I spent a lot of time with my now wife and met my best friends
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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I grew bitter and resentful towards people who complained about how hard it was to work from home and all the downtime they had while I had to trudge into “critical” work everyday for low pay.
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Where's the "I started half a dozen hobbies and projects and didnt really stick to any of them" character?
I got drunk a lot and called it "getting into making cocktails"
I started making Sous Vide infused syrups for my cocktails. Which led to a lot more cocktails & an esoteric obstinance when it comes drinking well drinks out on the town… poor bartenders.
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After years of being told teleworking was an impossbility, I was sent home to work and didn't even miss an hour on my timesheet.
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Oh my gosh, I had 2 kids, went back to college, rocketed my fledgling IT career forward and gained a mortgage during the pandemic. Granted I probably would've done all those things without the pandemic, but many of the pandemic era policies helped make each of those steps much easier than they normally would have been
I work in retail so the only thing that changed for me during the pandemic was my level of anxiety.
I worked in retail too! In March of 2020, I got laid off, took a couple weeks to have my first vacation in years, then after some introspection about how id been working for a decade and was still making minimum wage I realized ten years had been worthless. It was rough but I went back to college and now have a cushy cybersecurity job in government.
I don't miss retail one bit. Hope you're doing better and building an exit plan
As someone in classes now ( at 44, hope it isnt a mistake after so many years of customer service) hoping for a cushy cybersecurity job in the future... can you give some advice on other key terms that might be used on the job searches, or closely related fields? I'm still pretty early on in my learning but trying to look around at what my best niche may be in the future.
It's never too late! I started at 24, I'm 28 now. Your not much older than one of my peer-turned-dear-friends. Truth is that as long as you nail the learning the rest will just be a matter of time. It took me almost a year of job hunting to get this gig, but it's municipal government work in a union in Canada.
I'll warn you however that cybersecurity isn't entry level stuff. I'd been working as a whatever-they-want-me-to-do solo IT guy for two years for a college before I made the transition. For what it's worth I was also customer service and you can definitely leverage that when looking at the (very crowded) entry level IT market of helpdesk roles. Helpdesk sucks, but unlike retail the suck doesn't last forever. Do a year, study certs while you do, then get out. Never. Stop. Applying.
I recommend looking into the compTIA certifications like A+, Networking+, and naturally Security+. Those are good fundamentals to have down, and combined with classes you shouldn't have too hard a time.
Hope this helps a bit.
(Genuine question) Why recommend A+? I've heard its more or less "i can identify physical ports, put together a computer, and install an OS"; useful if you've never done anything with computers, but otherwise redundant and unimpressive in the IT field (Edit: and exam vouchers ain't cheap if you're just getting into IT!)
I jumped straight into Sec+ myself, and I really ought to do Net+ just for core knowledge.
No hate, that's a fair question.
In this specific case, it's advice geared to what I know about the person soliciting my advice. Because I don't know what they know, it's a case where it's just good to start at the ground floor. Some of my classmates were international students from India with only the slightest idea what the difference between a tower and a montior were so having this knowledge never hurts. Also at 44 there may be some stigma that they encounter if they use older terminology or don't know the cutting edge in an interview.
If a cert is useless to you then by all means skip it after doing a practice exam. Talking about your cert goals in an interview is a good way to bring up what you know/are learning on your own.
Certs are there to serve you, not the other way around, so ideally study them until you land a job, then get the job to pay for them if you can.
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Yes! Thank you for all that advice! Where I am at now shows internal jobs available, maybe I should look more at the help desk listings when they come up to start sidleing over. At least then it will be colleague c.s. instead of cold customers.
Special thank you for certs info! Don't think my classes would be getting to that kind of info for quite a while yet (just coming out of all the 101 classes).
Much appreciated!!
Of course, please feel free to reach out further if you want more insights relevant to your position. I can't promise anything but I'm happy to help and be a sounding board.
