VVs In My Necklace Shining

Boy, there's a lot going on! Not only am I trying to solve my imminent unemployment situation, I'm trying to wind up the circumstances of my current employment from what is (er, was [sad face emoji]) essentially my dream job...

Well, hang on, I hate to interrupt myself, but maybe the situation prompted me to use some strong language there. Nobody really describes their job as a government archivist as a "dream job." Certainly it was a desired situation based on my long-developing employment history and became an absolutely-best-case opportunity given the fixed circumstances in context, but I can say with some confidence that when you ask a child or even a teenager or a young adult or a fully grown adult or a middle aged adult or an elderly person what their "dream job" is, the answer "government archivist" coming up would occur at a likelihood so negligible it would indistinguishable from total impossibility. Let's just say I was happy with where I was at.

As I was saying, not only am I processing out from my dream job,* I'm transitioning my house from A Place Where Kids Live(d) to an empty nest ready for sale, I'm fitting in the end of a long cycle of medical testing (all positive, no worries), I'm actively pursuing what leads I can for a new job, oh and also I'm getting married. Like tomorrow.

Luckily I'm marrying a very practical person, so that actually is taking up the least amount of time, money and energy, believe it or not. A civil ceremony more or less is done with the wedding prep the day you make the appointment. Photographer, flowers, catering, DJ, strippers for the after party, all the traditional wedding trappings become moot points when you know there's another wedding waiting at the civic center 20 minutes behind you and 20 minutes ahead of you. Maybe that sounds overly functional for something as romantic as the joining of two souls or whatever, but the outcome is exactly the same for later tax considerations.

Everything else outside of the wedding part does require a lot of attention and tedious focus. So far I have a couple of strategies I've been employing to approach the problem. First, I've been indulging in a medically unwise indulgence in both caffeine and sugar, often at the same time. I say "medically unwise" as the issue I've been chasing down with testing is primarily a digestive complaint, so maybe coffee and Coke Zero aren't necessarily therapeutically indicated, but I'm sure it's better for me than black market Adderall or whatever. So we make compromises.

The second strategy I've employed is to fall all the way down a YouTube rabbit hole following reactions to the white British geriatic gangster hip-hop duo Pete & Bas. There's a lot to do there, from just being impressed by the lyricism and the flow to seeing young (mostly Black) American hip-hop heads lose their shit the first time they see them to running down the theories and conspiracies around how much these two pensioners are actually involved in the music at all, a whole range from "this is them" to "this is some Milli Vanilli bullshit."

Now, I can see how the second strategy on the surface might not seem that productive, or even in an extreme interpretation an active avoidance in negation of productivity both in practice and as a concept, but I would counter that with... you know, something if such a counter existed. Except maybe to ask in the rhetorico-hypothetical: maybe in times of high task pressure and demands on our focus, an outlet of low-energy (passive? catatonic?) intake of zero-stake stimuli is actually a strategy to refresh and reset the brain and nervous system to better re-engage with the checklist(s).

Or to put it another way, is it good mental hygiene or pure brain rot? What am I, a doctor? The internet already has one of those. I can't ask him directly, so I think the responsible thing is to watch 90-200 hours of his existing videos just to see if I happen upon an answer.

Anyway, mazel tov to me and the soon-to-be missus. There won't be a lot of coverage of my actual personal life here, as it's just not really what I do, but I look forward to making up some things about it to either amuse myself or to disingenuously underline a point I have no business making. Essentially I'll tell you the same lie we tell kids when they're about to also become step-kids: don't worry, nothing will change.

I certainly have no plans to become interesting all of a sudden. We're all safe on that score.

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*Yeah, OK, I'm fighting with myself. Worst I can do is a draw.