The Final Days of 2021
I admit that I haven’t been that active with any online activities— except taking art courses, web dev/data science courses, and writing my Miraculous fanfic on A30. On the other hand, I haven’t been progressing with my fanfic for awhile now because of my sudden hectic life. The title of the post seemed to sound like New Year’s Day is coming and Christmas hasn’t arrived yet. On the other hand, my next post would probably be sometime early next year, so I might as well make this one my final post and my final diary art of the year and continue on developing my art skills in the long run. I still will be continuing on writing my Miraculous fanfic as well, but I’ll be a lot slower than I was before. I only have three days of off-days in comparison to my past part-time jobs where I’ve got plenty of time in the second half of the day everyday until a few days ago (as of this writing). It was time for me to move on and take on new challenges and time for me to really live my life to the fullest.
Diary art for this post
It’s December and we’re counting down to the end of 2021, so of course, it’s a Christmas tree— your standard pine tree being decorated with the usual decors, a star on the top, but right outside where the snow falls. There’s no snow here in the California Coast,1 but the majority of the U.S. do have snow, so I added some snow on the background with a little bit of powdered snow here and there around the tree as well.
Once again, I’ve used Procreate to make this artwork, with brushes being provided by one of my art mentors from Class 101. The awesome thing about Class 101 courses that involve Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop and Illustrator is that many of the instructors do provide their own custom brushes. I am (still) currently taking this course that inspired me to practice and get myself used to making art of any medium and of any kind. If you are interested in enrolling, they will (eventually) have a sale going on and they also accept installment payments, knowing a lot of these courses are pretty expensive. Or if you want, be patient until I finish this course and I will write a course review of it here, along with an upcoming discount coupon coming from me, but it will be a long wait.
What’s going on lately?
As mentioned earlier, I got a new full-time job!
It’s not exactly a super high-paying job, I’m still far from my goals, but full-time employee also means more (and stable) cash flow and full benefits from the company too. They also have an education program where they will pay/reimburse tuition costs for any institution2 as part of their training. After completion, doors to opportunities, even within the company too, will definitely open.
The thing about this particular job is the schedule. My new job is a 10-hour shift instead of the traditional 8-hour shift, but I only work for four days, three-day weekends, pretty much. If you total the hours together, it’s still 40 hours a week. We also have the option of working overtime3 on our "third" free day, but for health reasons, it’s not always recommended and we’re only allowed 4 hours instead of the full ten. I’m off on both Saturday and Sunday, and Wednesday is my free third day. If I were to work overtime, I would have to work on Wednesday.
The job isn’t super-difficult, but we’re also standing stationery too and don’t move as much, so it may be difficult for anyone to stand for long hours while doing their work on their workstations. And because this is a 10-hour shift, we get two breaks (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) and a thirty-minute lunch. Because it’s only thirty minutes, there was no way we’d drive out of the complex just to buy a hearty lunch from a fast food restaurant or somewhere else, so we’d have to bring our own lunch or buy some at their vending machines at the break room.4 Luckily, I have been getting into a diabetic meal prep thing just by reading some recipes online, so I’ve got my lunch meals planned out the day before.
Christmas plans?
As family tradition goes, we have our reunion. All our out-of-town family members will be arriving here next week. And then there’s the gift exchange. I haven’t actually decided what to give my siblings yet, so I have this weekend and whatever free time I got next week to shop. Buying gifts is really frustrating, especially with adults, but it’s a lot easier to buy gifts for kids5 and I already took care of that.
That’s about it, really😅
Closing…
It’s a short blog entry, like always. I never really meant it to be super-long entries, since I relate everything to my diary art of the moment. The saying of A picture is worth a thousand words really applies here, and because of that, I’ll let my artwork tell the story instead.
Till next time!
On the sidenote . . .
- That is, snow is very, very rare at the California Coast, most parts of inland, but the ones that border other states, such as Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona, that’s where the snow falls…
- colleges, universities, community colleges, online schools, etc.
- When the company offers anyway…
- The prices are ridiculous imo, but that’s California for you…
- namely my toddler nephew…
January 2, 2022 @ 4:08 pm
I really like the artwork this time, really pretty!
Man sounds like you’ve been busy. I hope you’re mostly enjoying yourself at least. Congrats on the job as well!
January 5, 2022 @ 1:38 pm
Happy New Year to you too Megan!
It sounds tiring, but I think we’re well pretty taken care of during our work days. We get two breaks (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) and a 30-minute lunch in between. It’s state policy that we have to take breaks every after 2-3 hrs of work, plus we don’t move/walk around as much (though we are standing), so it makes sense why it’s 10 hrs long (4 days only). I also recently signed up for their career training program, so hopefully I get to have some ease a bit with my job haha!
I’m already working on a new artwork for my next blog entry soon!