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Can someone ELI5 me the whole furry thing? Is this a community, is this a sexual thing? Is it an American thing?
ELI5
Furries are people who enjoy dressing up as or creating characters based on anthropomorphic animals, which are animals that have human-like traits such as walking on two legs, talking, or wearing clothes. These characters might be foxes, wolves, cats, or any other animal but with a personality or appearance that feels human-like.
Some furries create artwork, write stories, or role-play as these characters online, while others might dress up in costumes called "fursuits" to bring their characters to life in the real world. It’s a hobby and a community that’s mostly about creativity, imagination, and expressing yourself through these animal characters.
Is this a community, is this a sexual thing?
It can be either or both. I think for the most part it is community though. For some it starts as one and then expands into the other. For me it really is a lot about self discovery & self expression, SFW & NSFW, and makes me feel more connected to the world.
Or to put it in mature comic form: https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/furry/
Is it an American thing?
No, European here with quite some insight. I think the map in the other post is slightly misleading, as bigger countries like the US have more conventions than smaller countries is kind of obvious.
If you have more questions, feel free to ask 😊 I will do my best to offer my perspective on this.
ofc. Furries are crestive people who enjoy art/litterature/etc. about anthromorphic animals(like werewolves!). A lot of us have our own characters/personas that we create as a avatar of ourselves or to express our creativity and aspects of our identity on a character. This is called a fursona. Now since the only criteria is to enjoy anthromorphic animals(aka furries) there is a lot of range. A lot of us enjoy dressing up as our characters on furcons like people who dress up as their favorite character at comicon. And this interest in furries/anthromorphic amimals/werewolfesque characters can be sexual too for a lot of people. (of course this doesn't have to be) It is just a very big welcoming community of creatives and fans of anthromorphic characters. Hope this helps
re “is it an american thing,” someone else will have to field the rest of your question
counterpoint, America is big, has atrocious public transport, and though furries that can afford suits can probably also afford flights, there's plenty who cannot afford either, or just pick one
It's for the safety of IT departments everywhere that furries' need for travel is limited
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Compare with a GDP per capita map. I'm not an economist, but it appears furries are wealth 📈
We need some data on the poor furries who can’t afford cons. Back in high school it was just a matter of sticking a fluffy tail to the back of your pants
from the stories I hear about commissions for art and suits, I'd agree. but then again, it's probably also like mountaineering, either you live like a bum out of your van, or you organize expesive ass trips to far away mountains
Am not a furry, and would also love an explanation. I mean, I ain't knocking whatever it is that gets someone through this world. It can be a very hard, very cruel place, and it dressing up as a electric blue armadillo makes someone happy, and allows them to find people they vibe with, I'm super happy for them. But dagnabbit, I'd really love to understand it. Haha
Also, I know 2 Australian furries and 1 swiss furry, so I'm guessing not an American thing.
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Nothing changed for me except the prevalence of masks. Everyone I worked with got stuffed into an off-site office instead of working from home, and I'm still bitter about it. Nothing we did required anything other than a computer and maybe a phone. Fully remote helpdesk.
I joined the furry fandom quite a bit after the pandemic lockdown was lifted.
I realized im Trans :3
I started transitioning 2 years before the pandemic, but it was still nice to be at home and not having to deal with people in person. Lots of people were and still are not very accepting of my transition.
A shutdown very well spent!
The full remote time during the pandemic allowed me to slowly update my profile pic for work until people started asking me what my pronouns were.
I was getting ready to come out to my sister in like late 2021, she had a really bad motorcycle accident and we were catching up and it seemed like the right time to tell her.
then she started talking about how a near death experience made her start re-evaluating some things, and then she came out to me and it was the fucking spiderman pointing meme. Both of us moved to WFH after covid hit so the timing makes sense, but it was such a wonderful coincidence.
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I always struggle with the "shutdown" timeframe. Partly because I have a shit sense of time, but mostly because nothing really changed for me.
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