Rosalia Rambles

Tag: health

  • Redundancy Review: Day 175, “Multiples of Seven”

    (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 squares and factorials, welcome to Day 175 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Tuesday is an important milestone day when it comes to writing these pieces, which makes it a shame that I have missed so many recently as part of my schedule slippage. We have the tradition of me making every Tuesday topic talking about something in the VTuber space, but the day also helps me keep track of how many weeks I have been doing the Redundancy Review, and by extension, making sure my day counter stays consistent.

    When it comes to writing a Tuesday piece, I will take the day and divide it by seven. Getting a whole number back means I am still consistent in my day tracking, and lets me know what week I am on.

    It is week twenty-five, if you are curious. Twenty-five weeks since I first got made redundant, with so much learnt about myself along the way, and yet… I still feel immature within the world as a whole.

    My birthday is coming up next week, and I will be twenty-eight years old, which coincidentally is also a multiple of seven, and my birthday is on Tuesday, which means it will be on a multiple of seven day for the review… okay I am getting tangential here, need to get back on track.

    Twenty-eight is a young age, all things considered, but I feel an immense amount of pressure from within my own mind to be beyond my own capabilities. For all intents and purposes, I have made an extraordinarily successful life for myself and my partner for people within our Gen Z age group, even through all the uncertainty and instability that my redundancy brought, we still had a very good lifestyle.

    I anticipate needing to do some amount of lifestyle trimming depending on the outcome of this contract and how easily I can come into new work after the contract ends. It will take a while for me to reach a point where I feel “stable” in terms of work again, and there is a real possibility that I will be in what I consider to be “unstable” work for a while yet.

    In the meantime though, I shall keep carrying on as I do, rambling about the nature of life as I see it and, when I actually make a post on a Tuesday, VTubers.

    Given the news this morning though, I feel I have to try highlight the work and career of Amane Kanata, a talent from Hololive Japan Fourth Generation who today announced they would be graduating at the end of December.

    This might be a little difficult, because I admittedly am not massively in tune to what work they have done outside of the few appearances I know off the top of my head, but I will sure try.

    First off, six years. Six years spent as a Hololive idol, working on streaming, original albums, and solo concerts. That is an impressive amount of time to spend in any career, let alone one that puts so much pressure on the talent to perform on a regular basis, so that level of dedication has to be respected.

    She listed her reasons for graduation in a document, the translated version of which I will link here (Twitter link) for full context, but it seems like she was taking on too many responsibilities above her position which led to her falling behind on her actual streamer activities, all of which took a toll on her health – all the more worrying considering she suffers from Meniere’s Disease, a very debilitating condition that causes vertigo, tinnitus, and fluctuating hearing loss.

    From the small bits I have seen of Kanata, she is an incredibly talented singer, being able to hold notes for extreme amounts of time whilst having complete control over her voice. Additionally, there was an absolutely massive outpouring of love on Twitter from other Holomems, finding out about her decision to graduate at the same time as the greater fanbase.

    People sharing good memories, saying how supportive she was of their activities, and saying that when things calm down, they should share good food together. It is the mark of a good colleague that everyone feels rough when you announce your departure.

    Though, it definitely highlights the rough nature of corporate VTubing in a way. Kanata taking on way more responsibility than her position dictated should not have happened, and suggests a lot of potential management issues behind the scenes that we as fans do not know about – something that has been speculated for a long time considering how often “disagreements with management” were cited as reasons for graduation.

    Any corporate entity is likely to have issues with management, but when the brand is built on the personas of these idols, taking time away from them which could be spent on brand building activities to instead fix problems above their station does not bode well, so hopefully after a rough year of multiple graduations for Hololive, the corporate structure going forward favours talents more and enables them to perform at their best without bureaucracy holding them back.

    For now, I wish Amane Kanata the best in whatever she does next. She explicitly stated she does not intend to reincarnate or return as a VTuber, preferring instead to be a private individual once more – which I can relate to.

