Suicide Hotline lessons, Relationships, and some small catchups

Sadly little in the way of pictures as my comments in the last one suggested, but I've been busy this week and I've been busy with a lot of things this week. I'll try and work on readability with my next more major one.

Annoyingly, I made a mistake with last week, as they went off schedule a little and did the last module on the same day, leaving me a bit confused with things as they went this time. Fortunantly, I fairly heavily studied at least the parts of information we would have got, on the subject of loss and grief. Pretty simple, the main lesson being to understand different people value things and not to find 'minor' losses as minor to other people. Being the greenie and misanthrope I am, that's not a hard concept.

This week, the topic was relationships. Basically looking at patterns for people in crisis and how effects can ripple and the amount of work relationships have with other things. That is to say, death of immediate family can adversely affect relationships with friends or more distant family. A large focus that came with that was the concept of reframing, most Americans should be familar with framing with certain events in the last decade, rephrasing something that would be negative to sound positive. A surge in the war as opposed to an escalation being the obvious example. This is a minor extension of this, basically trying to nail in stratergies for how to turn what a caller's said is a problem and find positives within it.

Tying to it, another large focus of the later half of the day was determining meaning and feeling, a bit of a trick to get around caller evasiveness, and trying to phrase questions to figure out more detail of their circumstances, then narrow it down to the immediate things that need to be addressed. This I've not been doing well with, apparently it was most stressed last week. But it's a solid area to improve on.

Yet again, the session was accompanied by not one but two people that work the hotline regularly. Again talk of the actual hotline work, this time a lot of it was spent on the more sexual based calls the hotline tends to get. As horrific as it must be to most people, was wonderful to me. It actually really does sound like an appealing job. Very varied and interesting. That may say more negatively about me then it does how good a job is, but it's important to get work you want.

On the subject of work that's wanted. Due to the continued stuff with my unemployment, I've finally finished sorting things out with Open University Australia, a distance education service that blows my local university out of the water, and actually has crazy things like minors I want to do, and come the end of the next month, I'll be trying them for a period of time to see if it's a viable option for me. This would be amazing as I'll actually be able to at least start on my psychology education while keeping enough free time for the hotline's practice. While the course will be considered full time, keeping me out of trouble. Had I taken that damn awful job, I'd of never had the time to even sort this out, let alone discover it, make sure it'll work with circumstances and how it does compared to local choices and such.

Of course, study from home is hard, distractions are going to be a lethal threat and something I need to work on intensely. I've had poor luck in the past with this.

Suicide Hotline lessons, Second second report

Ho boy. I am definitely sick. One of my eardrums blew up during the middle of the day and I wound up sleeping 12 hours straight after getting back. Still, I'm glad I've powered through the day for the lesson.

Today we actually got into the real meat of the subject. Specifically the model we use when talking with people. It's a complex system, while previous training with phone jobs follow a fairly linear path, this takes on a different way due to the inherintly unstable nature of callers we receive.

Basically it's been divided into three specific sections, essentially connecting, actually getting the information from the caller, as last time confirming they're talking about suicide, or say, violence to another person or just calling for something else, as both are also common calls. Understanding, where we get an understanding of reasons for their wanting to die and try to create an ambivilance in if they want to live or die. Lastly, resolving. This is the hardest since its very important to remember we're only really able to help in a crisis. This involves getting them to make a plan to continue help with professionals.

Each of these with about 4 specific sub areas to detail them even further. Its quite hard and I'm going to need to spend a while working on memorizing it. Its complex, but fun.

The class is also interesting. Because of the nature of this double lesson, one of the people was someone that had been working on the phones since 2007, I believe? They had a lot of insight into the lesson and the common calls. It seems like a fun environment once working full time. I'm hopeful I'll have time to work there still once I'm done with the training.

Very fortunately, this will be the only double session of the training we'll need to do, so I have a week to get better.

For now though, I think I am gonna try and get a bit more sleep. I have a lot of plans for the tomorrow that stats in 23 minutes from the time of posting this.

A short little catch up

Man, it has been a long time since I've touched this. I doubt people even care, but that's alright. I'm free enough I can try again on hunting down a regular viewership. I initially stopped updating, telling myself it'd just be till I had some news, I had none, sickness and events caused me to miss finishing my game right when schedulaed, which would'a been a major subject, then games like Deus Ex added onto that.

Now though? I think I've got news in droves. How to sum up the last month or so?

