Short Stories and Work

Before starting this website I moved about 2 hours from my home town into the city. With that change I also started living with my girlfriend of 5 years and started a new job. It has been about a year now since the move and so much has changed. I want to take a moment to look back on just how much my life has changed, even if it is just to appreciate that change might always come with uncertainty, but in the end thing work out.

After working in the hospitality industry for over 8 years I finally made a career change. Mostly this change was out of desperation, I had made the risky decision to move to a new city before I had landed a job and so it felt like a ticking time bomb watching my savings dwindle as we paid rent and bought new furniture to furnish the apartment. Despite this, I eventually landed a job in an industry that I knew virtually nothing about, commerical printing. In the past I had worked for one of my friends dad in his printing company. They specialised in high grade prints and frames for professional photographers and artists. This was nothing like that. Imagine a massive warehosue with large machines printing on paper and cardboard 2mx2m wide. I was offered the job and trying to hide my relief from my now boss I was ecstatic if not a little worried that I did not have the skills or the knowledge to perform in such a different industry to what I was comfortable in. Alas I am here a year later and I love my job, I was right I did not have any knowledge of the industry but if there is anything I have learnt about myself in the last 20 years on this planet is that my curiosity is rarely satiated. I am so fortunate in my job, everyday I learn something new, and if I am bored there is always oppurtunities to seek out more learning. These machines are massive and complex but similarly the clients and the briefs that I work with on a daily basis have their own sets of problems that all require unique solutions. I am truly grateful for my job and I see myself working there for a long time.

Similarly, my job is part of the reason this website exists. I was tasked by my boss to build a commerce page for our website that was initially exclusivly for internal clients but he wanted to make them avaible to external clients. My mind was buzzing, I had always wanted to try my hand at web design but I had simply lacked the creativity or the project to try it, this was perfect. I found out that our company page was designed in WIX which I thought would be a great entry point. I have since learnt that WIX is a stubborn mistress and the task of transferring a commerce page from internal clients to our public webpage would teeth grindingly frustrating. After my adventures with WIX, I tried my hand at some simple HTML and found myself having a great time which brings me to here.

This website has been so helpful not only as a creative outlet but also to help channel my curiosity, too many times I have burnt myself trying to absorb as much information as possible but stopping there. I realise now my mistake was I never put that absorbed information into practice and so it was lost. It also lets me share the things that I love. Which brings me to the title of this blog post, Short stories. I have been reading a lot of short stories recently, in particular I have been reading short stories from Clarkesworld. I'd love to share a couple here.

A series of steaks

In a near future, food is becoming a much more valuable resource. One woman makes a living creating forgeries of organic food to trick the rich.

Better Living Through Algorithms

A woman finds herself caught up in the next online craze, only to find it is slowly changing the lives of herself and those around her positively. I do not want to say anything more, this story is much better read going in blind.

I think that is it for my short story recommendations, I think if I continue to be impressed by pieces on Clarkesworld I will push them to my recommendations tab in the Nav. It's been a while since my last blog post, but I hope to keep this up. Till next time.