    That covers everything for today, thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope your week is going well, and that you have positive things on the horizon.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 172-174: “Showing Up”

    (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 absentees and truants, welcome to Day 172-174 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    It finally looks as though I am heading out the other end of everything that kicked off last week. My pestilence symptoms have mostly abated aside from a particularly persistent cough that really does not want to go away, and after much pestering of my internet service provider, there is a… sort of resolution to the whole “internet line being cut” thing.

    Put simply, they have to go through a much longer process to reconnect us to the internet due to being on copper lines. Copper lines are being phased out in the UK in favour of fibre, rightfully so mind given how behind some infrastructure is in this country, but it means that old copper lines that get cut off without replacement have a layer of bureaucracy to them.

    On the plus side, the call I had to do this morning was with customer retention who managed to get me a lovely deal together to reduce my monthly payments as part of getting me back online, which I definitely cannot complain about – especially given as the guy I talked to was lovely.

    For now though I find myself working off my phone’s hotspot data, which I thankfully upgraded for this month with the hunch that it would still take a while for my situation to resolve itself. Unlimited data for working and scrolling, lets me keep busy this month at least.

    My hotspot does sort of lead into the topic I wanted to write about today, and ties into me jumping around all last week to co-working spaces and libraries in order to get my work done. It traces back to one of my qualities of “this is really good on paper but I somewhat resent having it”: no matter the hardship, I try my best to show up.

    World collapsing? Trauma resurfacing? Period pains? Does not matter, I will push myself to show face at work and do what I can on a given day. Does this usually lead to me being way below where I would normally be in terms of productivity? Obviously, but I still believe that any progress is good progress, even if it takes an hour to do a test run because of a hacking cough that gets irritated by moving about in VR too much.

    It is what marked me as someone reliable, and that reliability is what people came to appreciate about me. Even as I find myself doubting what this means for me as a professional in the current world, the fact I try to keep up an output of any sorts even when under stress or strain is something that can be considered admirable about me.

    Something to consider when I inevitably end up redrafting my CV after the end of this contract, trying to spin a more consistent story about myself as an individual and selling myself that way. Part of me worries that this site will put me at a disadvantage when it comes to applying to jobs in future given I quite literally wear my heart on my sleeve in these pieces, but, I would rather die honest than live any more days with my mind caged up…

    …that got needlessly dramatic, but hey ho.

    Anyway, as expected for this end of year period, I have not got much to explicitly review, but I do have a screenshot from my latest Stardew session played with only a minor amount of scuff due to the hotspot which I want to talk about.

    This is the inside of my house on my main Stardew playthrough with a friend of mine, and whilst the farm is gradually approaching its final form; the interior decorating side of things is taking up a bit more time.

    The main achievement from this latest play session is down in the bottom-left corner, where a retro-styled cafe has started to take shape next to my kitchen in the dining room extension, something which was added in the most recent 1.6 update. Outside of that I have a fish tank going on with the majority of the legendary fish in there, though there is a lot of empty space to still fill up.

    In Stardew at least, I like using my in-game houses as museums to my achievements, collecting every sort of unique reward or challenging collectibles, as you can probably tell from all the paintings on the wall that I have gathered throughout the game.

    Considering there is still much more to do in this playthrough, I am almost certain I will be able to show a better version of this house in the near future.

    That will cover everything for today, a short journal updating where I am, rambling about something in my head, and talking about something I have done recently. A pretty formulaic article, but thank you all the same for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you have a wonderful December to finish out your year, and that the season does not bring you too much chaos.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 171, “Libraries Are Great”

    (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 librarians and archivists, welcome to Day 171 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, I know, a single day entry – what a concept. A daily series writing an entry on the day it should go up.

    Okay I am being snarky and facetious, but given the fact I had another thing not go my way yesterday you can forgive me for being a little cynical.

    Specifically, I was unable to book the co-working space for a second day in a row, which meant needing to find another place to park my posterior to attempt to be productive. I briefly considered taking a visit back to my parent’s place, especially given they have full Fibre To The Premises meaning an absolutely gorgeous three-hundred megabits down speed with around a hundred megabits in up speed… but given my dad has also started taking all my old Warhammer bits out of the loft, I would certainly get distracted with that instead of working.

