This… was not an easy decision to make, but it is something I hope to ultimately be temporary – something that helps ease my pain whilst I navigate a rockier than expected life transition, being able to go off the medication once I return to a greater point of stability.
In addition to sertraline, I have also been prescribed a beta blocker to help with the initial anxiety that comes with going back onto an antidepressant and to hopefully control some of the panic attacks I have been experiencing. The doctor reassured me that taking this step is not a sign of weakness, but one of strength.
Though, as I sit in bed writing this review and contemplating the action I have taken, I find myself being consumed by doubt, possibly because of how late it is, but I want to talk about it all the same.
I have used the phrase “better on the inside, better on the outside” a few times whenever writing a Redundancy Review, in the context of talking about how I want to improve my mental and physical condition as part of a greater plan to be a better person.
But I wonder how much changing my “outside” is going to help me, and whether I need to start looking “inside” more to figure out what exactly I need to do next. Right now I am laser focused on changing my job as that constitutes a major part of my life and finding a career with greater purpose might at least ease some of the immediate stress.
It becomes more of a philosophical question the longer I ponder it: what does it mean to change “inside”?
There are many answers I can provide, but I think the first step needs to be committing to the short-term improvement that I hope the antidepressants will be able to bring. Once I am no longer bogged down in the deepest recesses of my own mind, I should be able to look at everything going on in a more objective sense and make more informed choices.
Hopefully seeing my therapist again helps too, there is a good deal of clarity that an outside lens can reveal on what I am truly feeling, and hopefully she can help me write a solid plan for getting myself back to the person I want to be.
I do not intend to surrender just yet, this is just a stumble on my journey towards who I want to become.
This post serves more as a milestone post for my own journey than anything else, I will hopefully be back to writing proper reviews tomorrow with the somewhat usual VTuesday segment. For now enjoy this picture I took on my trip to Swansea just over a week ago.
That covers everything for now, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you have not had too hard of a Monday and that the rest of the week is shaping up to be a good one for you.
Good morning examiners and invigilators, welcome to Day 130 and 131 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
The moment I thought I could return to a reasonable schedule for posting, a short holiday took me out of the rhythm once more – although it was definitely a needed break.
Specifically my partner and I took a whirlwind trip down to Swansea in South Wales, close to where he originally came to me from, with the trip itself having two main purposes:
Visiting a local game shop down south to participate in an Official Hololive Card Game event
Going out for a meal with my partner’s parents
Outside of those two main objectives, having time away from my current situation in a city I have never been to before to try clear my head was my own personal objective. It was not my intention to have a career crisis before this holiday, but it oddly lined up that I needed to take some time away.
Swansea is specifically a coastal city, and it has been an… extremely long time since I have got to see the ocean, to feel the sea breeze push against my face as my nostrils fill with the oddly satisfying scent of salt water. I did not even realise I had been missing it until it hit me once more, and it contributed massively to clearing my head.
Over the last couple of days, I have talked with both my own parents and my partner’s parents about my career situation, explaining what I have been feeling and what I feel like my current options are. The result of these two conversations were largely the same, reminding me that I am extraordinarily lucky to have a job in today’s job market, but understanding that I might want to find more purpose within my life.
My partner’s parents emphasised to me that I have had a lot of lived experience in regards to mental health problems and the awareness that develops from that experience, which I could use in combination with my transferable skills honed within the technology industry to advance into an administration position of sorts within either civil service or the charity sector…
…which, yes, lines up with what I have been talking about in previous editions of the Redundancy Review, helping to cement that my feelings are valid, and that the main task I need to work on now is rounding out my skillset even further to be able to demonstrate I can enter into these roles.
The time away also helped me define the “why” of this line of thinking, and it is a very simple reason: purpose.
I feel I have lost my sense of purpose in life, primarily in the wake of my redundancy. The Redundancy Review has helped me keep a sense of personal purpose in mind, especially as I explore my psyche in each edition, and whilst I really enjoy getting to write these pieces, I have sort of come to accept that this website represents a living portfolio more than something that actually makes me money – which I am okay with, even though I would love to be able to support myself via writing.
