can thus get a foot in the door at better jobs should I feel inclined to look for a new position. The thing is, I associate college with the worst years of my life -- the years in which my depression and all my related maladaptive thought patterns jumped out and beat me up repeatedly, once I was away from my accustomed support networks -- and I have a reflexive mental/emotional flinch reaction whenever the idea of returning to that comes up. Also, I hate, hate, hate the reminder of how many courses I screwed up or just failed utterly because I was unable to attend classes or complete the assigned work.
It would, I think, be less distressing if the inability had been because the classes were hard. No. This was because I was unable to do much of anything for several weeks every month or three, and then did not have the tools to climb out of the resulting hole, nor even the tools to convince myself that I was worthy of so much as attempting to climb out of the hole. And that is not a state of mind I want to touch with a ten foot pole... but I kind of have to at least brush against it in passing, if I want to get copies of my transcripts and talk to admissions people about how many courses I need to do to get a degree and swear to them that no really, I'm better now, I promise.
(...Okay, organic chemistry genuinely was hard -- I just cannot visualize complicated stereoisomers to save my life, and now you know why I decided to major in German literature instead of chemistry -- but everything else was easy. Which was quite possibly part of the problem. Easy things don't feel meaningful.)
Anyway, I talked about this with Vicky when I saw her in August, and she helped me write up a list that breaks down "go back to college" into a bunch of small, manageable steps. I need to print that out and pin it to the wall behind my computer to prod myself into taking action.
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3. Gacked from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
annearchy: The first five people to comment on this post get to request that I write a drabble/ficlet of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their own writing ability level. (Slight variation: you must specifically ask for a ficlet in your comment or I will assume you don't want one and will move on to the next person. Also, what the heck, I will write ten of these -- five for LJ comments and five for DW comments, assuming anyone is interested at all.)
I make no promises whatsoever as to length -- you may get a single sentence if that's all I can think of -- but I do tend to run long...
I ask because I was only about six or seven year old at the time in question (and also, I grew up about 25 miles from Manhattan), and I am therefore very, very unclear on the intermediate steps in office technology between, say, typewriter-with-carbon-paper and PC-hooked-to-internet. Internal networks like I think IBM used to do are a complete mystery to me, and I don't know if a modestly sized grain company would either have been interested in or been able to afford such a system anyway.
(This is in reference to the Mysterious Skin fic I am trying to write for Femgenficathon. The character in question is Avalyn Friesen, and the setting is the rural vicinity of Hutchinson, which is about 40 miles northwest of Wichita.)
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2. I have been thinking, once again, that I really should go back to college (by which I mean, take one or two online courses a semester for several years) and finish a degree in something, if only so that I have my trained monkey certification and can thus get a foot in the door at better jobs should I feel inclined to look for a new position. The thing is, I associate college with the worst years of my life -- the years in which my depression and all my related maladaptive thought patterns jumped out and beat me up repeatedly, once I was away from my accustomed support networks -- and I have a reflexive mental/emotional flinch reaction whenever the idea of returning to that comes up. Also, I hate, hate, hate the reminder of how many courses I screwed up or just failed utterly because I was unable to attend classes or complete the assigned work.
It would, I think, be less distressing if the inability had been because the classes were hard. No. This was because I was unable to do much of anything for several weeks every month or three, and then did not have the tools to climb out of the resulting hole, nor even the tools to convince myself that I was worthy of so much as attempting to climb out of the hole. And that is not a state of mind I want to touch with a ten foot pole... but I kind of have to at least brush against it in passing, if I want to get copies of my transcripts and talk to admissions people about how many courses I need to do to get a degree and swear to them that no really, I'm better now, I promise.
(...Okay, organic chemistry genuinely was hard -- I just cannot visualize complicated stereoisomers to save my life, and now you know why I decided to major in German literature instead of chemistry -- but everything else was easy. Which was quite possibly part of the problem. Easy things don't feel meaningful.)
Anyway, I talked about this with Vicky when I saw her in August, and she helped me write up a list that breaks down "go back to college" into a bunch of small, manageable steps. I need to print that out and pin it to the wall behind my computer to prod myself into taking action.
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3. Gacked from
annearchy: The first five people to comment on this post get to request that I write a drabble/ficlet of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their own writing ability level. (Slight variation: you must specifically ask for a ficlet in your comment or I will assume you don't want one and will move on to the next person. Also, what the heck, I will write ten of these -- five for LJ comments and five for DW comments, assuming anyone is interested at all.)I make no promises whatsoever as to length -- you may get a single sentence if that's all I can think of -- but I do tend to run long...
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 12:49 pm (UTC)1) I started my career at a very large Midwestern law firm in 1988. The secretaries had fancy IBM typewriters that were quite revolutionary because you could backspace over a line and correct text without using white-out. My law school had large tandy or Compaq computers in a pool that ran WordPerfect and WordStar on a DOS platform. I moved to another, more sophisticated place in 1990 and they were only just starting to give secretaries computers. I would not assume that a grain elevator in the 80s would have anything but an IBM selectric or Smith-Corona. This was before Fed Ex too and fax machines were only just starting to be used.