    There was also the option of becoming one of those insufferable people who squat in local cafes to do their work, although I would aim to be a bit more polite than them and actually order proper drinks regularly to my table rather than doing the bare minimum, but then I run into the problem of looking like an absolute weirdo wearing virtual reality kit in a public space, which might mean I get kicked out of wherever I have parked myself.

    My options were not looking favourable, until I started my walk home from the “office” and realised the perfect solution had been right on my doorstep the entire time.

    Shrewsbury Library, an absolutely gorgeous building, and my refuge for today to get myself connected with the hope of getting some work done. Whilst this location carries the same amount of risk that a cafe does in terms of wearing VR kit and looking weird, the table I have perched myself on is in a corner away from the main public areas. This means that I might still get a few weird looks thrown my way, but so long as I keep my voice down during any test runs I should be able to stay productive.

    The major upside to working from the library is that it is a way cheaper alternative compared to booking a co-working space or regular ordering drinks in a cafe, the only expectation is being respectful to my surroundings.

    In general though, I have always loved libraries as the free public spaces that they are, and without the local library back in my home town I do not think I would have been exposed to all of the hobbies I currently enjoy.

    If you cannot tell from the general contents of the website, I am a massive nerd, and a huge part of my formative years were spent in a library. There was a Warhammer tabletop group hosted every Saturday at my local library where I was introduced by an old friend of mine, eventually becoming a regular member at the group.

    It is interesting playing an involved tabletop game in a library, especially as whilst we were allowed to make a modicum of noise, there were moments where we did get told to reign it in a little bit as, after all, it was still a public library. Eventually though as the years shifted on at the club we were moved from a central area of the library to the space at the rear, pushing us out of sight of normal patrons and giving us a bit more freedom to express ourselves.

    This group was actually where I got into the deckbuilding card game “Star Realms” as well. I noticed it in my old friend’s bag one day and got curious, asking what it was. We played a round and I ended up enjoying it so much that I picked up my own copy to introduce to my friends at some of my other gaming groups at the time. This then evolved into me becoming an avid Star Realms collector, and to this day I still place it as my favourite card game of all time – even over Magic: the Gathering.

    Though it was not just the Saturday group that I used the library for. During my summer breaks at university there was usually very little for me to do during the week… granted I should have been studying and actually improving myself on being a game developer but there was also a lot of mental shit going on during that time which held me back. 

    Anyway, back on topic, I would often meet up with a good friend of mine to grab a quiet table somewhere in the library and play card games for a bit, getting both much needed time out of the house and socialisation.

    That is the beauty of public libraries, they go beyond what most people assume as simply being a place to take out books or use the computer, although the latter is definitely a vital service in the current age. Libraries are spaces for anyone to use for whatever purpose, they can act as social hubs, medical centres, or even just a warm place for people to come during the day. 

    They are essential public services, ones that should be funded to the highest degree because of what they can be for people in need. I would not be in the position I am in life without public libraries, and future generations should benefit from the same perks I received from having a good public library in their life.

    Think that covers everything for today, and gets in a somewhat usual dose of left-leaning politics into the mix. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to take a relaxing weekend and recover from whatever has brought you low – treat yourself, you deserve it.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 167-170, “What Can Go Wrong Has Gone Wrong”

    (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 disaster bisexuals and chaotic lesbians, welcome to Day 167 to 170 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    So, I said in my previous article that I had mostly managed to avoid going down too hard with the pestilence my partner had been afflicted with…

    …yeah I spoke way too soon, got hit hard on Monday & Tuesday to the point I had to take time off work to recover, something I am usually very loathe to do for physical conditions as I can usually just persevere through them with the power of Lucozade and high-strength painkillers to keep my energy up and the discomfort down respectively.

    But getting tonsillitis as a fucking twenty-seven year old woman was not on my bingo card, having only had the disease once before when I was a child which now makes me regret not having the bastard things out while I could have.

    Though, given my younger self was absolutely terrified at the idea of surgery, I cannot exactly blame her for not going along with that idea and taking the antibiotic route instead, however disgusting it tasted. 