But this means I need to do a fair bit of soul-searching in order to find a new professional purpose, something that can pay my bills but also provide me with a good degree of satisfaction. Something that I leave on Friday feeling I have made a positive impact on the world by what I have been doing, and feel excited to wake up for it all again on Monday.
It will take a while to find something like that for me, and there will be even more difficulties along the way, but I know I will make it through… I keep saying that a lot recently, possibly as an affirmation to myself to keep myself going.
I will make it.
One way or another.
Time to get to the review segment, and it is actually going to be a somewhat personal one. As part of my Swansea trip, my partner and I went exploring shortly after arriving to find a cafe or something for lunch. A fair few places my partner wanted to show me had closed down since he moved away but in our search, we came across a small Ukrainian cafe called Ruta.
As a part of personal trivia, my grandad was Ukrainian, specifically from Lviv. He died when I was not even one year old, so I never really knew him, and growing up I never really had much exposure to Ukrainian cuisine, which drew me into wanting to try Ruta out, and specifically going for a traditional Ukrainian dish.
The one I chose to try was called Zrazy, a potato-based dough shaped into a patty before being stuffed with minced chicken and cheese, topped with stewed mushrooms and served with sour cream.
There is a lot I could say here.
I could talk about how the potato dough was perfectly soft, or how the seasoning on the filling was perfect, or how the sour cream was the ideal accompaniment to this dish.
But I want to relate this dish to what I mentioned about never knowing my grandad or having any exposure to Ukrainian cuisine.
Despite that lack of connection, from the first bite I took… this dish tasted like home. It was wholesome, comforting, and filling. It might be a bit dramatic to say each bite healed my soul a little bit; but it genuinely did feel like that, it was a taste of a heritage I never experienced.
And it was extremely reasonably priced at £7.99, so like, even outside of the spiritual experience it was an economical choice for lunch as well. My partner and I intend to return to Swansea to enjoy more of the city, and I want to return to Ruta to explore even more traditional Ukrainian cuisine.
Heck, I even want to learn how to cook Zrazy now to build that spiritual connection even more.
That will do it for today though, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax before Monday is upon us once more, I know I am nervous to return to work after my stress leave, but I come back with a clearer head and wanting to push myself towards a better tomorrow.
Good morning staircases and escalators, welcome to Day 122 and 123 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
Yesterday… was stressful for a lot of reasons. My partner ended up having a rough start to their work day which made them come home early, my old roommate had a bit of a crisis on their hands due to numerous factors, and this was all in addition to managing my contract workload for the day.
Hectic is at least one of the words I would use to describe what went down, and that is without discounting all of the feelings I have been having regarding wanting to change my current position in life.
Job is definitely on the higher end of that priorities list, which I am taking steps in a positive direction to try find myself something new. Surprisingly I have actually been invited for a phone interview on Wednesday for that CEX Store Manager position which is the first interview I have gotten since I was made redundant, so… there is at least some comfort there that I am still able to get interviews.
What I am more optimistic and interested in however is an informal chat with someone within the Care Quality Commission to talk about a role I am going to be applying for there: Application Analyst.
Part of the career chat I had with my friend on Thursday was taking a look at my current skillset and determining what sectors I could find myself thriving in. As someone who has worked in Quality Assurance for five years with production experience sprinkled in for the last two years, the amount of transferable skills I have picked during that time is surprisingly plentiful.
Adaptability is high on that list, especially from having worked in the technology start up space for the last four years. It is an environment that hardens you, one way or another, and requires you to stay adaptable or flexible to the shifting needs of the business. Everyone needed to chip in on different things at varying points – with me usually being one of the first people to say yes to trying something new, becoming familiar with that side of the business fairly quickly.
