Last Friday, the big boss at work called me into his office. Whenever any authority figure wants a private meeting with me, I always expect to be crucified for any of my myriad vile deeds. In this case, though, I was given unexpected news: he intends to use me as a programmer for the rest of this contract, and possibly about a month longer afterwards. I have worked as a computer technician on-and-off for about six years at the province’s public health organization, doing stuff very much unrelated to programming. However, my boss was aware of my background as a programmer, and I assume he also knows that I’d rather be coding than fixing users’ shit. The last time they offered me to code, it came at a real bad time, when I didn’t think I could handle anything like that due to physical and mental health issues; my contract was ending, and I much rather preferred staying unemployed for a while.

Long story short, starting from this Monday, I’ll exercise my Javascript skills to develop an internal app along with a couple of other workers. The most recent app I’ve been working on, neural narrative, involves Javascript and Python, so I shouldn’t have any issues. What worries me, though, is that I’ve yet to solve like five significant tickets, one that will force me to visit another hospital in a nearby town, so I suspect that on Monday I’ll find myself having to juggle setting up the proper environment to program along with solving those lingering tickets, which may easily take two-three days if everything goes well (and that rarely happens).

I despise change. My autistic brain handles it really poorly. But still, I can appreciate change toward something better, or what at least seems better from my current perspective. So I’m cautiously optimistic.

This morning I posted part 128th of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked. It’s hard to imagine that back in the day, I worked tirelessly at it for months at a time, not getting distracted by anything. And I dread to read any of my past material, because I suspect it’s much better than what I can pull off now, in a significant part, unless I’m delusional, due to my health issues that have affected my brain. I’ll try to focus on finishing this novel, and for that reason I’ve decided to involve my aforementioned Python app to liven up the process. I’ve already generated the characters of Leire and of her boss Ramsés.

Here’s the first portrait that my app generated for Leire, the troublesome protagonist of my story:

I like it in general, but this version of Leire looks less ghostly than I imagine her, and I also hate when the AI decides to make a catalog of equipment when I asked for a portrait, so I fired up another generation.

And that’s absolutely perfect, pretty much exactly how I have imagined Leire for these past three or so years: those vulnerable doe eyes, the haunted look of perpetual exhaustion and anxiety, the grooming issues, hiding herself in a hoodie. I’ll even forgive that her index finger is almost a pencil. Of course, Leire hasn’t looked quite like that ever since she embraced her mommy’s love; I’d like to see this version in a dress.

Leire is in many ways a bundle of my most troublesome instincts: OCD, intrusive thoughts, suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, delusional thinking, an inability to stay on target even to save her life, a lack of concern for the world and herself, a tendency to hurt others without even meaning it… She’s probably my favorite character of all I’ve ever written, in part because most of the nonsense that bubbles up during freewriting sticks to her.

As for Ramsés, the AI came up with this:

Which is fine. I imagined him with a thinner, more receded hairline, and a less suave look, but I won’t complain.

Saturday is running out; these weekends just fly away. But apart from my worries about having to handle lingering tickets as soon as I get to work, next week paints itself better than all the other ones I’ve had in previous contracts, so my life could be much worse at the moment.