    The week started off rough, but by Wednesday I was… mostly… ready to bring myself to my desk one way or another to get back into the flow of things and let myself focus on something productive during the day which was not sleeping or seven hour Youtube videos of Metal Gear Solid playthroughs.

    Or rather, that is what I would have done, if not for my internet line being disconnected during the night.

    Somehow, someone accidentally put in my address for usage as part of an internet contract, and rather than the infrastructure company doing any amount of due diligence or even sending an engineer round to the flat to confirm that the work needed doing, they put an “unsolicited cease” on my line at three in the goddamn morning.

    This led to me putting in a very snotty, very stressed out call to my ISP who, to their immense credit, has been patient and understanding with my frustrations around this issue, answering any of my questions to their best ability even when the answer is “I do not really know”.

    Though good quality customer service does not reduce the annoyance that comes from having a vital service cut off, not just for mine and my partner’s relaxation time, but for my actual fucking livelihood too. I am a remote worker working for an organisation which has no head office for me to go into instead whilst I wait for my internet issues to be resolved, leading to me draining both mine and my partner’s hotspot on the Wednesday before booking myself into a local co-working space today.

    On top of all this, my partner is still suffering hard from their own illness as well, with the both of us feeling incredibly nauseous after eating pizza on the Monday before giving in and resorting back to the classic sick person comfort food of tomato soup on the Tuesday. Being ill is hard enough, but not being able to indulge in food that normally brings us both comfort has made navigating this period of illness even more difficult.

    Hence the title, cause with the way this week has been, it genuinely does feel like at every turn, I have been met with stone walls and road blocks.

    But I am still going.

    Somehow.

    I am going to be honest, I do not really know how I am still going after the week I have had. Regular readers will know I aim to deliver a positive message when it comes to me telling this story, about persevering even when the odds are against me, about keeping going even if the cards dealt are not what I was anticipating.

    And for the most part, that is still happening. Even if the timelines are not yet clear, I know everything I am suffering through right now will pass, and there are still spots of hope beyond the horizon.

    Right now though?

    Credit to @Basil_Mage on Twitter for this beautiful image, certainly captures the mood I am in right now.

    Hopefully the weekend calms down for me a little bit, if just to let myself vegetate in bed for a couple hours if the internet stays off. Should be getting an upgraded data contract sometime over the weekend though, set that in motion as a contingency in case what is currently happening to me happened and I had no clear idea when my internet was going to come back, small benefit of the current phone plan I have, I can actually flex what I pay and get varying amounts of data in return.

    That is about all the writing energy my body can provide me today, but at least this means I have written something mid-week rather than waiting till the weekend, which I am definitely taking as a plus. Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review, wherever you are I hope you are dealing with less shit than I am, and that the weekend on the horizon looks to be a relaxing one for you.

  • Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 160-166, “Afflicted With Pestilence”

    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 poxwalkers and plaguebearers, welcome to what is essentially a “week in the life” post for Day 160 to 166 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    The week started out as standard, work feeling pretty intense for both myself and my partner, with the latter having a fair bit of overtime on the horizon for both the Monday and Wednesday. He got through the Monday shift pretty okay, but given the exposed nature of retail, on Tuesday he took a turn when he was afflicted with a pretty nasty cough. 

    He usually has a pretty good immune system, not getting ill often at all and any time he does get ill it never lasted more than a day or two, so I encouraged him to head into work on Wednesday, emphasising that if it did not clear up, he did not need to do the overtime.

    Unfortunately, he needed to come home shortly before his shift was due to end. I was proud of him for making it as far as he did, but considering the state he came back in, it was definitely for the best.

    The worrying part comes in that we are on Sunday, and it has not cleared up. The coughing has definitely got less intense, but he does not take well to illness all the same – definitely different from how I take it.

    Because, yeah, with me being in close proximity to him and offering him comfort up close and personal, I ended up catching whatever he has.

    While he gets ill very infrequently, my immune system is quite different. Two bouts with COVID have taken a pretty rough toll on how my body reacts to illnesses. Combine this with naturally not-good sinuses which are prone to infection, any pestilence I get inevitably moves up into my nose and leaves me very disoriented for a period of time…

    …which is weird that somehow, I have not taken whatever this bug is as hard as he has.

