Crumbling

24 Feb, 2026

Life: finances, work & community

Ah.

I'd been cognitively avoiding thinking about work, the future, and my personal finances. But apparently today was the day I could not keep it up any longer, so the panic settled quite snugly in my heart. It's like a quiet simmer of inaction that takes over me.

I don't have anxiety. Like, not clinically at least, but no one's immune. I do live in a society, and in a "developing" nation as people like to say. And in the post-pandemic world, fueled by post-capitalism bs, where I'll never be able to buy a house by myself or, at the rate things are going, be able to afford the costs of owning a car, for example.¹

Sigh.

Today I had to reckon with my bank account. I managed to pay off most debts I had (the most important ones, related to government taxes and stuff) and now I'm left with a credit card that I already arranged a deal with and the bank loan I had to take just last month. But what now, you know. I still can't find consistent jobs. My current income covers about 2/5 of my fixed expenses (including debts).

And then there's the issue with my line of work. Translation and conference interpretation are being absolutely decimated by AI tools. Not a lot of us will survive.

If the interpretation field was already throat-cutting with very few chances of growth, now only the well-established interpreters will remain for real. The rest of us will be swiftly replaced by AI radios and the like.

As for translation, well, it was super tricky before, and professionals have used MT (Machine Translation) for as long as it has been a thing, and that was okay. But... it was no AI. You still needed a translator behind tools like Trados or MemoQ. Now that is not the case anymore. From the looks of it, the only thing that will remain will be literary translation, and even that will probably have a chunk done with AI, with smaller publishing houses opting for it and passing the slop work to be mended by a copy editor.

In other news, one of my neighbors, who also happen to be one of my closest, bestest of friends, is moving a few thousand kilometers away in just a couple of months. I knew she was trying to get a government job, and those can take you anywhere in the country, but... I guess after so many years of her trying, I never considered it would just happen one day. That she would have to go away.

I'm so happy for her and utterly distraught for myself. Welp.

I know the internet exists, guys. We won't become estranged, I don't think. It's just... I was just getting so much comfort in life from the thought that I was finally part of a community that lived nearby, people I could call over or visit out of the blue, friends I could casually encounter in the middle of the street or buying groceries. I was even thinking of starting a book club. I've never had a local book club before, it was one of my dreams. But now she's going away, and my other neighbor and friend is also going away in a couple of months... Community is flimsy. I guess I didn't count on that.

The cherry on top is the "easy" way out of this financial (and professional) shitstorm: it was suggested to me (more than once) that I should just take a UX/UI design course and work with that. "After all, you do like internet stuff, don't you" I was told. But guys... the thing is, I don't want to work with that. I don't want to learn about it professionally. It's fun bc it's completely removed from who I am and what I do. I like crunchy websites that are amateur and wonky. I don't want to learn how to make things look professional or polished or... purchase-inducing. I don't wanna sell things online to people or help anyone do that. I don't want to ruin my one consistent hobby.

TL;DR: Things are not looking up, folks. From never having a debt in life, I got two now. My line of work is being destroyed by AI. Friends are moving away. I don't want to try the "easy way out" to make money and destroy my hobby on the way.

Online: postroll, bookmarks & pixel bears

• Sylvia made the cutest little pixel bear for The Folkmoss Logs and I am ecstatic.
• Added a bunch of links to the Bear Blog bookmarks, notably the plugin to have a markdown toolbar on the post editor and themes by inchwyrm.
• Added more premade templates on the Layouts list as well.
• Discovered & became obsessed with the delphi tools collection.
• There's a lot of good stuff on my postroll recently
• Put up a few pics on my illustrations section. I don't like to make them discoverable via the Bear Blog feed though, bc they aren't actual posts, you know.
• There's a bunch of new video essays recommendations on my listography.

#blog #eng #life #rant