This is a trait that has carried me throughout my career honestly, as I was always the first to put myself forward for new things at Codemasters, which led me to testing audio, back-end data analysis, and eventually becoming the second-in-command…
…it then got turned up to eleven working at Immerse, and even now working the contract role. Learning new things makes me incredibly happy, and that joy has carried me to a successful career.
All I need now is something a bit more permanent, as I do not think contractor life is entirely for me in the four months or so I have been working in it. I have definitely learnt a lot, but I want to push myself towards a permanent, full-time role in a different industry now.
So… what does this have to do with the title? Well, because that was just a job search update segment, but I have a personal segment I want to write today as well.
Over these last five months, things have been a massive rollercoaster for me. What started as a month long process of limbo wondering what would happen to the company I had called home for just over three years turned into the redundancy announcement that kickstarted this series, and my greater search for a new place to call my own, before I got the contract role that is currently sustaining me.
In this time period, I have experienced great highs, terrifying lows, and almost everything between those two points. My situation is stable right now, remarkably so even given the circumstances, but at the same time I spend a lot of my time paranoid that this might be a turning point in my life where I suddenly am not worthy enough to keep going, that my head will sink below the water at any moment.
This led to me seeking comfort in an unusual source: my brother. We have a good relationship, although we do not talk as often as I feel we should, there is a lot he has helped me out with over the years and I feel incredibly lucky to call him my big brother.
I asked him how he keeps his head above water, and how he perseveres when everything feels against him, with the advice being given being oddly profound:
“The simple answer on how I keep going is that I simply refuse to drown. I have, currently am, and will in future feel like I’m drowning, and that everything and everyone is against me. But I also recognise that if I let the water take me, I’m out the game, I don’t get to play any more. That means no more prizes, and you can’t get back in the game once you’re out. You can always come back from the lows to get to the highs if you’re willing to dig your heels in, but you have to be in the game”
It feels silly to say, but his blunt way of speaking really helped me out and made me reflect on these last five months.
My redundancy was my lowest point, and I genuinely felt like my entire world had collapsed in the wake of it…
…but I kept going.
My life is precious, and there is still so much love I have still yet to give, not just for my life, but for the lives of all of those around me. There is a beautiful network of people around me who support me, and I want to be able to support them through their highs & lows, just like they have done for me.
Things feel hard right now, but I want to keep going. Even when my paranoia presents the worst case scenarios for me, I will keep fighting through.
I guess I need to try write a review segment now. It has honestly been hard to keep up with doing them in recent days due to everything going on in my life…
…no, I am sorry, but I do not think I can today. Too much has been going on, and whilst I still want to put my writing out there for those who may need it, I cannot bring myself to focus on a ‘review’ type segment right now.
Have a picture of this big, beautiful, and badass pizza I made last night. Homemade dough and all. It is taking me a while to get the proper formula down, in that I am aiming for a New York-style thin crust and am usually ending up with a Sicilian-style thick-yet-airy crust, which is still plenty delicious but not the effect I am ultimately wanting.
Baking in general has brought great comfort to me ever since my redundancy, not only as a way of learning something new but to work to create something that I can use to bring joy to others, be it through bread, cake, or to make the usual Friday night pizza my partner and I share all the more loving by the homemade touch.
If you have made it to the end of today’s Redundancy Review, thank you for reading. Wherever you are, I hope you are safe, happy, and comfortable, able to enjoy the weekend. If not, then I hope you can try find comfort when it is possible, and I am glad you are still around.
Good morning diviners and cartographers, welcome to Day 118 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
Things seem to be returning to normal for me now, I still live the busy life of a SaaS QA professional, but I do not feel the same amount of pressure as I was experiencing last week.
It is in this moment though, over four months gone since my initial redundancy and as the five-year milestone of my quality assurance career comes ever closer, that I find myself reflecting on where I am along with where I might want to go.
I have been trying to write a “living CV” page on this website, though I keep putting it off in favour of other things, so now I feel it is a good time to start off writing a career retrospective along with talking about the moments of uncertainty that have come along the way.
