I felt the same thing watching my partner working this morning. I’ve been with him 10 years and I still can’t explain his job beyond its title because as far as I understand he oversees people as well as works on software that’s developed, deployed and managed by another company, but they don’t manage software or services or develop anything but they deploy it, but that’s not not his team, and it’s this one specific program, but it’s actually 12 integrated programs, and he’s working on one that’s in development but he’s not a developer, but is not part of anything they’re actually doing yet, and that’s not his main role.

Everytime he explains it, I get more lost…

What is this job? It’s obviously stressful, a lot of other companies rely on on whatever this service is, and my partner, as of this year, makes 8x my income, so it must be important… Right!?

Right!? He’s not making 8x my income pushing pencils…right!?

I teach General Education at a community centre for people who missed out on formal schooling.

My job is 3 words “I teach SOSE”, and you know almost exactly what I do you can picture the main tasks and also picture my output (educated graduates)

His job did not exist 15 years ago, the concept of a job like his in software for the masses did not exist 50 years ago, a desk job to this degree of pencil pushing did not exist 100 years ago.

Sometimes I think about how my job is technically one of the oldest in the world, but never a well paid one.

Sometimes I consider a pencil pushing job for a few years, to just get my retirement fund sorted, but if I don’t even understand what the job is how can I expect myself to do it?

The first pride was pretty wrathful.

The female condom has two rigid rings, one in the sealed end that sits under the cervix, and one at the open end.

The ring at the open end is designed to hold the condom open and give the penetrating partner a nice big safe target to make sure the penis/toy/whatever goes inside the condom and not accidentally between the condom and the vaginal wall. This ring also provides some minor protection to parts of the vulva due to its size.

The internal ring is much smaller by comparison, and is not that much larger than a diva cup. The internal ring of a female condom is a similar size to a “soft cup” menstrual cup, it’s a little bit smaller than a contraceptive diaphragm.

I also hate cooking, but I’m broke and vegetarian.

1lbs of dried chick peas goes in my housemates pressure cooker on Sunday, and 12 servings of chickpeas gets scooped into ziplock bags and thrown in the fridge and freezer for the rest of the week.

On top of rice with a bag of microwave steam veg, stirred into a premade curry, blended and served on top of pasta like a weird hummus alfredo, thrown into a Quesadilla (side note, what’s a Quesadilla without cheese called?), smashed on top of toast and covered in whatever condiment I have. Or more realistically, I toss some salt in the zip lock bag and just eat out of the bag with a spoon while staring into the fridge wondering what I’m going to make for dinner, before grabbing a slightly limp carrot and an almost empty jar of peanut butter I left out instead of throwing away and telling myself “this is a balanced choice, protein, carbs, fats, a vegetable…”

Rice gets a similar treatment to the chickpeas, a big batch in the rice cooker on Sunday, divvied up and frozen for quick and cheap rice during the week without having to cook it from scratch after work. We don’t have “minute rice” or parboiled rice in my country, and the “microwave pouch” rice doesn’t fit in my budget.

No one said that we’re buying processed garbage instead of vegetables.

If vegetables, beans and rice is the core foundation of your diet, then any money you spend on processed snacks is a splurge, because it’s not necessary but you enjoy it.

Depending on the time of year, produce is what I splurge on.

In winter, I get sick of apples and satsumas, I could spend $4 on a highly processed snack that is tasty but doesn’t offer much else, I could $8 on a relatively “healthy” sweet snack (compared to the cheap snack), or I could spend $8 on small scale greenhouse grown strawberries.

Given my options, if I’ve got money, I’m going to buy the strawberries, which is a splurge considering apples were $3 and there’s nothing wrong with apples other than “I’m bored of them”

Hmm, should I try getting it a fourth time? 😂

I managed to avoid it until Jan 2023 when I was hit the first time. Completely asymptomatic, I would have had no idea I was infected if it wasn’t for the fact I RAT/lat flow tested twice weekly because of my job.

Recovered fine, didn’t have any lingering symptoms.

Then in May I started getting a bit run down, my lymphnodes around my neck and jaw were really swollen and inflamed, and I was chronically congested, but not with any mucus or anything, just felt like my sinuses were swollen shut, and in the first week of June I had my second covid infection, still mostly asymptomatic, no cough or anything, just fatigue and headaches.

The headache never really went away. I’ve had chronic headaches my whole life due to arthritis in my neck, but this was different, more pressure and in a different location.

In September I got Covid again, and since then I have felt so crook. Migraines almost every week, moderate headaches every day from the moment I’ve wake up to the moment I pass out from exhaustion. The fatigue never went away but I can’t sleep anymore. I’ll lie in bed for hours but only get ~4 hours sleep a day, sometimes I’ll get 8 hours but in multiple naps. I’m thirsty all the time and can’t quench it, but I’m not really peeing at all, even less than usual despite drinking more water. Some days I can’t keep food down, some days food goes straight through me, there’s no middle ground. My lymphnodes are still swollen and now it’s all over my body, not just in my jaw and neck. I’ve had sinus bradycardia since September and dyspnoea (feeling like I need to yawn but can’t, like the air in my lungs isn’t getting in deep enough), and my nose bleeds every morning.

I’ve seen my doctor 8 times since June, basic tests have been run and all they can say is “it’s stress and long covid”

Im fucking sick of it. I’ve had to drastically reduce my hours (and pay) at work, and I miss my friends and all the fun active things I used to do.

I’m still managing to get by, but I wish I had a better understanding of why I feel the way I feel. “long covid” feels just as useless as no diagnosis at all.