TM Gasque

While I still don't have a job, I've been able to do doing fencing twice a week thanks to a local #SCA group because they offer free gear and carpool.

I am so thankful for them because its help me feel like I've finally gotten out of the end-of-PhD haze I've been in for the last 9 months.

Job Hunting Experience Today:
1) AI or die.
2) BS degree or 12 years experience for "entry level job"
3) Send a full video, figma mock-up, and or youtube video on how you would fix our company!

This is hell.

Job market summary: Join in the AI bubble or bust.

I love being told to join an industry that will die tomorrow so I don't go homeless today.

I think people misunderstood my latest video…

@pintlive.bsky.social's Tankification

The most fantastical element of Star Wars is the interchangeability of technology. And I blame it for my love, desire to, and continuous frustration with building interactive experiences from at-hand material.

Another degree, another collapsing job market.

PhDs have the highest employment rate of all degree types? Whelp I'm, yet again, a statistical anomaly.

Better practice the customer service voice, there's big competition for the only jobs in my area: "eating shit for slave wages."

Wife (non-religious): As the Bibble says: "if you build it they will come"

Me: That's Field of Dreams.

Wife: No that's Noah.

Our brains explode at pop-culture cross-pollinating with religion.

Wonder if my imposter syndrome is the result of a father who made sure I was aware and repeated back to him that I was never going achieve my goals because I was never going to be good enough.

Current creative project breakdown:
120 page side-story.
80 pages bodybuilding document.
6 gigs of recordings and notes to compile.

Don't often share I play #Arknights, both because its a gatcha game and because the story is pretty dark at time.

But it's always a joy to read in that way Poe or NIN embody an emotional style. Arknights embodies the cracked, bloody nails of holding onto hope in the face of unending dispair.

geez good thing we’re only using it for health insurance claims, legal arguments, mortgage rates, teaching students, predicting crime, mental health care, automating government services, fact checking, and pointing out other AI

Another day, another AI induced psychosis/schizophrenia episode in the news.

If only there was a away to realize that a lying machine that causes low grade brain damage might by say whatever you want it and removing critical thinking skills to would cause a mental health decline...

Love talking to someone at an interview and seeing the lights do out when I explain my skill set. Really make me feel wanted to get a "you do sales? we need someone to throw in the grinder" as they flat out tell you no they don't do jobs related to anything in your skill set.

Today's To Do List:
Application #1
Hour bus ride.
Interview at hiring company.
Hour bus ride.
Groceries.
Application #2
Wait for hiring process for job.
Application #4
Try to have fun.
Write for book project #1
Write for book project #2

Can tell its gonna be a bad brain day.

Job hunting making me feel like I wasted my life trying to find myself, safety, education, and happiness.

Job hunting making those voices of abusive ring "correct" that I should have just given up, stopped trying, and settled for misery before knowing joy.

If there was one aspect of my conditions I wish I could get rid of its the time blindness.

End of the week is so long, but at the same time end of the year is tomorrow.

Today is art. And maybe visiting the Work Assistance office...

Also job hunting. Because life is cyclical.

Creative Writing Update:
Setting Document - updating (50 pages)
Chapter 1 - written (32 pages)
Chapter 2-5 - drafted (106 pages)

Time to beat out an ending.

You know its bad when applications have a line basically going: "Even if your not, apply with all the confidence of a mediocre white guy."

How about you write a job application that is reasonable so I don't have to?

More job hunting frustrations: I have experience in multiple fields (TTRPG, Radio, Games, Engineering) but because I never did a singular focus I don't feel competitive. Doesn't help that each of these fields "died" when I tried to focus on them or I was homeless killing my ability to work in them.

Ah yes. Thank you state run job program. I love seeing 75% of the market being AI slop, 15% being "for internal applicants only," and the final 10% being outside my field of specialization.

Anyone else have multiple degrees but always feel like the dumbest person in the room?

Job hunting is about as hellish as I remember #phd

Ghosted applications:
15 adjunct positions
1 visiting professor
1 lecturer
4 museum positions
6 researcher positions
3 post-docs

Rejected applications:
2 adjuncts
1 researcher
1 tenure
1 industry
1 post-doc

Good news: Got accepted to write a book paper.

Now I just need a source of steady income.

Unmuting various discords. Made them silent to finish the PhD. And while its sad to say I need to force myself to be social again.

Hardest part of CPTSD is the days when feeling the world is inherently evil and dangerous is the truth.

That the abuse and traumas weren't shadows on the cave wall, but the true world outside.

How “I Saw the TV Glow” Explores the Universal Struggles of Identity and Trauma — Tech Square ATL Terra Mae Gasque, a TSRB researcher in Georgia Tech’s Digital Media Department, brings a unique perspective to her analysis of I Saw the TV Glow (2024), written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun. In h...

Another article about my work on Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow for the journal of Science Fiction Film and Television! #phd

www.techsquareatl.com/tech-square-...

Prioritizing Play Over Profits: How Fan-Made Worlds Are Resisting Corporate Control — Tech Square ATL What happens when fans build better stories than the studios that own them? From viral memes to collaborative tabletop role-playing games, emergent transmedia is rewriting who gets to shape a narrativ...

Someone wrote an article about my #transmedia chapter from Imagining Transmedia! #phd

www.techsquareatl.com/tech-square-...

Been told I'm "too smart" in one way or another all my life. Originally, it was abusive family, then job hunting while homeless. Now?

Lecturer position rejection: "too advanced try tenure"

Museum maintenance: "over educated"

Hard when your ability to solve problems becomes a problem.