You’re thinking “Man, I really miss Jenny’s hilarious and witty insights into the jetsam and flotsam of the human experience”. I know, because that’s what I was thinking, too.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a reason why I haven’t been updating much since the new year. In the past four months, I have:

• Written and passed the Core Knowledge Examination, exam #1 of the Ontario Chartered Accountancy process
• Adopted the best cat in the world
• Ingratiated myself into the Toronto web development community
• Met Matt Mullenweg, the dude who invented WordPress
• Survived “Busy Season”, that time between November-March of every year when all auditors/public accounts question their life choices
• Quit my job as an auditor, though not as a direct result of Busy Season
• Gotten a new job as a web developer
• Abandoned the Toronto WordPress community
• Survived an encounter with the DHS and moved to North-fucking-Carolina
• Moved in with the Boyfriend

So, understandable, perhaps?

I know no mention of a cat on the internet is complete without pics of said kitty, so may I present: Lady, the haughtiest snugglebutt in the world -

She was a just under eleven years old when I adopted her, though the only way you would be able to tell is from the disdainful glint in her eyes when you tempt her with catnip and/or toys. Her fur is super glossy and soft, she cuddles right up to me when I go to bed, and she meows up a storm when she’s displeased with her human handler. In short: best cat in the world.

She came with me to North Carolina, of course–I would never abandon this lovely creature–and she spent most of the 15-hour car-ride perched on top of the luggage piled in the back of the van, glaring at every passing vehicle as though she pitied their pathetic existence.

The other big change in my life is, of course, is the job change. Anyone who’s known me for more than 15 minutes knows that accounting isn’t exactly my calling in life. Anyone who’s known me for more than 30 minutes usually asks me what I was smoking when I entered the profession. While I will gladly defend the career benefits that a CA confers upon people with more patience than me, I’m nevertheless exceedingly glad and grateful to be out of the industry.

My experience in the accounting industry is pretty much the textbook definition of “different strokes for different folks”. At this new job, I’m still sitting behind a computer for 10 hours a day, trying to solve problems that involve arcane rules that only industry insiders understand. But the difference between spending six hours on a JavaScript function versus six hours testing the effective return of floating-interest-rate-loans is like night and day. Granted, most of my former colleagues would probably find the work that I do now totally nauseating….but that’s why they’re in accounting, and I’m not.

The other thing that’s amazing about my new job, aside from getting paid to learn things that I would’ve wanted to learn on my own anyway, is that it’s an entirely different work culture. As the web developer I’m considered part of the creative team, and we work on the top floor of a beautifully renovated historic home in the city (the Accounts guys work on the first floor, suckers). I even have a window! We take clients out for sushi, we watch Game of Thrones on the weekend, and I’m pretty sure the CEO’s youngest daughter is my biggest fan in this new city.

I not only get an immense amount of autonomy for the projects that I work on, but I also feel really appreciated for my professional and creative judgment. There’s a pretty big difference between being asked to verify numbers in accounts receivable logs and getting to participate in shaping the direction of a company’s brand-new branding and marketing initiative. (Thankfully, I only have to worry about coding the designs that the designers come up with–I couldn’t dream of producing graphics on par with what our team is capable of.)

The work is fast-paced and challenging, there are always half a dozen ongoing things to be juggled, and I couldn’t imagine a more fun thing to be doing. Do I want to be a career web developer? Probably not–I still have to write the next Harry Potter, and all that. But for now, I’m having a blast.

The guys at the agency had an office-warming gift for me:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

–Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of Le Petit Prince

This quote pretty much sums up what’s been going on in my life the past two months. There are so many crazy changes coming and I wish I could talk about them all–I’m of that peculiar brand of Millennial who thinks that if something isn’t documented on the internet it didn’t really happen–but…not yet. I need to wait for the dust to settle first; don’t want to tempt fate, after all. But soon.

I’m prepping a series of really exciting blog posts and I can’t wait to start pushing them out. Hurray for progress.

I’ve written before about how I think much of the disdain directed at fashion is unwarranted. Fashion is, at its core, a form of self-expression, and I don’t begrudge anyone the choice to spend money on something that makes them feel at home with their identity.

But my identity is shaped by the drive to do things. Anything. I feel most like myself when I’m putting out fires or cycling through seventeen windows to formulate a blog post or running around directing a legion of minions to do my bidding. I can’t run around in heels. I can’t immerse myself in code when I’m wearing a blazer or a jacket, because the presence of that piece of clothing is noticeable against my arms in the way it pulls when I’m typing.

Fashion isn’t often designed for motion; it’s mostly designed for display. Even a beautiful bespoke 3-piece-suit has to be adjusted when you sit down, lest the buttons do something weird when your body folds itself. Pieces of clothing are molded to a particular form, but that form changes in a way that pieces of clothing can’t quite keep up with.

I’m not designed for display. Don’t get me wrong: I like looking good. I like buying clothes that I don’t have the money for and I like the comments I get from The Boyfriend when I put on a nice dress. I love putting on a sharp suit for a presentation and feeling like I own the room. (And it’s taken me a long time to come to a point where I no longer feel like I’m being anti-feminist for even caring a little about how I look.) But fundamentally, I’m designed for action…or maybe better, motion. Fashion, for better or worse, gets in the way of that.

