Having to leave Amazon and KU was a minor earthquake to my mental health, because I'm having to think about the future and what I see is scary. While indie authorship is always a marathon, I'll have to go wide now, which is an even slower build. It means I need a day job. And the one I applied for, that I actually wanted, is ghosting me. Unfortunately ghosting is very common employer behaviour here. It angers me that employers can behave so unprofessionally while the people applying to jobs have to be perfectly professional despite the stress and despite being treated badly by the market and by employers.

For a few days I was coming over all weepy at random times of the day, and when I was looking through jobs I was forgetting to breathe. There was a constant knot in my throat and the back of my neck hurt because I was unconsciously so tense. I applied to one thing and just stopped. I remember the last time I job searched, and it was bad, but my symptoms this time are so severe that my recent job must have hurt me more than I thought. The other employees were there long-term and I thought I would get to be, too. And when I heard about some of their newbie mistakes–accidentally deleting a website, spending a client's entire marketing budget in an hour by forgetting to cap the daily ad spend–I wondered why they had been allowed to stay while I, who had not made any newbie mistakes, was laid off. By extending my trial period instead of making me permanent, they paid me less than the salary I was supposed to get for an additional three months, so that they got nine months of my labour and I got less than I bargained for. And these were employers and colleagues I trusted, and even now I'm confused because when I tell my friends about it, they say I was exploited, and if I heard my friend tell me this I'd say the same. But they had seemed such green flags to me that now I don't know how to choose a job that won't hurt me. If exposing yourself to the job is the only way to find out, that doesn't help my anxiety while applying.

The ways in which I am trying to care for my mental health include: wearing outfits I like even if I'm not going out, hyperfixating on Yunho, and trying to find k-drama and books that stimulate me because writing fannishly gives me a sense of accomplishment without any expectation of monetary gain. I like thinking up and writing meta more than fanfiction, and I like the bits of interaction I get on my tumblr posts. I like the platform and I like that Ateez and k-drama fandoms are present there, although I wish CIX and other k-pop fandoms would also move there instead of staying on Twitter.

I can't always find things that stimulate me, though, and sometimes something that stimulates me for a while peters off. For instance, I was enjoying the k-drama Idol I, about an idol accused of murder whose representing lawyer is secretly his fangirl, because the first half of the show was deliciously self-reflective about the experience of being a fangirl and what a mindfuck it is when the parasocial crosses into the real. But the second half of the show is just romance with a murder mystery background, and is not as interesting to me.

I've got to figure out ways to keep the happy chemicals in my brain in production, but one thing I'm grateful for is how accessible art is for me thanks to modern tech. I can read webtoons, watch shows, read webnovels, listen to music, scroll Tumblr for art. One of my online acquaintances told me I can find mini tutorials for oil pastel techniques on Pinterest. And when I create, when I write something of my own, I can put it on the internet. Even if other circumstances and conditions make my brain unhappy, even if it's near impossible to maintain wellbeing during These Times, feeding my brain nourishing things is easier now than at any other point in history, probably.