New job + move + reviews
Mar. 2nd, 2025 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenwoodsideNew Job
I managed to fail at a lot of job interviews last year. This year at the end of January, an interview panel finally cracked and offered me employment.
Quite mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was mentally and emotionally engaged in the type of work I was doing in my old job. I'm not someone who finds it easy to believe they're good at things, but I think I *was* good at it and had the potential to get better. I put a lot of my free time into developing my skills in the area.
On the other hand, the organisation felt toxic to me. For various reasons: some to do with a simple clash between my personality type, preferences, and interests and the prevailing style of my unit. Some because the communications were crap, there were too many egotistic managers and not enough conscientious ones, and I got trapped in a feud between departments that had me convinced most of the time that I must be very bad at my work to the point where on many mornings I was blinking back tears of shame and despair and confusion, and hating myself for not being whatever it was the organisation wanted.
The new job I don't care anything for, but I think that will be a plus for me if I can keep it that way. I tend to torture myself when I care about work, and I really don't want to. In the places where I've been employed, I've seen how quickly the system carries on when people leave and how little impact low-ranked individuals have in huge hierarchical bureaucracies. I want to give what I owe to the new place, but not more. Everything else needs to go to actually living my life and finding sources of meaning there.
Move
So I've moved about 130 miles to take me closer to my remaining family. I've been saving for a deposit for five years, but couldn't buy while I was still stuck in my last location. Now, I'm going to rent for three months while the new job and I hopefully adjust to each other. Then on June 1st, the house hunting will start. Assuming the property market hasn't blown up by then. Or the world hasn't blown up.
Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer
Terra Ignota is a quartet of novels described as 'political science fiction', while their author, for whom this series is her first published, is an associate professor in Renaissance history at the University of Chicago.
I picked up the first Too Like the Lightning without having any idea about the contents. I was hoping for an above-average sci-fi adventure novel.
It wasn't an above-average sci-fi adventure novel. After reading the quartet over the course of January and February, I find it difficult to describe it at all in a short way without giving away a lot of the detail that is better discovered in increments on a journey through the books. The Iliad meets the Renaissance meets the Rocky Horror Show? No, that still doesn't really capture it.
The setting is an almost-utopia, a future Earth where living standards have improved for everyone, where speedy, cheap, eco-friendly travel is possible from one side of the world to the other, and hunger and deprivation have been got rid of. Nation states still exist, but have largely been side-lined by Hives, non-geographical unions of people whose membership is voluntary. But statistics have also come a long way, and the stats say there's going to be a war...
I feel that there are plenty of openings to find fault with the design of Palmer's new Earth; at the same time, that would be completely inappropriate, a bit like encountering a Macaw Parrot in a Slough carpark and complaining that the colours don't blend in with the attractive asphalt grey of the floor. After squirming and objecting through the first few chapters, I did what JED Mason asks in Book 3, and surrendered totally.
Terra Ignota was largely written during Obama's Presidency. Palmer is still writing fiction; I am interested to see whether she is able to conjure so much optimism in the world of today, whether she is able to continue depicting the majority of her actors as compassionate beings subject to reason. I hope she is; as many of her characters would argue, because something is difficult doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
Welsh practice
None of the below is top secret. Just trying to stretch some language muscles...
Conclave
Do'n i ddim yn disgwyl y byddai'r ffilm mor llawn gobaith. Mae'n seiliedig ar nofel gan Robert Harris, ac roedd y nofelau diweddar ganddo a ddarllenais yn peidio cynnig diwedd hapus. Ond roedd hyn fel stori'r tylwyth teg neu fel stori'r Brenin Arthur wedi'i hanner cuddio. Ie, edrychai rhai digwyddiadau yn ffug iawn. Roedd y terfysgwyr Islamaidd a osod bom y tu allan i'r Cappella Sistina yn eithafol o garedig a sensitif i anghenion y plot wrth ddarparu cyfleoedd ardderchog am ddylunio clyfar sain a fideo.
Beth bynnag, roedd yn ofnadwy o hwyl, a byddwn yn ei gymeradwyo i bawb.
The Brutalist
Nid oedd digon o bensaernïaeth. Mae'n colli pynciau hefyd am ddefnyddio 'black best friend' sy'n diflannu'n sydyn heb unrhyw un yn sylwi arno.
Ond gwnes i fwynhau'r eiliad pan oedd y cwpola gwydr yn cwympo a thorri drwy ddamwain. Teimlodd yn fwy dramatig na phob brwydr yn y ffilmiau Marvel wedi rhoi at ei gilydd.