• New games, Deus Ex has been awesome fun, though I can add nothing new that's not know, its awful outsourced bosses almost ruin the game. I haven't actually beaten the game, I faff around too much with othet things to focus on it, then I think about making new characters that are built smarter. It's a mess.
• I've been spending more time on old games, trying to catch them all in pokemon, a goal I'll never achive legitimately due to event legendary and living in Australia, but I try. Mount and Blade, probably one of the most fun games ever, and most of all a recent (re)purchase of GTA 4 on the PC, as opposed to my old 360 copy. It was cheaper to get it with the episodes, rather then just get them on xbox live due to Australian point costs. Plus I don't have to deal with my SD TV and inability to enjoy the Euphoria engine, I hate it.
• My SD TV evidently hates me back, it blew up in my face when I last tried to play on it. Good riddence. Now I have... the spare old SD TV we couldn't even sell. At least it does work for non HD games.
• Jobs have been interesting. I got a big interview with the suicide hotline I've been going for, an indimidating as fuck pannel interview, But I actually did great at it. Maybe too bad. I could visibly see a bit of disappointment when, on an attempt at grossing me out with a story, I spent several long seconds debating on if I should answer with empathy and find that offputting, or misanthropic and honest and say I find it interesting, and finally picking the latter. When I got talking of plans for furthering study in psychopathology, I was offered the papers I needed to sign on the spot, I'll be attending the training next week.
• Only a few days latter I got an interview with a company I was seeking a job from a long time ago. like, years, specifically the one I stopped bothering with on being told they'd only accept 'official' jobs that I'd been paid for. The interview, just for setup, was hellish. No cothes were clean or ready, hair was a mess, car wouldn't work. I finally get in, and my interview goes okay, I slaughtered the written part but I recorded myself during the one on one part and I was a tragedy. Plus I had already made commitments with the hotline and confirmed them at this point. 
• A week later, after not only had the hotline details been done even more, I'd already completed it's online components, but I was looking into tying it directly into education, furthering it all for myself, it'd shave just a little time off the 8~10 years I kind of want to spend on study. And the motherfuckers offer me a job. It'd kill every one of these and give me 4 hours a day not spent sleeping, working or commuting. If I don't sleep in. Oh and they want me on weekends too. I have to turn this down, I'd literally have nothing to live for besides this. Maybe two years ago I'd consider this, but its three months till education again, two weeks till hotline training. And so I do.
• But then the unemployment agency find out I've turned down paid employment for filthy plebeian volunteer work. The hell I get for this is so bad I even gave up for a while and tried to see if I could get the job they were offering still. I don't. They don't care. How could I try and help with people that are suicidal (Less then 1% of suicide callers attempt suicide. Its merely potential/now criminals or the extremely depressed. Thats even less important) while furthering my life long career goals, as opposed to burning myself out of wanting to work ever, doing nothing for three months straight, quitting for education, and getting shit for quitting a job when I now have university fees to pay. Maybe after having my unemployment pay removed for 8 weeks'll learn me.I hate Excelior for this so much, I'd boycott everything they touch but since their main focus is helping with Australian taxes, I'm gonna have trouble avoiding that, for now...
• On an infinity happier note, I finally finished my long, long, long running campaign. Not only that, actually, but I got it finished in a way that I think my players found fun and interesting. A little minor drama happened but that kept it all being a happy ending, too, instead of a sad one. It had a lot of closure. Frankly I kind of surprised myself at how well it turned out. A quirk of RPGs is that endings for them are probably the single hardest thing to do. That, or a little of monster design are going to be my next post, which'll be here soon. Hopefully. Now though, my focus is on the next game.

It's been an interesting mess. I definitely do not want to have a pause like this in my activity again. There's no excuse for letting all this slide by the wayside.

Finishing up strong

I hate days where I have to go out for things like appointments. Like any some sort of misanthrope-hikikomori thing I get less and less able to be comfortable outside for long periods of time. I spent all of yesterday bouncing around waiting till the end of the day, getting nearly nothing done physically. I try and work on this by going out daily for short times but it only seems to get worse faster then it gets better.

It does give me time to think though, and it gives me lots of time to think though, and with both my friends and myself finishing up long running tabletop games and video games, this has been on my mind for the last few weeks, and is a common area of screwing up in games of all kinds.I find it a very common theme that the end of a game things just... fall apart. As the deadline looms, patience wanes, the budget shrinks, the audience locks in on things you don't want them to know, or get too annoying or any combinations of these will cause a game will lose quality rapidly. Actually this often applies to movies, TV shows and other things. You need to rush things and dump information. Remind people of things they should know. Challenge them. Its a mess and its easy to make mistakes. Or forget to bug test. I'm looking at you Obsidian Entertainment.