2) College. Do you feel like you are in a better place mentally? It certainly seems so over the distance of the Internets where I really don't know you at all. Why plunge in though? Maybe start with a class at the community college? Get back into the discipline of it and see if you like it and if it agrees with your head. And, you know, when you describe that hole you were in where you could not even imagine getting out, that is such a classical depressive episode and don't you feel you are better able to see that and deal with that now?
3) As for drabble, oh gosh, do I have to post over in mine? I'm BORING and don't really have anything to say. BUT BUT Shezan and Ilgamuth or Cor and Aravis. Oh please.
[Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-21 11:20 pm (UTC)"How so?" Shezan asked, slipping her newly ragged volume of Hilad's poems of grief under a sheaf of papers on her desk. She pushed herself to focus, to think outward instead of in. "You said yourself that things in Narnia went promisingly. The queen challenged Rabadash to prove himself, she accepted the necklace he offered, she followed him to Tashbaan -- done, and done, and done. And she does not strike me as one to court war over a broken dance."
Ilgamuth glanced along the hallway behind him and closed the door to Shezan's rooms. "That would be true if she were a daughter of Calormen. But she is a barbarian, and the more I speak to her retinue, the more I suspect she opened the dance unaware." He sank onto the sofa and gestured as if opening a book and preparing to share the knowledge it contained. "Consider that Narnia lay prisoned in sorcerous winter for a century, and that the tetrarchs, to all reports, come from a land beyond the edge of the world -- as our ancestors did, nigh a thousand years ago. The queen had no reason to know our customs. Even the humans among her counselors might have remained purposefully ignorant, out of ancient spite and resentment."
"You believe that she thinks she is still in the space before the first step?" Shezan said slowly. "Still considering whether to stake a claim?"
Ilgamuth nodded. "It would make sense of her behavior of late. In Narnia, she was warm to counter the land's chill -- even in spring, the nights are cold and frost is far from unknown on the fields. Here in Tashbaan, she grows cold to counter the heat of summer and Rabadash's growing passion. But she speaks gently and smiles when he declaims his love, rather than sliding her words around to reparations. That is the way of a woman weighing her choices and choosing to withdraw, not one who has already chosen and is having second thoughts."
If Queen Susan of Narnia thought she was unattached while Rabadash and all the court considered her halfway to marriage...
"This is not going to end well," Shezan said, echoing Ilgamuth's opening. "Can you spare this night? I have no faith in our ability to hold the Narnians, not when the gods have so clearly taken an interest in Rabadash's fate and shown a willingness to use even demons in their plans. He will be beyond fury if the queen plays him for a fool, and those of us with cooler heads must be prepared for the aftermath."
If only her grandfather had not died the day Rabadash sailed for the north... but there was no use wishing for time to unspin from its skein. Azaroth had called him home and he was with the gods, advising the armies of heaven as he had advised the Tisroc on earth. His smile, his rapier mind, his sure and gentle hands -- they belonged to the other world now.
Still. If only.
Ilgamuth leaned down to kiss her forehead, having walked over without her notice. He wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and touched the half-hidden book of poetry with his right hand. "You do your grandfather honor," he murmured. "Come. Sit with me, and I will quote Hilad's poems of love that outlasts death. Then we will save our prince from his folly and our country from humiliation."
"So may it be," Shezan agreed. Circling her hand around his wrist, she let her lover raise her to her feet.
Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-22 02:25 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-22 02:36 am (UTC)...I may try writing that if
Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-23 02:19 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-23 02:52 am (UTC)You cannot remember Ilgamuth because he appears in canon in precisely two sentences, as the Hermit of the Southern March describes the battle of Anvard to Aravis and the horses:
"Rabadash is giving his orders now. With him are his most trusted lords, fierce Tarkaans from the eastern provinces. I can see their faces. There is Corradin of Castle Tormunt, and Azrooh, and Chlamash, and Ilgamuth of the twisted lip, and a tall Tarkaan with a crimson beard--"
And then a little later on:
"Darrin has killed Ilgamuth."
That's it. But I needed to use some of Rabadash's companions in "Out of Season," and since Ilgamuth was the only one besides Anradin (Bree's cruel master) who got any physical description whatsoever, I picked him and essentially built his character from nothing. He ended up being fairly calm and sensible, with an appreciation for poetry and history, though I am sure he is as fierce in battle as the Hermit claims. :-)
Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-23 04:08 am (UTC)Although I keep getting distracted by how UTTERLY TRAGIC it is that they are IN LOVE and he is going to DIE. DDDDDDDDD:
Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-23 04:49 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-23 04:51 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-10-04 02:41 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-10-04 04:03 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-10-04 04:09 am (UTC)Yay indeed!
Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-10-04 04:11 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-10-04 04:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 11:34 pm (UTC)Yes, I am in a MUCH better place mentally. I was out of college on a psychiatric medical leave from 2002-2003, after which I tried to go back in 2003-2004 and discovered that while I was on anti-depressants, I had not untangled all the related behavior patterns, dropped out again, and entered the work force. By mid-2006, I had found my way out of most of my mental boxes. I just remain very wary of college, because in my experience full-time school exacerbates all my negative tendencies whereas full-time work mitigates them. So my tentitive plan is to take one or two online courses a semester, maybe supplemented with a couple in-person courses from the local community college if I can wrangle a plan to get the credits transfered to the place I hope to enroll in. :-)