    Comparing our situations, he has been afflicted for almost a week now and still struggles to move about, eat proper food, or be at his desk for any length of time. Whereas in the span of two days with the majority of that time spent in bed zoning out to extremely long Youtube videos, while I still feel like ass I am at about the same level of functionality that I am on any other given day.

    This goes some distance to explain why I have not exactly been in a writing mood this week, most of my energy has been dedicated to taking care of my partner and making sure he can get through this situation as best he can.

    In general, I do not feel massively optimistic about my ability to keep up with writing for the rest of the year, at least until mid-December by my current guess. Lots of work commitments, working out Christmas plans, my birthday, and trying to find time to myself in that mix.

    It will benefit me to try to write in that mix, but it may be more pieces like this which are journal-styled than proper Redundancy Reviews as I have made in the past.

    There will be plenty to ramble about in the future, and plenty I can review, but for now, the story I am telling is one of perseverance, checking in when I can and keeping myself together through the crazy world we live in.

    Thumbnail picture… thumbnail picture…

    Soon.

    Soon I will have this game finished 100%, and then I will be able to ramble about it to my heart’s content.

    That covers what I want to catch up on this page. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax before the work week begins once more and that any impending Monday blues do not hit you too hard.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 159, “It Still Feels Weird To Rest”

    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 daydreamers and fantasists, welcome to Day 159 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    It is a wonderfully brisk autumn Sunday, and events have moved at a very slow pace today. Woke up later than usual, saw my partner off to work, laid in a little bit longer before heading to the kitchen to mess around with food plans for the rest of the week, hung out with a very close friend of mine, and then once my partner came home from work, we threw our heads against the wall at the last major challenge we have to face in Expedition 33.

    By all accounts, today was good and restful… so, why am I sitting here feeling guilty about how today has gone?

    I have talked at length about how weird it feels for me to rest sometimes, that I am somehow undeserving of taking time for myself, especially when those moments often come after prolonged periods of stressful circumstances where any person would consider it a reasonable reaction to want to rest.

    It is definitely part of my mindset that I need to change the most, that not every waking hour needs to have a defined end product and I am okay to do things solely for myself than in service of other goals…

    …of course this is very much easier said than done when you consider I am running a blog where I try to review something in my life that I have experienced recently and I have weaved myself into a trap where my every waking moment can become “content” for me to write about if so desired along with the fact that I will be paranoid if I cannot write about anything interesting on a given day and the desire to tell a story from my past is not present.

    That did not start out with me meaning to get extremely real with my perspective on things.

    The structure I have given myself does not do much to help things. Something I have reflected on over the course of writing this series, and finding myself planning ahead for when I find myself in a permanent role once more, is that having the structure based on days makes things more difficult for myself when I inevitably fall behind due to life circumstances, leading to filler posts or massive anthology posts.

    When I can eventually transition the Redundancy Review into the “Rosa Review” (maintaining alliteration at all times of course), I will instead be calling each post an episode instead, lessening the pressure on myself if I wanted to step away for a day or two to focus solely on taking time to rest and providing a more broad scope of what to talk about.

    Posts would still be created, just at a lesser frequency. I would hate to give up on what I have created here, and letting my skills atrophy again would be a damn shame considering how much I feel I have improved over the course of writing these posts.

    Even if my mind is still not fully where I want it to be right now, I still want to do my best to tell this ongoing story.

    For those who come after.

    I am… so excited to talk about Expedition 33 once I finally 100% it, there is so much I love about that game that I want to write about at length but I still have not actually hit the ending yet, want to beat the superboss before I do that.

    Though, it does sort of leave me without a “formal” review topic today, but I have got some cool pictures from the walk I took with my friend.

    The place where I live has had a lot of rain lately, and living right on the banks of a river leaves the local area prone to flooding. This resulted in the very amusing shot of the public life preserver being decently submerged by the rising water, but the picture of the coffee shop on stilts is the more impactful one.

    It is a place called “Coffee Evolution”, and it is actually where my partner & I had one of our first dates together as a formal couple. Staff have moved since that point leading the quality of the coffee to sadly decline, but I still appreciate the memories I have of the place.