Unfortunately, its also the worst place to make mistakes. Its what people will remember you best for. The last things that happened and how it all comes to a close, not the humble beginnings no matter how glorious they were at the time, nor dramatic scenes in the middle. It's simply how we're wired. To that end as a person on the internet I offer my uneducated advice to all creators of things out there:

Strange reminders of childhood

Of all the game genres out there, given how much of an out atheist I am, one of my favorite genres, probably right after that Oddworld style puzzle/platformer genre that makes up my number one, I'm a fan of the god game genre.

It's a tough one to like, There are very few of the games, they're not that popular, and some of the games in more recent times (Black and White) are awful. I tend to have to make do with RTSes if I want them, but it's so fun.

I can easily remember where it all started, but a bit of backstory to explain, I'm poor as all hell, and my television picked up our four local public channels in black and white, I would always watch movies like Godzilla, horror films and sub par pornos on the Special Broadcasting Service channel, but after about 11, my mother would go to sleep and I couldn't leave the TV on making noise or I'd be disturbing her, so I would play my megadrive, (Or Genesis, if you're American) which didn't have a sound cable.

I had a pretty small selection of games, and not that many of them lasted a long time, but one I could just replay over and over. Populous. Due to my cardridge being damaged, It wouldn't even work half the time, so I would spend a half hour taking it out and putting it back in until it would start up right, and play until either I pass out or the sun came up and it was time to go to school. The first time that happened was when I realized I have insomnia.

So many hours spent, staring at that book, its likely to blame for a lot of my issues. Why I flatten all ground in Minecraft, Why I tolerated an entire game long tutorial in black and white, why I didn't replace my non SonyPS1 memory card that liked to randomly delete my saves until Final Fantasy 9 came out...

And now, From Dust is out. I didn't even know about this, let alone that it's made by the same people, but I pre-ordered it as soon as I did. Since it's finally come out on Steam, it's been what I've been playing all day.

Annoyingly, I spent yesterday pulling an all nighter, to get onto 'good' sleeping hours for things, but after being awake so long, I slept 12 hours straight and woke up finding it all messed up again, and I have an important appointment tomorrow, so it looks like I'll need to do the same again tonight.

I've already beaten From Dust, its a very short game, but it looks like it'll be fun for finding alternative ways to beat a lot of the stages, as well as venting any frustration I'll have with the appointment.

If you like god games, I recommend trying a demo at least, it's very true to the genre, but otherwise it depends on how much you value $15 for purchase. It can be VERY frustrating, as opposed to satisfyingly hard, and is a bit too absent in story, in a bad way. I like filling in blanks and interpretation, but it feels completely intangible here, so sadly this is one I think only really has game play going for it. Not entirely my thing.

Still, it'll make for a good bit of fun nostalgia.

In which a person in 2012 complains about the difficulty of finding a job

I've been painfully sick the last couple of days and have spent my time housebound trying to find employment.

This being a hard thing is, currently with the way things are going, is no surprise, but this has been a long term problem for me. Even now at the age of 24 I've yet to find a single paying job despite much, much trying.

This isn't to say I'm unqualified, I've spent years working jobs that include with rough estimates on the time;

• Gardening and construction (4 months)
• Brushhand work (5 months)
• Animal care (4 months)
• Delivery (4 months)
• Retail sales (6 months)
• Werehousing (5 months)

The problem, it's all been volunteer work. How charitable of me, unfortunately volunteer work will get you nothing more then the respect of people. Being as apathetic as I am, that's not terribly valuable.

This causes the weird disjoint, as many people very much respect volunteer work, its also just shy of official at times. I think my favourite time is when I've been told by certain companies that I clearly understand what the job entails, but they won't hire me because I laid qualifications I've been paid for.

I've been told every job advertised gets like, a hundred applicants it needs to sort out, when they only need one or two people, and I imagine this is true with the quality of excuses I've heard over the years, and some of the cutting points are just sad if the company is trying to maintain some self respect.

Now though, with jobs being bad for everyone as opposed to just us misanthropic hikkis and the like. I pretty much approach the finesse of a shotgun. Throw as many resumes out there, pay attention to jobs you actively want that you hand deliver resumes at while you use the internet for anything else you can do without going postal.

Now that I've dropped out of my useless computer class, I'm trying this now. I doubt I'll be able to find anything but I can hope.

