Domestic Geek

So, I was put in my place at work today. Wish I could post details, but I can't. Job hunting has started in earnest. I'm going to probably have to take a major pay cut, but at least I'll be in South Dakota and can focus on starting my own side business that will hopefully eventually become my sole source of support.

The freaky thing was reading Maria Shaw's Starscopes Newsletter when I got home:

Mars will conjunct Pluto bringing some very intense power struggles and energy to the surface November 10 to the 14th. You could really feel like blowing off some steam. People, who have been getting on your nerves, will now push you too far. But it is a great time to get moving in a new direction and these energies may help you on a new path.
....
November 12th brings a harsh and challenging aspect from Pluto and Uranus. Something out of the blue may unfold that forces you to choose a different path than you are already on. Expect the unexpected this week. This will be an interesting day because Saturn will also meet Venus and this can either bond a relationship or create an ending of some kind. If a relationship's foundation is shaky, it could crumble under this influence.

So, yeah...this coming week is going to be rough, but necessary to get me off the dead-end path I'm on and hopefully onto a better one.

Something in me snapped at work today. I'm done.

I'm so sick of being a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. I'm so sick of giving it my all to try to make a fucked up situation work just to get a paycheck. I'm sick of being lied to my face. I know I'm pretty good at whatever I try, but these people don't deserve my best. I won't go into details publicly, because I know this blog comes up if you search for my name, but I deserve better than this.

I was searching for something motivational to put in my line of sight at work and I came across the Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford University. The parts that stick out for me are excerpted below:

"You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
...
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
...
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

--Steve Jobs, June 12, 2005

I'll be honest that this colon thing has me a little freaked out. I'm also getting closer to the age that Mom was when she passed. If I don't figure out what will make me happy and do it, I'm going to die with regrets and bitterness.

I'm in a creative funk. I purchased this today at Barnes & Noble to see if I can get my creative juices flowing again - Kim Werker's "Make It Might Ugly.

One of the best things about Keystone, SD is Big Time Pizza. We always order the Big Tatanka (Buffalo meat, green peppers, onions & bacon). The place caught my eye because the owners have that Subaru Baja pictured there.

I'm really wishing I hadn't done any paid blogging back in the bleak unemployment fiasco back in 2007.

Every few weeks, I get an email from somebody asking to have their link removed from my pathetic little blog. I did a little purging a while back. Some of the ones that remain are services that I would have actually used at some point. Like right now, there's a font site asking to have their link removed. They were on my list of resources for when I get back into design, but no longer. If these darned companies would worry more about their service or product and less what Google's most recent demands are, they wouldn't really need to care about where they rank on Google.

I'm so sick of this SEO game. Stop trying to game the system (that's why you and/or your company paid for all these lame links anyway) and stop giving Google all this power over you.

I'm especially irked when it isn't even a paid link in question, just some site I found and linked because I liked what they had to sell or wanted it for future reference. Some guy with a site selling old Hallmark ornaments asked to have his link removed. I told him why I had linked it and since he apparently cares more about Google than a customer, he's history. His stupid website still looked like something from a beginning HTML class. Good riddance.

I was going through some papers and found a list of all the paid posts I made back then and now I'm going to remove each and every one regardless. Some acquaintances that did paid blogging with me back then say they ask the companies to pay them to get the links removed, but I so don't want to deal with that. I'm just tired of seeing this crap in my inbox and reminding me of a period in my life that I would like to keep in the past.

STOP PLAYING GOOGLE'S GAME - NOBODY CARES!