I've been away long enough that I noticed this "howdy" side to the site and decided there was no better place to visit first.

I've lived just about all of my life in California and have worked as an educator, along with numerous and varied proletarian jobs with varying amounts of precarity. While some seemed to have liked it there, even thrived there, I hated it there. Just being in the teachers' lounge, or for that matter existing in public, seemed to be an open invitation to be involuntarily exposed to the worst of "hustlegrind" and "startup" culture. It may have been because of the specific area I was in (if you know Mountain View to Palo Alto to maybe Sacramento, you'll get what I mean), but these intrusive interactions, where a stranger could and would (if you look passably perhaps) get propositioned to "get in on the ground floor" with some grift or another, were bleakly common. Similarly, because of the sort of painfully privileged yet socially malnourished environment, just about nothing was discussed by my fellow faculty or other people I associated with except the pop cultural monoliths of the time, which I had to absorb via cultural osmosis in the worst way. Anticipating grading papers for the next few hours didn't get any easier when "DAE LE RED WEDDING?!" and "DAE LE SHAME, SHAME?!" was all anyone around me wanted to talk about, unless they were discussing some investment or how "epic" (yes, that old stale word remained in vogue way after its expiration date) someone's new Tesla was.

That's why I risked everything, cashed in my retirement fund early, and with eyes forward to becoming a father and finding a better place for my family, I moved to the Atlantic northeast to start an agricultural project that I intend to expand beyond sustainability into a communal project . It's hard work, and of course it's hard work, and it's still a work in progress. For OpSec reasions I don't want to get into too many details there except to say that it's all a work in progress and it's difficult, but rewarding. .

I like it here. I like it here quite a bit. There's funny people, weird people, even scary people here and there around me, but I haven't had a single conversation that I would qualify as "bazinga" since I arrived. I haven't seen a single ZYBERTRUKKK either, except pictures of them getting mocked on the internet. . I don't know if it's just the area I now live in or if it's a larger cultural shift, but as far as I can tell there's no more pop cultural monoliths that I had to be force-fed just by being around hogs gobbling up the hog slop, being it "historically accurate" or "satirical" or whatever.

I bring that up because I have no great interest in waddling into the slop anymore, to argue about it or against it for that matter, largely because I have not had to for almost a year now, and that makes a huge difference.

I still set aside time to write when I can, and my next novel project is nearing the completion of its first draft. For those curious about that, there's no mecha this time (THIS TIME ), and it's a more contemporary setting with only some slight background science fiction elements. I may share more details about that in an upcoming post if there's interest.

I hope you and yours are well, comrades.

EDIT: I accidentally said "there's mecha this time" instead of "there's no mecha this time" and corrected that immediately.