If I don't soon, due to Australian laws cracking down on this at the worst possible time (Hey, unemployment's at an all time high, lets ramp up the demand they get a job within a couple months to weeks or lose benefits, that'll endear people to the government and make them not want to leave.), I'll wind up being 'encouraged' to get another volunteer job to get experience I can list on a resume, which is always a good thing, as everyone respects volunteer workers and you get very real experience.

And the cycle will continue again.

The Din of Celestial Birds, by Brian Evenson

The review for Petrified Forest will be delayed, I think. I've been busy and unable to focus on the story, its a bit more abstract then I'm used to. I'm quickly discovering I'm bad at reading books. I can't imagine where I picked up that habit from in the last, I dunno decade of dealing almost exclusively with computers.

In the meantime, a much shorter and great story! Spoilers for the story inside.

Stat by stat, putting it together~

Stat by stat,

Putting it together

Power by power,

Only way to make a true monster.

Every little idea for a complication

Only satisfactory when it makes evil laughter.

Having just the concept is frustration

Gotta have the points make it real

Statting it all-

That's what counts.

Awful song parodies aside, they have it very right at times when it comes to finishing one campaign and starting another and you want to make both work right and impress and/or horrify your players.

Late Night Madness

Sorry I've not posted in some time, Haven't been feeling well. I have however been keeping myself distracted with video games. Good news is this gives me a chance to talk about them. The steam sales may be partially to blame. Best news is Alice, Madness Returns finally arrived, and I've been waiting for that for a long time.

Freedom~

Ahh, it's good to have the internet again. For the last week and some change, my internet ran out, leaving me with just 56k speeds, or about 2kbs for the last two days, it's a problem with living in Australia. We have limited bandwidth if you want a decent speed. Going to be the second biggest problem with Australian internet soon as I understand but ranting on that could legitimately get me in trouble.

Instead, I've been doing as much as I can offline. Working on Psychoka notes, Pokemon (Finally beating the main game and getting started on catching them all.) and working on minecraft. The first thing I did with my internet returning at the beginning of this month for mortify myself with a stream of my going insane, trying to build a redstone gate. I may include pictures of the map I'm on soon, once I get it prettied up.

There are some good parts to all this though. I've finally gone through with dropping out of my IT course. Now I have everything I wanted to know from the course, its work is just superfluous and a complete waste of time. Especially with the teachers. I've seen bad teachers in my time, but at least they did things. Teaching is a complicated subject and a important one to me, and there are a lot of reasons why expectations may be unfair, but when they'll literally spend entire days ignoring the classes requests for help or don't attend classes themselves? It's not worth dealing with.

Now it's time to focus on psychology for next year, while I look into keeping myself from getting in trouble by volunteer time spent with a local suicide hotline. A very nice ordered textbook arrived from America today and a couple more are in the mail.

Another short bit of news for future blog posts, I'm rewatching a bit of the DC Animated Universe cartoons. I've always held these are great, especially for learning a number of lessons important to RPGs, and a friend has encouraged me to try and do blogs of RPG talk based on each episode. An idea I like. I may work on the first tonight, while I debate between sleep or staying awake for my own game tomorrow, after arriving ten minutes late for his today...

Thoon wants to be the very best, like no one ever was...

I've been feeling like crap for the last 24 hours now, slept maybe 12 of them. Spent the rest of it madly writing ideas for Psychoka, then spent some time digging up my DS and playing Pokemon Black. I really forgot just how messed up the game can be.

I've always liked Pokemon, It's the only Nintendo game that hasn't messed up fatally yet if you ask me, and that's because I ignore the console released games. One large reason is because it plays with the element known commonly on the internet as grimdark, with vague threats of unpleasent things to characters and pokemon having disturbing facts that aren't elaborated on. I'll always be tempted to run a campaign based on those parts if I could figure out good mechanics for it...


But, sometimes it's almost like Black and White take this to the point of farce. Be warned, Pokemon B/W spoilers inside, if pokemon can be spoiled.

That Advanced Networking I just did sure comes in handy...

Boy I sure do love it when half way into the day at class the network cuts out on us, ruins half the classes tests because hurpityderp hosting important things like tests on a local server is too much work, and we can't do any work for the rest of the day. So screw this, I'm looking back into volunteering for Lifeline. It's probably strange to some how I'm skipping classes on tech support and help desks but seeking to work for a suicide hotline, but if I'm going to work with faulty computers, at least ninty percept of the time won't be wasted explaining they need to jiggle the brain cables.