(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)
Good morning caretakers and clearers (yes that is a word, I specifically looked it up), welcome to Day 329 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
Spent a bit of today doing some cleaning, both of myself and of my living space, specifically starting to tackle clearing out the fridge and freezer in order to make space for various essentials I want to pick up in the coming weeks whilst I still make my current amount of money alongside tidying up the bathroom so I could stick the shower baskets back on to keep things relatively organised.
Housework is always something I struggle to find the impetus for, possibly because of that old bastard ADHD. It never seems urgent in my mind, so it falls by the wayside in favour of other things, but simultaneously, I am a housework fiend when it comes to procrastinating something more important…
…there is a joke in here about how my flat is going to be the cleanest it has ever been as I put off finding another job, but I do not know how confident I feel to make it.
So instead I think I will spin it more into a general discussion topic, specifically along the lines of: What sort of timeline do I think I will find a new job on?
The short answer is: “eeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?”, with the explanation to that answer and the long answer being one and the same.
As I have mentioned previously, processing where I want to go next is the first priority, and given I am extremely privileged to have a good amount of runway to support a long amount of processing time, debugging myself and recovering from burnout is the key.
At the same time though, I know this is also partially because I reckon a three-to-six month job search is going to be the optimistic end of the timeline, with upwards of one-and-a-half years being the middle ground between pessimism and realism given how rough the market is currently for job searchers, hence my logic of wanting to throw myself into writing cause if I am going to be on the search for a while, I may as well maintain a massive personal project.
It is the advice that is always given to all walks of life in terms of career development: maintain a personal project. Artists of all flavours, programmers, and even quality assurance professionals such as myself are expected to work on projects or ideas outside of work hours to show your dedication to your craft, and it is the theory behind this that I have a love-hate relationship with.
I get the logic behind it, promise. Working on stuff outside of work can help show employers what you are capable of in ways that cannot be expressed properly in an interview or job application, and it can be fulfilling to see a personal project through to completion – especially if you do so with friends.
But at the same time, and especially with modern work culture, the idea of giving up personal time to go beyond work feels extremely unfair in terms of how it makes you stand out to employers. Heck the reason there are so many gaps of multiple weeks between Redundancy Reviews before I got shitcanned was because I would finish a work day and not even want to fathom doing anything that would class as brain stimulation – and I work remotely.
Remote work means that I do not have to consider the same factors as other people do:
- There is no commute to worry about, freeing up on average two hours
- I live in a very walkable town that has numerous local amenities for lunch and food shopping, meaning I can do those errands on my lunch hour
- During my breaks from work, I can make small dents into the housework list as a way to get away from the screen and decompress my mind
- And because I only had a few meetings a day, I could spend my focus energy on actually getting the job done rather than having my social battery drain bit-by-bit
All of these are an extreme privilege to have against modern work culture, and asking someone who works longer hours and also has to deal with a commute to give up their paltry time in the evening or any amount of time during the two weekend days they get to work on a personal project feels, in equal measures, performative and exploitative.
There is also a prime opportunity for me to drag AI through the mud once more off the back of that, but I think I will save that one for another day and instead talk about VTubers that I like.
Like Nerissa Ravencroft from Hololive English Advent.
I ramble about Shiori Novella enough, but I have only slightly alluded to what I think about Nerissa. When Advent initially debuted she was actually the design I was taken least with, but as time went on and I saw how she interacted with the community on streams, I started to fall in love with how this silly goober functions, combined with her absolutely godlike singing voice.
Her originals are wonderfully crafted pieces that resonate with different emotions in each piece, from alluding to the playful and seductive nature of demons in “Say My Name”, to diving deep in how it feels to reflect alone on mistakes and past trauma in the hauntingly poetic “In My Feelings”… and well, I could talk about Oyome Holic here too, but let us save that for a day where I am not writing this at past ten in the evening.
This varied vocal energy is brought out in the cover songs she creates as well, with the two I am wanting to highlight showing both ends of the Vocaloid producer spectrum with “Birdbrain” nailing the esoteric and weird side of things (alongside nailing the scream right at the end of the bridge), and with “Rabbit Hole” utilising Rachie’s English lyrics being…
…well…
…Rabbit Hole is a hell of a good song, and I will leave it there to save myself any embarrassment.
Outside of this though, the thing I admire most about Nerissa is her work ethic. She does so much behind the scenes to enable music and streams for the Jailbirds, and this definitely deserves to be recognised more because the effort put in even when the odds are against her is one hell of an admirable quality.
Plus her obsession with Culver’s acts as great advertising for the American chain, to the point that if I somehow end up in the US in the future, I would love to try it out.
Anyway, that’s my VTuber rambling at an end for today, not so much a review, more just an unstructured gush about the talents I look up to.
Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope this week brings you peace and comfort where possible, or if you are facing hardship, that it passes by quickly without much weight on your soul.
Keep on keeping on.
Rosalia Rambles 