My career as a Quality Assurance professional started in March 2021, where I joined Codemasters Software Company as a QA Technician. I joined in the Xbox Functional QA team for F1 2021.
Look, there I am in the credits!
Honestly, even though it is over four years gone now, and the game is not even available to purchase on Steam anymore which really sucks cause I would love to revisit it for a review, I still hold an immense amount of pride for my first credited video game release – especially when I consider the amount of effort I put into that release.
Codemasters was my first job ever, so I tried to push myself above and beyond to show what I was capable of. This inevitably led to me getting noticed by the higher ups, not only for my sheer amount of bugs being logged, but for the sheer tenacity I had when it came to throwing myself into test sheets.
This led to me getting the opportunity to go into the Southam office for a week to try my hand at some audio testing in the, quite frankly beautiful, surround sound room at the recently refurbished QA building. Getting hands on with more specialised testing really left a lasting impact on me, especially as I got the chance to do this only one month into my job.
Fun fact: this is actually the only time I have worked in an office/in-person setting, the rest of my career has been entirely remote, as I changed roles right as offices were beginning to open up again.
After that, I continued grinding on. Helping out where needed with requests from my lovely & sweary platform lead (I call him that affectionately, we bonded over colourful language from time to time), continuing to plug away at my test sheets, and maintained the push towards the ever-approaching release date.
As that time came closer, overtime became available to help push things over the line. Unlike other game development companies which might make crunch time mandatory; Codemasters was on an entirely voluntary basis, with you nominating yourself for certain days to work and it being up to the lead QA’s discretion on who would make it in.
Now, as I have mentioned I was eager to prove myself and get stuck in.
Perhaps too eager.
So I put my name down for every available overtime day between the start of the final push all the way up to the day of the final Build Verification Test (BVT) being sent off to Xbox in order to get the discs manufactured.
Nineteen days.
Nineteen days in a row.
Admittedly, the pay was good. We got time-and-a-half for any Saturday or Sunday work, and considering late May bank holiday fell during this time too that paid double-time – this led to me having enough to buy myself a proper gaming PC once the stressful period was over.
That said… never again. Never again do I want to work to that same degree because I was thoroughly destroyed by the end of it all.
When the eighteenth day came around I vividly remember barely being lucid at my desk. I remember going into work, sitting at my desk, and around eight hours later I logged off before heading straight into bed before day nineteen started with a final rush to do a BVT.
It was a hard push, and it definitely taught me one of my many lessons about listening to my body.
Release came and went, but even as the needs of the team shifted with post-launch content on the horizon along with people being migrated across to other projects, my role mostly stayed the same, plugging away happily at my tasks.
During this time period, a Senior QA Technician role came up within the company, and despite being relatively green I was encouraged to apply by the QA lead and my platform lead. I did land an interview as well where I was complimented for how I handled myself, but ultimately they wanted someone with more experience who could more reasonably step into a platform lead kind of role.
However, once again, my tenacity and drive did not go unnoticed. Soon after this I was brought into a call with two other stellar QAs from the Playstation and PC team to be told we were going to be made “second-in-commands” for our respective teams, essentially being groomed for management type roles in the near future.
This meant I was taking on more responsibility, though, given the fact our team sizes had shrunk massively due to projects elsewhere in the company, the team I managed to start off with was ultimately very small. Nevertheless, I was given my first exposure to what it took to organise a QA effort within a large-scale project.
Though, it was not long though until new hires started rolling in to begin work on F1 22 (EA had decided to drop the “20” part of the name to bring it in line with their other sports franchises) that I got a chance to start guiding and mentoring fresh QAs… which did lead to a funny story.
It was the week before the Christmas shutdown started, both the QA lead and my platform lead had used some annual leave to add some extra time to a well-deserved break – this left me the de facto “leader” of the Xbox team in their absence.
