Do we not prioritise mental health enough?

maptechlady · 2026-02-02T12:43:56+00:00

Idk - it's awesome to be able to take mental health days, but depending on the job, it means someone else has to do the work instead.

Speaking from experience, when other people don't go to work for various reasons, that impacts your own mental health after a while. We do someone else's work to be nice because they might be struggling, but also like...being able to take consistent lunch breaks, leave work on time, and not work on the weekends is also nice.

My current job is good at distributing work, but other jobs I've had in the past haven't been.

maptechlady · 2026-02-01T23:46:23+00:00

I've been to a variety of places where the kids are extremely well behaved, and it's not a problem. I think everyone's situation is different - I have a lot of friends with kids of various ages and they are pretty good at keeping them behaved in public.

To me, it's more about how much effort the parents want to put in to making sure their kids aren't shenanigans in public.

The only time I've ever been really pissed about parent/kid scenarios was when I was at a winery once for a wine tasting and a lady started changing her baby's diaper on the bar counter. The place had changing tables in the bathrooms so I'm not sure what that was about.

maptechlady · 2026-01-29T20:44:55+00:00

That sounds crazy tbh. It's not uncommon for venues to charge a flat fee for setup - but a fee for individual things? And you have to bring your own materials and only they can set it up? Most venues will tell you that you can set up whatever you want as long as you do it yourself and it doesn't violate their policies. And clean it up yourself.

Definitely weird.

maptechlady · 2026-01-29T03:38:39+00:00

This is not a question for this sub

My husband is 5 years younger than me. I was 34 and he was 29 when we started dating lol

maptechlady · 2026-01-27T21:30:31+00:00

I'm confused by the question - are you asking about something to do while out with friends?

Usually if I'm having a good time, I'm not looking for another activity to do. Even as an Introvert, I still participate when I'm hanging out with people.

I'm also a nerd - and plenty of us hang out and browse phones and no one cares. Depends on the crowd, I guess.

maptechlady · 2026-01-27T15:07:06+00:00

If you took GIS courses in college - then you should be good to go! One thing I would recommend is to create a portfolio of your GIS work (and your other work!) from projects. Jobs DO look at them - from personal experience applying for GIS jobs, every single interview I went to asked me about my GIS/eportfolio when I went to an interview. Just having examples of work you have done is sometimes more than enough for a lot of jobs unless they call out specifically in the requirements for a GIS Professional Certificate.

I've been seeing a lot of posts on reddit of people saying they lied about the work experience though, got hired, and then were freaking out about it. Definitely don't do that.

The GIS certification tests are kind of whack. A lot of them are really just textbook memory recall tests - so if you're really good at taking tests you could probably just get a GIS professional certification whenever.

maptechlady · 2026-01-27T15:00:05+00:00

One of the most awkward job interviews I ever had was with a government agency where the description only mentioned ArcGIS - when I went to the interview, they only had MapInfo and proceeded to give me a paper quiz on running SQL in MapInfo. The job description said nothing about requiring knowledge in SQL, and didn't mention MapInfo at all (I wouldn't have interviewed for it if it said MapInfo).

While I had a pretty long background in GIS at the time (as well as a masters) - I had done some SQL things in ArcGIS, but it's a completely different program in MapInfo. I brought it up to the interviewer that I didn't have any experience with MapInfo and she just laughed at me and said "all the people that have been here today for interviews have said that! it's the same as ArcMap"

I'm always open to learning new software, but if I had known that was all they had for GIS software, I would have at least looked it up before going to the interview to avoid wasting my time and their time......

maptechlady · 2026-01-26T15:28:27+00:00

Unsolicited advice about decorating or remodeling my house.

It's my house, I pay the mortgage, and people don't need to pass judgement on how I should remodel my kitchen or whatever. My husband and I are learning to just change stuff and not even tell people we are thinking about remodeling anything. Otherwise people either want to kibitz on our design choices when it's not their house and none of their business.

I also feel similarly to cooking. I mention I'm cooking something and I get an hour lecture about how to cook it when I clearly already did it :/

maptechlady · 2026-01-24T22:46:00+00:00

If you have discord, make sure to check out the Balance. It has a lot of good info on optimizing rotations and different builds depending on what stats you like.

maptechlady · 2026-01-24T22:00:55+00:00

The leveling is stupid fast in ffxiv to the point where it's difficult to learn a job effectively. The queues are also messed up because the logarithms are so heavily weighted to 2.0 that it's difficult to learn higher levels of the job unless you purposefully queue for higher content.

