jkatkina

The COVID-19 sityation is genuinely freaking me out. It wasn't -- until today when it got declared a pandemic. It probably isn't as scary as all that, but -- but. I have two hours of public transit per day, and work in a workplace that is pretty unforgiving when it comes to requests to work from home.

I'm not in the age group where it'd be utterly terrifying, but I'm in a high-risk bracket for my age group. I've got a shitty immune system and asthma. (On a purely personal note, all this hand-washing has been hell for my poor, eczema-ridden hands. ugh.)

I think this is also one of those side-effects of getting involved in The Cause of unionization. I'm aware of how things could be, how they should be -- and how absurd they currently are. There's no good reason not to let us work from home. They just care more about coddling their clients than they do about keeping their employees healthy. It fills me with a largely impotent rage, which in turn magnifies my fear.

Ah, I'll be okay. But I'm hella activated right now. Not fun.

Also waiting to find out if my contract gets extended, so like, stress all around. whee!

Went to get ramen for lunch with a coworker today, a good dude who's actually around my age amongst all the recent-grad babies that surround us. This is progress: I am Pretty Bad with being social on my own, which is one part palm-sweating social anxiety and one part being really self-sufficient and comfortable on my own, but I have decided that I don't want another workplace where I know no one and no one knows me, so damn it, I am making friends.

There was a post going around the blue hellsite a while ago about friending people at work, as filtered through the lens of "humans will pack-bond with anything". It was a fascinating take, and rung much more true than any other take I've seen. The basic premise was that, for those of us more inclined towards self-sufficiency, treat making friends at work like any other small maintenance task: make time for it, engage in it mindfully, have a strategy for understanding the cues and mores. Ultimately at some point, if you work in a company, there'll come a day when you'll need help, or you'll be able to offer help, so start thinking about that before you need it.

And honestly, I really like the kind of people I'm encountering at the studio? Animators are good people. The Christmas party was a gosh darn tiki-flavoured delight. They do barbeques on Fridays in the summer. I want these people as my friends.

I feel pretty optimistic about it. There's a really interesting thing that seems to happen in a city with multiple animation studios -- people move very fluidly between the big studios, based on what projects are going on at which studio. People cycle through and circle back. A coworker I'd just started forming a connection to just left to go be a head animator for the next season of Rick and Morty, but before he left, he said, "I'll see you when I'm back. As soon as this season is over, I'm coming back to [studio I work at]." Like it ain't no thing, right?

It feels weirdly cozy, like, the longer you're in the industry, the more you know you'll have friends in any studio you jump ship to. I love it.

Anyhow, lunch with Shea was nice. We're both sort of gunning to climb the ladder; he wants to get into storyboarding, I want to be doing colour keys or be a team lead on something. I told him we'd have lunch together again in ten years and delight in our success stories.

It's a good start.