One day, one of the newer QAs came to me with a question relating to specific Xbox console guidelines. I was unsure of what he was asking, so I said to give me a minute whilst I went to my platform lead…
…oh wait, platform lead is not in. That is fine I will just go to the QA lead…
…no he is not in either…
…shit…
…I am the one in charge, I need to get him an answer.
I hastily searched through the very helpful glossary of Xbox terminology I had been provided at the start of my job to get him an answer, letting them log the bug report correctly and carry on with their day unimpeded.
F1 22 started on schedule, and whilst I was still required to get F1 2021 over the line in terms of the final bits of post-release content – primarily battle pass stuff – I was still hard at work making my mark on the new project too, hoping to maintain my crown as Rosalia, Queen of the Bug Leaderboard.
But… I was also wanting for more. First of all I wanted more money, as for all the above and beyond what I was doing it was still minimum wage for the time, but also I wanted a new challenge. Initially I did try branching out into writing roles once more but also kept applying to QA roles as well.
I interviewed for Immerse, and shortly after I moved into my new flat early in 2022, I got the job offer from them which started my now nearly four year long stint in the SaaS XR industry.
Although, I needed to tell the people at Codemasters that I would not be continuing my employment with them. Due to the nature of my role, a full-time contract which was periodically renewed, all I really needed to do was give notice that I did not intend to pursue a renewed contract with the company.
What I did do though was call both the QA lead (who was my manager) and my platform lead. During the call with the former he knew it was coming due to being put down as a reference for one of my applications, but he understood that someone of my skills wanted to try out different environments.
My platform lead had a very different initial reaction:
“Who’s upset you? Tell me and I’ll thump them for you!”
He was a very bombastic character, and even through those jokey moments he understood why I was leaving, wishing me the best.
I left Codemasters end of March 2022, a week later I would start working at Immerse which began a chapter that has defined, and continues to define, my current adult life. But that story is for another time.
Still got my name in the credits for F1 22 though.
So, what does this all have to do with uncertainty?
Because at every key story moment, from starting out to overtime, the senior QA interview to being the second-in-command, to even deciding to take the plunge to leave: I was uncertain.
The title is a dual-meaning. I currently experience uncertainty about where I want my career to go in the wake of drastic changes within the last four months, but simultaneously, I have made my career in spite of uncertainty.
Even when presented with opportunities where I was never fully sure how they would go, I always said yes.
When I was unsure on what I should be doing, my head was still down and I still moved forward.
I am a career uncertain, and whilst I do not know what direction I may take next, I do know that my tenacious & enthusiastic spirit will come along with it.
Maybe next time I will tell the story about how that spirit persists even when the flesh is spongy, bruised, and extremely tired.
So many stories to tell, guess that is as good a reason as any to keep writing them down. To be honest the above does not even begin to cover everything I experienced at Codemasters that stuck with me, so even more reason to keep writing.
But even though I have written damn near 1800 words, I still think I should get a review subject in here somehow.
Yeah, let us go for the random object I had to hand – not like it is an uncommon theme on the Redundancy Review.
Well, not entirely random, as when it comes to buying drinks there is one specific reason that comes to my mind whenever I need to buy apple juice.
Last week was extremely stressful for me, balancing work, periods, and trying to stay generally healthy. Unfortunately for me, one thing always happens when I am placed under large amounts of stress: my stomach starts getting fucked up.
One thing I have always found helpful in mitigating that is apple juice, especially a more “wholesome” brand like this Cawston Press carton where it is more likely to pure juice rather than from concentrate, it helps put my stomach at rest in a way that ginger or turmeric based products often struggle to.
This carton specifically cost me £3.95 from a local and small greengrocer that I love going to for its wide variety of more off-brand products than you would find in a supermarket, plus shopping local is always the best route to take where possible. Admittedly it is definitely a steeper price that what you would pay elsewhere, but supporting local can be like that sometimes.
Anyway, that will do it for today, it has still been surprisingly stressful even though I have managed to find the time to write today. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review, wherever you are I hope the Monday blues are not hitting you too hard, and that the week ahead looks clear for you.
Rosalia Rambles 