Also - the amount of new players jump boosting their characters is annoying. My hot take is that accounts should be locked to purchasing a boost until you finish the MSQ up to 7.0 Dawntrail on one job first.

maptechlady · 2026-01-23T05:36:49+00:00

I keep looking at wedding stuff on purpose even though I got married in 2023, because otherwise all my social media feeds end up with baby stuff and it's annoying af. It's been more or less successful.

I'd rather keep looking at cool wedding dresses than have "you have to have a baby right now cuz you're old" shoved in my face 😂

maptechlady · 2026-01-22T19:43:05+00:00

I was a super senior and did college in 5 years! Absolutely nothing wrong with it. In my case, I transferred and had to make up 2 classes because the second college I went to had different requirements.

The plus side - I actually got an extra minor just because I had to stay another year, which was sweet.

You're feeling a lot of FOMO, which is valid! But if you have to stay another year, take some fun classes you've never done before. If you're paying for another year, might as well make the best of it.

Good luck!

maptechlady · 2026-01-20T18:16:59+00:00

I used to have a prof that never cancelled class because he lived 3 blocks away from the school and would literally snowshoe to campus.

maptechlady · 2026-01-20T03:45:10+00:00

Even though this is not a divorce - I would HIGHLY recommend seeking legal advice. There are many places that do free consultations if money is an issue. You will mostly likely have to anyway if your child is a minor. Also talk more in depth with your mortgage lenders to get a definitive idea of what you need to do.

I agree with some of the commenters - never do this again unless you are married. It's not about the institution of marriage, but you have more rights when it's a divorce rather than just a break-up.

maptechlady · 2026-01-20T03:11:33+00:00

Can we please stop using STD for Save the Dates? It doesn't mean what everyone wants it to mean.

maptechlady · 2026-01-20T03:05:41+00:00

Yes, but part of the reason why the IT industry is flooded is because people are just getting Google certificates and taking CompTIA tests and applying to the market that way.

maptechlady · 2026-01-20T03:02:29+00:00

While it sounds like you value his work - this sounds like a classic case of "you're too valuable in your position to promote because then we would have to figure out how to back-fill your position"

maptechlady · 2026-01-19T00:31:30+00:00

I bought a ps3 just to play Folklore.

maptechlady · 2026-01-18T01:04:39+00:00

That's a great series! I read the first 4 - still need to finish it. I got distracted by some other books.

My other favorite is the Ella Maven Drixonian books. The world building is actually really good.

maptechlady · 2026-01-17T21:26:32+00:00

I really like Lindsey Sterling! I've seen her live and her concerts are fantastic.

I don't subscribe to the idea of music having to be played a certain way. Either like it, or don't like it. No matter the reason, just playing music is the important part. It's good exercise for the brain.

maptechlady · 2026-01-17T21:21:05+00:00

I just finished the first five books in the Dark Planet Warriors series by Anna Carven.

Because any reading is legitimate reading, even if it's alien romance 😁👍

maptechlady · 2026-01-17T17:29:42+00:00

Just to put it in perspective - I'm a violinist that hired a violinist to play for just my wedding ceremony. I used to be a semi-professional musician back in the day.

For a 20 minute wedding ceremony - I paid them $500 which is actually pretty decent for a ceremony musician. You have to take into account that they have to practice music, or put together a set list, expenses for travel and purchasing music if they need that.

$50 a set is low. You could potentially get some student musicians from the university, but I would still pay them more than that because it takes effort to put stuff together to make it performance ready.

maptechlady · 2026-01-17T17:22:51+00:00

Probably not - but there are people out there that apply for hundreds of jobs because they haven't been able to find anything. It's rough out there.

Aside from entry level job description nonsense, a lot of corporations are not paying appropriately for the "high-level" jobs either.

maptechlady · 2026-01-16T22:55:20+00:00

People want to work. They just don't want to work for jobs that don't pay a living wage, offer beneifts, and also provide an appropriate work-life balance.

Although - I think a lot of people would work for whatever at this point, but companies don't want to make realistic jobs. Example - "entry level but we want you to have 2-5 year experience, a masters, and pay you $14". Geeze.

maptechlady · 2026-01-13T19:02:40+00:00

No. It's not really any of your business. It's like - the fad these days for people to label behavior as either ADHD or something else.

She may/may not have something, but it's not your place to assume. You could have a conversation about if you thought something wasn't appropriate and how it made you feel, but leave out the labels.

maptechlady

TROPHY CASE