2024 → 2025

I entered 2024 on the brink of burnout. Maybe a bit past the brink. I didn’t feel secure in my job; I was still exhausted from a rushed move at the start of the year; I ignored the fact that I was already busy and tired and went for my Maine Master Gardener Volunteer certification anyway; and, you know, there’s that whole pandemic thing where I was (still am) living the 2020 lifestyle and feeling very alone in that.

2023 background (skip me)

I want to explain the job insecurity, but if you don’t care about that (and you shouldn’t, it’s a downer), please feel free to skip this paragraph! By the start of 2024, I knew my job really well, inasmuch as it was knowable (the boundaries of my role were pretty squishy). I’d done some worthwhile things, impressed some folks, built some strong relationships, and learned how to get information in an organization where news was rarely shared via official channels. I was doing good work that I was proud of and that my stakeholders were happy with. But my position felt precarious because, even though I was hired to work remotely and will probably always need to stay remote, 1) my manager had tried to pull me into in-person work and insisted I should apply for a formal accommodation with HR if I wanted to avoid on-campus work or to be kept safe with any mitigations beyond my own mask during the six campus visits she could require I make per year. I ended up with a written agreement that I was officially 100 percent remote (no required visits at all) for now, but aside from being allowed to mask, I would be unprotected if I ever visited campus (meaning that my manager could require long meetings in small, unventilated, overcrowded rooms with no breaks, and I was not allowed to ask others to mask); also, I had to reapply yearly, with a new doctor’s note each time. The process was dehumanizing and felt like it would inevitably fall through because 2) the associate director of HR who managed my case was visibly unenthusiastic about remote work/employees and also responded mockingly to all of my doctor’s requests for mitigations to improve safety. It’s worth saying: I had the full support of the library’s new director and every coworker I ever spoke to besides the HR rep and my manager (and after our director stated his support, my manager’s opinion also seemed to change). I genuinely believe my director would have done his best for me; but ultimately, I couldn’t know how much power he would have had to overrule HR.

Job news

Given my feelings of precarity and some other issues that arose while I was in that role, I feel incredibly fortunate to have, after a short search, found a new position that feels like a great fit! I was able to give 3+ weeks of notice, staying through the first week of fall semester at my old job, which left them in a good spot for the school year. I took three weeks for myself, and at the beginning of October, I started my position at Colorado State University Libraries as a Developer & Systems Administrator. (Which means I get to build my sysadmin skills! I’d happily accept advice on how to do that!)

I know it’s early to say this with any certainty, but so far, I feel like CSU Libraries have lived up to all of my hopes. Lots of people have hybrid schedules, and two others are fully remote, so meetings are generally online for maximal inclusion. My manager knows about and is cool with my health/disability situation; she also does a great job running a remote/hybrid technology team, including regular informal chats; the two other people with the same title I have(!!) are so smart and skillful but also extremely kind and patient; the whole team is fantastic and helpful and super sharp; the colleagues I’ve met from across the Libraries are delightful; our dean has a technology background (so she understands the value of our work) and is thoughtful about power structures; and there are not only multiple vocal advocates for accessibility, but the library’s leadership puts real time and resources into DEIA efforts. On the technology side, we run our own servers and a lot of infrastructure I haven’t been able to touch in previous positions, which is a cool new challenge. It’s great. So many things I’ve heard other libraries say “can’t be done” are being done, here, and I’m glad to be a part of it! Now I just want to get up to speed as quickly as I can so I’m a productive part of it.

As a bonus, my hours are generally 10:30am-7pm (my choice, they’d have worked with me if I wanted to be more on Eastern time), which fits so much better with my natural circadian rhythm than east coast work ever did. They also believe in flexibility for their workers, so I have room to shift my schedule as needed on individual days (say, to sleep through an afternoon migraine and make up the time in the evening), or potentially to negotiate different starting and ending times on different weekdays if needed. Of course there are scheduled meetings and goals/expectations and all that — it’s a job — but I genuinely haven’t caught any whiffs of the presenteeism you see in so many academic and business institutions.

So, I mean, yeah, I’m probably still burnt out. That doesn’t go away quickly. But I think I’m in a good, sustainable situation, job-wise, which is going to help.

Home and garden news

It also doesn’t hurt that I’ve made it through my Maine Master Gardener Volunteer (MGV) traineeship. Or, well, mostly. I finished all ~40 hours of lessons (October 2023 – March 2024); I’m at 38.25 hours of the 40 I was meant have volunteered in 2024; and my coordinator says they won’t throw me out for not hitting 40 on the dot. (Most MGVs are retired. Not a lot of us try to do it on top of full-time jobs. And I think I’m the only one who does it entirely virtually, so I’m not counting any travel time or anything.) Next year, and every year thereafter that I want to maintain my MGV certification, I only need 20 hours — which still sounds exhausting to me, right this second, but is certainly more achievable than 40 + lessons.

