(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)
Good morning cadavers and corpses, welcome to quite frankly an absurd amount of days between my last Redundancy Review and today of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
And now, a silly bit.
Charging to twenty days.
Clear!
Still not enough motivation, charging to forty days.
Clear!
Right, that should have injected enough life into things to write for a bit.
So… why the long unintended hiatus? Whilst I am no stranger to them, this is definitely up there for the longest one taken of this so called daily series.
In short: depression.
In slightly longer: depression plus inspiration.
In full long form: well, keep reading and I will get there.
Seasonal depression kicked my ass hard, as is noticeable from some Redundancy Reviews before my long break, which led to a lot of days blurring together as I tried to navigate through the wet haze of greyness that is the UK in winter.
And when I was in that mental state, I did not particularly want to write. Not because of lacking ideas to talk about, but more because I did not want to only talk about my sadness or mental condition, because I want to try focus on the positives rather than the negatives.
Which, yes, I know is a pretty shitty attitude to take towards myself. All of my feelings are valid, but, there was a certain guilt that I felt whenever I would open a document and start trying to write what my view on the world was at that given time when everything in my mind was just doom and gloom.
But, as much as I want to keep things positive and write Redundancy Reviews based on what good has occurred in my life recently, that does not mean I should suppress any inkling of negative emotion just to make “good content”.
Things have been tough lately, with my day job especially putting some strain on me for the bigger push to use AI tools in our workflows to try make things more efficient/productive – a total misrepresentation of the facts considering I feel what the tool is doing is neither of those things and just adds layers of complication that waste time in the fixes that need applying where we could have just made base level improvements to the current processes instead of introducing a hallucination layer instead.
There is a certain pressure from within my own psyche to be “grateful” for the fact I have a job currently, especially in the job market of today – and do not get me wrong, I do fully appreciate how lucky I am to have a job in the wake of a layoff when so many of my contemporaries in the industry do not, but “grateful” is not a term I would really use.
It gets me by, and I do at least learn new things even if I do not put much value on the skills I learn in navigating AI slop, but currently that is all I feel to my job: a means to an end.
The end in question is just getting to live my life as I want to, although with everything going on lately it has been hard to do that, with just surviving each day and getting to the weekend feeling like an accomplishment.
That is not to say that things are all bad. There is plenty I am actually finding enjoyment in outside of work, work is just this malaise over my brain that depletes what little energy I can muster.
I have got back into building Warhammer 40k models, admittedly an expensive hobby to undertake, but as I was looking at the various offerings of plastic crack that is available to purchase my conclusion was that I was fucked no matter what route I took and at least I had some familiarity with 40k from my past experiences. Built a full box of models over the last couple weeks with another one to start work on soon, not to mention painting which was one of my goals for this year.
My gaming life continues to be plentiful, having recently 100%ed the first Hades game before moving on to Mewgenics, with Umamusme sprinkled in and Monster Hunter Wilds returning for another round of buffet selections with how many new quests are being added in as part of the final update before the expansion drops at an indeterminate time in the future.
Finally had my first consultation for voice training, which should give me a boost in confidence and let me explore my identity a bit more.
Writing just… kind of falls by the wayside when things get intense and I want to focus on living. I suppose it is the dichotomy of being a writer in my current situation: my main body of work revolves around making “content” that takes inspiration from my daily life, but when my energy levels are low, I want to focus that energy on living rather than writing about life.
And if I do not have energy to write about life, that usually means I do not have the energy to write whimsical fiction of any description.
If anything, I just need to find a new source of whimsy for myself to latch onto, to hold tight in the darker moments.
Have a picture of some ducks that I took when I was out shopping with my partner over the weekend, they were pretty cute.
Think that will cover everything for the meantime, hopefully I can get back into some kind of groove after finally sitting down to write a piece and not let my true emotions get filtered out.
Regardless, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are safe, happy, and comfortable. Times like these are hard on everyone, and finding whatever small bits of hope we can hold onto can help make life feel that much more worth it.
(and thanks to my friend Rhys for checking in on me after noticing I had not written one of these in a while. Thanks man, it actually did kind of spur me to write again.)
Rosalia Rambles 
Leave a comment