#string thinks out loud

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I have two job interviews tomorrow. The first is round 1 in cybersecurity.

The other is round 4 of 4 in software engineering.

Wish me luck.

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TW: medical stuff

I might delete this later, but I feel I gotta get this off my chest.

Lots of medical TW, you have been warned.

Two years ago, my husband finally changed his GP to this guy from a village ~10km next to us. After years when my husband was sick for weeks during winter, and his previous GP kept dismissing his issues as "psychosomatic", this GP finally got the ball rolling.

Operating on a hunch, since my husband's blood work was OK (the usual tests GPs do, don't ask me for more details), referred him to hematologist.

<insert weeks of tests and tests>

Boom. Cancer.

We are both in our forties. Our youngest is 3yrs old. And my husband has cancer. It's some kind of extremely rare leukemia, that can be treated by chemo only. The prognosis is good -- he might live a normal lifespan.

If immunologist gives him all green next week, he can start with the chemo immediately.

I am operating on an autopilot. I got these new meds to help me sleep without nightmares. I thought made it through our share of the disasters when our middle child was stillborn.

Apparently not.

Do I feel better? I might. A tiny little bit.

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I have greatly lowered the frequency of my linkedin emails (I don’t want to delete it for job-related purposes), but it’s still annoying.

“[name of ex-colleague i barely remember] shared their thoughts on linkedin! Share your thoughts too!”

Darling, trust me. You do not want me to share my thoughts. The fragile egoes of my white male colleagues are unable to handle them.

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Tomorrow

I am returning to work after many years as a stay-at-home mother.

I am looking forward to actually working, instead of looking for lost Lego bricks, cooking and doing house chores. Not to mention not having to depend on my husband financially -- we had enough, but my pride was bruised every time I had to ask him to send me money.

I am not looking forward to the corpo part of the work. Our small(ish) software company was swallowed by a gargantuan one and all the parts that were pretty and nice are now gone. However, I managed to negotiate working conditions that would give me time to care for our children.

Wish me luck.

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Help me educate myself

Hello world, tumblrinas and fellow sentient creatures from this side of a black hole.

I am looking for reading/studying material (book, article, etc) about living in the USA during the last 20-ish years.

I am NOT looking for a story about the rich. Please neither desperate housewives nor gossip girl-like themes.

I want to understand how ordinary Americans live. Their day-to-day and their future.

More under the cut.

Before you scold me for sounding like an ignorant moron, hear me out.

All my life I have been living in Europe, in this small post-communist country. I had to call my elementary school teachers "comrade teacher" and was repeatedly told, "do not say anything about the books we have at home."

The furthest I have been from home was Scandinavia or Greece. Never outside Europe.

Now, I work in a global company and my colleagues are from every part of the world, so I learn how life is here and there, but still I am missing the complete picture. I have only small parts of the whole picture.

As I grew older, I paid more and more attention to the news. Our previous regime pictured the USA as an evil capitalist country, which changed overnight in 1989: the USA suddenly became the land where anything is possible.

So help me find resources to understand this. I have seen some movies, read a few books, but I have also seen tumblr posts of desperate people asking for money bc their health insurance does not cover insulin. Saw posts from folks asking for help bc public transport in their city is non-existent and their car broke.

I will happily accept anything -- books, articles, newspaper articles, etc. Video format is okayish, but my time to watch in peace and quiet is non-existent with two small children.

Thank you!

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I know coffee will not solve anything, but I'll be damned if I don't try again and again.

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Well, the elections are underway... I just found out there is a new season 2 of Ghost in The Shell SAC 2045 on Netflix. So if the result sucks, I plan to ignore everything for a while and just binge on this.

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Author interview

I was tagged by @alyssalenko. Thank you for tagging me! Even though it takes me ages to reply, I really appreciate each and everyone of your tags.

Tagging: @sleepswithvillains, @rpgwrites, @slaytanic, @cdrkateshepard, @ainzaphir, @ripley95, @ellenembee and anyone else who wants to do this. Apologies for double tagging, I am unable to keep track of tags these days.

This will be short, as I have only three (3) published stories :D

1. Name: String. That’s all you are getting. I use “dreamsindigital” on AO3.

2. Fandoms: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, some SWTOR. 

3. Where you post: AO3. Everything is behind login. even. 

4. Most popular oneshot: Failure 

5. Most popular multichapter: Ruthless Calculus  (<begin engineering joke> select 1 from the set of 1 .. </end engineering joke>. 

6. Actual worst part of writing: Some parts of editing. When I know something should be re-worked, but I am at a loss how to do that. My beta (hello, @ainzaphir) is a big help here. 

7. Favorite story you wrote: It is a tie between Ruthless Calculus and It was done (in my wip directory it has more chapters :D)

8.Story you were nervous to post: Oh man, I am nervous to post all of them. 

9. How you choose your titles: No particular procedure. Often the story is unnamed until the very last moment and I choose a title based on the feel it gives me. Or there is a quote I like and chose it as the title.

10. Complete works: Just the one-shots.

11. Incomplete works: Lots.

12. Do you outline: YES! I am unable to write without an outline. 

13. Coming soon ideas, maybe? I have a few. But I am letting them rest until I have time to revisit them. 

14. Ask me anything: Is there anything you miss in fanfic? The good old “Don’t like, don’t read.” Just close the tab, move on. Don’t be an ass in comments just because the story is not written the way you thought it would be.

15. Best writing traits: IDK, you tell me :D But I would say my dialogues are quite well written, even for someone whose mother tongue is an obscure Slavic language.

16. Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: I am very fond of a collab piece with @ainzaphir (working title: Heleus marriage law). It is set in Andromeda, ship Harry Carlyle x Sara Ryder. 

17. Spicy Tangential Opinion: Unfinished works, even the abandoned ones!, are as valid as the completed ones. Often I abandon a story after a few chapters because I did not like the way the story progressed. In both cases, I did not read the story until the end, but I did enjoy the first part. My point: I read a  few chapters I loved. Did not matter if I stopped because I did not like chapter+1 or there were no more chapters published.