In all that time volunteering and changing jobs and everything, I completely neglected my own yard and garden. The work we paid for in 2023 ended up being pretty bad, alas, and we haven’t really had the heart (or the energy) to clean it all up, beyond filling in the hole after our pond liner floated out of it last winter. (Seriously, the company we hired? Do not recommend, at least not for ponds or lawns, or really trees. The whole thing was a mess, start to finish.) We’ve made a little progress, and I hope to make more—get those elevated beds up so I can grow things—but we’ll see.

In sad news, we said goodbye to our 17 year old chinchilla, Princess Eleanor Rubidium Chinchillington, III (a.k.a. Ella). She had a genetic condition where her teeth grew in both directions, not just up from her jaw, but down into and through it; it’s not something they can do surgery for, so it’s always eventually fatal. We kept her as comfortable as we could, with pain meds and squishy food twice a day, and in her last months of life she enjoyed total run of Dale’s room (since she had stopped chewing on things, she didn’t have to be supervised to be out) and several times broke containment and enjoyed the life of a small, fuzzy criminal, running rampant through the whole house. She passed quietly, while being cradled in a blanket by her favorite person in the world.

Our other pets—Phoebe, Pumpkin, Hermann, and Newton—are mostly doing well. Pumpkin was named Chubby Bird of the Day (Facebook link) back in April. Phoebe is a very old man who needs pain meds for his foot each day and sleeps more than he’s awake, but he toddles around to where he wants to go and makes happy beak noises every day. Pumpkin checks on him first thing every morning, which is adorable, and (sometimes) yells at us when he knows Phoebe needs us for something. (He also yells for no reason, so. Maybe we’re projecting intention, here.) And the budgies annoy them both whenever they’re all out.

Other notable things that happened this year: watching a rescued baby seal being released back into the ocean; traveling just a couple of hours away to see the eclipse in totality; speaking at Solstice School; and experiencing the best aurora borealis of either of our lives, ever, including when we lived in Alaska (that’s the hero image for this post); and making an excellent crocheted “Medusa” hat with cartoony snakes for Halloween. By several measures, it was a good year.

2025 plans

Learning

I’ve signed up for online American Sign Language classes. (The organization is called “Queer ASL,” and the courses center 2SLGBTQIA+ people and experiences, but allies are welcome and invited to take the courses too!) Just as the herbal classes I took online in 2024 (the Zoom sessions of Wild Cherries Year 2: Racemes of Delight; they’re in the Pittsburgh area, so I couldn’t join anything in-person) didn’t add to my feelings of exhaustion, I’m finding that studying ASL is also energizing rather than draining. It uses a different part of my brain than work or chores, and (as I might talk about in another post coming up) it feels like one of the “little good things” I can do that might make the world a better and more inclusive place in the coming years.

I’m doing a self-paced training on herbs for chronic illness with an herbalist I respect, but because it’s entirely self-paced, I’m doing it painfully slowly. (There’s a pun there, probably.) I’d better finish that in 2025; I think I only have access for a year?

And in terms of work-related trainings, CSU paid for access to Practical Accessibility for each Dev/Sysadmin (and for our new User Experience Professional!), and I made good progress on it during my first three months on the job. I’ll finish that in 2024, and then I’ll start looking for Linux / Systems Administration / Cybersecurity training.

Community

A thing I love about the Stonefruit and Wild Cherries community in Pittsburgh—and probably part of the reason those classes were more soothing than tiring—is that the people involved are so caring for and careful with each other. In addition to a number of other caring behaviors, they kept each other safe by holding their in-person classes outdoors, requiring a negative COVID-19 test before arrival, and everyone masking while indoors. I would love to find such a caring community up here in Maine, enough so that the temptation to start one keeps growing. (Hear me out: there’s the Feminist Bird Club, which has no chapters here, and also Birdability, which has no captains I’m aware of here; a hybrid of the two would be a great addition, right? Our local Audubon chapter already offers accessible birding events, so I bet they’d be supportive.)

If I don’t find (or create) any kind of formal community, I will at least spend more time hosting friends, I hope. We lit our fire pit on December 21, and a couple of friends stopped by. It was much too cold to be outside, but the company was great! We’ll hopefully do more of that, during more pleasant weather.

I also plan to be more intentional with my time, cutting down on social media and replacing the “ambient news” part of it with RSS feeds and the socialization part by scheduling time to talk with people, or emailing them, or writing letters. I found an RSS reader that will let me follow the Facebook pages my town uses for official news (I wish I were joking), so that’s one problem solved. The hope is that I’ll gain back some time for reading, gardening, and other things that benefit my mind and spirit more than scrolling — or if I don’t gain back time, because I’ve scheduled so much for socializing, then at least the connections I have with others will be more meaningful.

Etc.

I won’t belabor this point, but I am expecting a lot of turbulence in the coming years. I’m proud of us for getting through 2024, and I hope we will each do our part to get as many of us through 2025 as possible. Keeping mind, body, and spirit together can be a lot, and when we manage it, it’s something to celebrate.

My motto going into 2025 is the same as it’s been since 2017 or so: brace for tough times, but don’t let go of hope. Make the world better in whatever small ways you can.