I managed to fail at a lot of job interviews last year. This year at the end of January, an interview panel finally cracked and offered me employment.
Quite mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was mentally and emotionally engaged in the type of work I was doing in my old job. I'm not someone who finds it easy to believe they're good at things, but I think I *was* good at it and had the potential to get better. I put a lot of my free time into developing my skills in the area.
On the other hand, the organisation felt toxic to me. For various reasons: some to do with a simple clash between my personality type, preferences, and interests and the prevailing style of my unit. Some because the communications were crap, there were too many egotistic managers and not enough conscientious ones, and I got trapped in a feud between departments that had me convinced most of the time that I must be very bad at my work to the point where on many mornings I was blinking back tears of shame and despair and confusion, and hating myself for not being whatever it was the organisation wanted.
The new job I don't care anything for, but I think that will be a plus for me if I can keep it that way. I tend to torture myself when I care about work, and I really don't want to. In the places where I've been employed, I've seen how quickly the system carries on when people leave and how little impact low-ranked individuals have in huge hierarchical bureaucracies. I want to give what I owe to the new place, but not more. Everything else needs to go to actually living my life and finding sources of meaning there.
Move
So I've moved about 130 miles to take me closer to my remaining family. I've been saving for a deposit for five years, but couldn't buy while I was still stuck in my last location. Now, I'm going to rent for three months while the new job and I hopefully adjust to each other. Then on June 1st, the house hunting will start. Assuming the property market hasn't blown up by then. Or the world hasn't blown up.
Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer
Terra Ignota is a quartet of novels described as 'political science fiction', while their author, for whom this series is her first published, is an associate professor in Renaissance history at the University of Chicago.
I picked up the first Too Like the Lightning without having any idea about the contents. I was hoping for an above-average sci-fi adventure novel.
It wasn't an above-average sci-fi adventure novel. After reading the quartet over the course of January and February, I find it difficult to describe it at all in a short way without giving away a lot of the detail that is better discovered in increments on a journey through the books. The Iliad meets the Renaissance meets the Rocky Horror Show? No, that still doesn't really capture it.
The setting is an almost-utopia, a future Earth where living standards have improved for everyone, where speedy, cheap, eco-friendly travel is possible from one side of the world to the other, and hunger and deprivation have been got rid of. Nation states still exist, but have largely been side-lined by Hives, non-geographical unions of people whose membership is voluntary. But statistics have also come a long way, and the stats say there's going to be a war...
I feel that there are plenty of openings to find fault with the design of Palmer's new Earth; at the same time, that would be completely inappropriate, a bit like encountering a Macaw Parrot in a Slough carpark and complaining that the colours don't blend in with the attractive asphalt grey of the floor. After squirming and objecting through the first few chapters, I did what JED Mason asks in Book 3, and surrendered totally.
Terra Ignota was largely written during Obama's Presidency. Palmer is still writing fiction; I am interested to see whether she is able to conjure so much optimism in the world of today, whether she is able to continue depicting the majority of her actors as compassionate beings subject to reason. I hope she is; as many of her characters would argue, because something is difficult doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
Welsh practice
None of the below is top secret. Just trying to stretch some language muscles...
Conclave
Do'n i ddim yn disgwyl y byddai'r ffilm mor llawn gobaith. Mae'n seiliedig ar nofel gan Robert Harris, ac roedd y nofelau diweddar ganddo a ddarllenais yn peidio cynnig diwedd hapus. Ond roedd hyn fel stori'r tylwyth teg neu fel stori'r Brenin Arthur wedi'i hanner cuddio. Ie, edrychai rhai digwyddiadau yn ffug iawn. Roedd y terfysgwyr Islamaidd a osod bom y tu allan i'r Cappella Sistina yn eithafol o garedig a sensitif i anghenion y plot wrth ddarparu cyfleoedd ardderchog am ddylunio clyfar sain a fideo.
Beth bynnag, roedd yn ofnadwy o hwyl, a byddwn yn ei gymeradwyo i bawb.
The Brutalist
Nid oedd digon o bensaernïaeth. Mae'n colli pynciau hefyd am ddefnyddio 'black best friend' sy'n diflannu'n sydyn heb unrhyw un yn sylwi arno.
Ond gwnes i fwynhau'r eiliad pan oedd y cwpola gwydr yn cwympo a thorri drwy ddamwain. Teimlodd yn fwy dramatig na phob brwydr yn y ffilmiau Marvel wedi rhoi at ei gilydd.
