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Well, back to Gaia again for the first time since 2004. Things sure have changed. Not just for me, but for Gaia. I suppose it's inevitable; without change we stagnate. Or wise words to said effect. Me, I could stand a little less change.

First I lose my job of five years. This is not at first a particularly bad thing; I'd come to hate the place. Not the people; the place, the atmosphere. The business was run in a very psuedo-Japanese style-- everyone was encouraged to have this sense of 'company unity', 'the company is a part of your family', yada yada. At the same time, the unspoken rules were, 'keep an eye on one another and if there are any screw-ups, make sure you point the finger at them before they point the finger at you'.

Wow, flashbacks to 1984 and Big Brother, huh?

After a few months of pretty much sitting around in something akin to psychic shock, I finally--finally-- got off my duff and went seriously jobhunting. Apparently the Fates approved, because I had 3 jobs offered in the same week. So now I'm a cashier at a grocery store, earning only a dollar less than I was at the previous office type finance job. Sad, but true-- sometimes grunt work pays as well or better than stuff you're supposed to have all this training and qualification for.

Plus side is, I suppose, the fact that I exchanged a constant sense of unhealthy paranoia (as opposed to the healthy kind that I sometimes think every work-slave needs) for something that I'm not all that great at: constant interaction with the public. Still, it's good for me, I think. My friends were starting to think I didn't exist anymore because I rarely left the house. 4laugh

And it DOES help pay for my current (well, um, 2 years long, that's still current) obsession: Yugioh. Specifically right now, collecting tankaban (I think that's the spelling)-- collected editions of the original manga, translated into English for those of us who only wish we were Japanese-literate. All praise to Viz Comics.

Plus all those nasty inconsequential things called 'bills'.

So now that I'm back at Gaia, I just decided.. well, blogs are the thing, aren't they. I've always enjoyed writing. Maybe it's about time I started talking, or writing, in my own voice as it were, rather than just through my fan fiction.