A lot has happened since the last blog entry.
Our senior manager at work for our location got walked out, deactivated and an email sent to the department saying that he will no longer be with us.
A senior project lead that everyone has loved took leave as well but for personal reasons.
All of that will be shaking up everything quite a bit as we have to work around those gaps and who may be filling them.
Because of the prior person mentioned being sacked, I’ve gotten a nice energy boost and desire to maybe stick around a bit longer.
Though if my goals to progress my career by creating a new administrative position for the database fall through then I will be looking elsewhere for work.
I’ve been growing closer to some friends that I’ve made on Discord. My chosen family I had tried to see if I was welcome in our work group DM and was met with a “Not ready just yet” which is fine. I then promptly retracted my request due to brain worms a couple days after.
My partner, Levi, and I toured two apartments and got approved for one of them. So we will be moving in starting next week spanning the course of a month, as our leases overlap.
I’m incredibly excited to move into a new place, have a fresh start with my own room again, with actually working appliances and in a much nicer area. I’ll have an actual retreat and truly safe space that is mine I can return to. Gods I want to just move in already.
For my digital life, I’ve been trying out the premium paid plans for the following services; Inoreader, Proton VPN, and Quicken.
Inoreader has been fantastic! It’s been curating my social media and digital feeds to a much more refined and digestible location. One location I can see and manage everything rather than across multiple sites and platforms while also maintaining tools to save articles. I don’t think I’ll be using traditional social media anymore as this is just incredibly streamlined.
Proton VPN has been alright for a VPN so far, I’m not too knowledgeable about what I’d need or want from a VPN. This service I can use on just about any device or browser, it’s base use is all I am really interested in trying out at the moment. This way I can see if its something that I would like to continue with using in the future. Preferably I use practical and very functional cybersecurity tools on my devices.
Quicken is my most recent subscription and tool. It’s to help streamline and have at a glance access to data visualization of my finances. My favourite part is honestly that I can have all my cards connected to one location, it will let me see how much I have in my savings and checking while also showing what I owe to my credit cards. In addition, I can link investment and retirement accounts that work may provide so I can see how much is in that account without going out of my way to login there. Totaling it all up lets me see my networth in full, feeling more secure in what I have and don’t have. I can even setup spending goals, budgeting goals, and see recurring payments to sort through or manually adjust so that I don’t have to track them in something like an excel sheet.
Primary concern so far is that I’m paying for a service that I could otherwise put a bit of effort into making my own free system. Secondary concern is that with linking my accounts together I’m providing them a lot of data on me. I do think the payment to access the service may be worth it. It’s not the most expensive thing but it is still money.
With all these services that I’m introducing into my life to try out it pains me I’m essentially swapping one subscription for another. I have this current cycle of paying a subscription, finding a free alternative I’m comfortable with, cancelling the subscription, then finding a new tool to introduce and use, pay for.