I think one of the reasons I prefer fall as a season is because I can look nice while still getting away with practical shoes. I tried the boots thing. I walked well in them and I liked the way they sounded, but I was a little slower than I would’ve been, a little less willing to scale three flights of stairs on a whim. Flats? I’ve yet to find a pair that that I could run in. But that doesn’t matter in the fall, because I can wear Converse with jeans and a nice top and still look put together.

(I can’t get away with that in the summer. The last time I wore Converse with a skirt I got ridiculed. Not that this stops me, mind you, but I’m aware that it’s Frowned Upon.)

I don’t think this is an excuse to be sloppy, for what it’s worth. Professionalism matters, and part of professionalism lies in cleanliness and neatness. It’s fine to not care about fashion, but it’s not fine to show up to a client meeting in tattered jeans and a T-shirt so old you’ve worn holes into the hem. That’s not deprioritizing fashion, that’s just laziness.

Not caring fashion, furthermore, doesn’t mean not caring about style. There are definitely clothes I would never be caught dead in (cf: much of mainstream fashion targeted at my demographic). My style just happens to emphasize a free range of motion over being perfectly assembled. This manifests itself in my accessorizing choices as well. Earrings? Fine. Bracelets? They get in the way of typing: out.

I don’t think this particular aesthetic of mine something that’s going to change anytime soon, but I’m starting to be come to terms with the fact that I will never be the type of girl featured in Lucky Magazine. And that’s okay, too.

This is what Hermione would be like if she were a dude.

Me? Arrogant? No way.

One of my coworkers.

Some more sketches while I was really bored.

I talked to several of my neighbours who knew the previous tenants, and they confirmed that my place was, indeed, capable of supporting a phone. I looked on the wall where they thought the phone might have been, and discovered the remnants of a phone cable, and a notch in the paint that looks like it might’ve once supported a phone jack.

Hurrah!

So I went out and bought a phone jack and wire strippers and set out to install a phone jack like a bad-ass.

Unfortunately, it turns out the wire I found led to…nowhere. Yep. It was just a strip of wire that had been severed at both ends.

Undaunted, I went outside and found the network interchange box that the phone company installed for the building. I traced the gigantic mass of wires leading out of the interchange box up the fire escape to a landing just outside my door, to a second switch box. I found the cables that led from the switch box inwards to my apartment. Only to find… that the cable poking out of the wall was 1. barely half an inch long, and 2. totally painted over.

No big. So I messed around with the cable leading from the second switch box until I got enough slack to be able to feed it through a bit more. Then I stripped the first, fake, telephone wire and connected it to the pathetic stub of the live wire, and connected the other end to the phone jack.

Still no internet. I cry a little, then re-check the box that the phone jack had come in.

I’d wired the colours wrong. Of course.

Anyway, after rewiring the cables, I get: a blinking DSL light! And tears of joy.

So right about now my ego’s the size of the former USSR, and I fully expect the president of the planet earth to call me at any moment offering me their job. You mean, she’s smart, she’s pretty, she blogs and writes and codes and draws and bikes ten miles like a bad-ass, she’s got a middle name with the letters ‘y’ and ‘x’ in them, and she installs telephone wiring? I thought people like that only existed in badly written YA stories?!

I started this blog because I wanted to get back in the habit of writing regularly, but lately it’s become more of an obligation than anything else. I still want to write, but now I want to write for myself: the long-form fiction that I started out with twelve years ago, and more of the vignettes I already post here.

Furthermore, I want my writing to be more than just an exercise in self-indulgence. Former NDP leader Jack Layton’s passing has made me realize that just shouting into the ether isn’t enough for me anymore. I want to start doing something with my opinion.

I still want to blog. Anyone who follows me on Google+ or Mlkshk or Twitter knows that I repost a lot of articles. But I no longer have time for the thousand-word-essays that used to occupy this space. I’ll be emulating the Daring Fireball blog in future posts: a link, a quote, and a single line with my thoughts. Occasionally I’ll still write an opinion piece, but by and large a shorter format will allow me to update more frequently, and be a bit less constrained in what I write about. Sometimes I just don’t have that much to say, you know?

As for the mailing list, don’t worry. I’m not going to send out an email every time I post a link; instead, you’ll only get notices for long posts and a weekly round-up of the highlights.

Hope you guys stick around.

I was staying in Long Island, so I took the fantastic LIRR into town and walked basically all over Manhattan. I hit as far north as 76th and as far south as the WTC memorial, with lots of subway-ing in between. (Totally jealous of the NY subway, for what it’s worth.) I’m not totally sure how far I walked, but I do know that I was on my feet non-stop for about 9 hours, so…

I only had a cellphone camera with me, but I think these turned out alright for what they were.

That only took me four solid days of coding, no big deal. At least I learned a bunch about how to use WordPress.

I still need to slowly add art to the ‘et cetera’ section over the next little while, but by and large it’s ready to face the world.