    Plus, this is the first time I have been able to see it on its stilts up close and personal, considering when this area floods it usually blocks access off entirely. It is only because the flooding was not as severe as usual that I was able to take these shots properly.

    That will cover everything for today. Thank you very much for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and not have the impending Monday blues bring you down too much.

  • Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 148-151, “Finally Slowing Down”

    Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 148-151, “Finally Slowing Down”

    (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 tortoises and hares, welcome to one big ass catch up post for Day 148 to 151 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Work has been utter chaos this week, preparing for a big launch requiring all hands on deck for all manner of tasks, which had the net result of me ultimately having very little time for writing between managing period symptoms, managing sinus infection symptoms, and engaging in what small self-care activities my remaining time & energy would allow.

    Not entirely out of the woods yet either with work, but at the very least I have the weekend now to enact some basic recovery plan and actually engage with my hobbies once more: gaming, cooking, and of course, writing.

    Admittedly it has been a while since I have had something like this at work. My entire career has been marked by various points where a massive effort was needed to get something out the door on a Friday, usually leaving me exhausted by the time everything wrapped up and just wanting nothing more than to sleep for fourteen hours.

    The fact that I am awake, aware, and engaging in something mentally stimulating after nine hours of sleep shows that I have built a resilience to this kind of thing… when you ignore the fact that my dual-afflictions this week meant I had to take Wednesday morning off because I felt like I was going to die if I put on a VR headset and every day outside of that it was a challenge to drag myself to my desk each day…

    …but I kept going, even in the face of adversity, and that is what I am going to be proud of. Through anxiety, pain, and exhaustion, I always choose to keep moving so I am able to see the better days on the horizon.

    Trying to write things down after a period of not writing for a bit always feels difficult, as if somehow I need to shake the rust and cobwebs out of my system even though I have been practicing for several months now, although my usual stumbling block is finding areas to elaborate on in a positive way rather than harping on the negative aspects of what I have been experiencing.

    I believe it is important to let yourself experience negative feelings, but not to let them consume you – a balancing act that is most definitely easier said than done. Suppressing negative feelings can result in them escaping out at the worst of times, lashing out at those around you when everything becomes too hard to bear, a painful experience I know all too well. But constantly dwelling on whatever is bringing negativity to your life ultimately lowers your resting mood which can make it harder to appreciate what few positive moments come your way.

    For all my struggles, there is still a lot I have going for me in this life, and I want to try focus on that more than what is not exactly going my way right now.

    Think that will cover everything for today, a bit of a shorter post but given my exhaustion and minor addiction to Clair Obscur right now, it does the job of hopefully starting a new streak.

    Need a thumbnail though, so I will use some pictures of the burgers I made tonight. My first proper bit of cooking this entire week.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to have a relaxing weekend and that you are able to recover from whatever might have happened during your week.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 144, “Been in worse beds”

    (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 bed bugs and dust mites, welcome to Day 144 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Sleep was a rough time for me last night, the hotel bed is comfy enough for sitting up in to write and watch TV but was lacking when it came to actually settle down. The pillows did not offer much support, the mattress is too firm for my tastes, and I forgot to bring a plushie with me to cuddle as I slept.

    It was at least a single bed, meaning I did not have to sleep in a space larger than what I needed, which would make me miss my partner more than I already do.

    Silly, in a way. We spend so much time together that it should, in theory, be easy for me to be away for a couple days – especially considering we were long distance for two and a half years with very infrequent visits for the majority of that time period. 

    But I am most definitely someone who struggles without him, which partially drives some of my recent fear, paranoia, and catastrophising. I am terrified of losing the life we have built together through any period of sustained joblessness on my part, especially because I would be absolutely loathe to move back in with my parents. Not because I do not like them – our relationship has actually improved massively over recent years – but because it would represent a major stumble in my path forward.

    Everything I have I view as the product of all the hard work I have put in over the last five years, and me of five years ago would never imagine in her wildest dreams that she would have any of what she has today. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” is such a bizarre question to me because outside of a few key moments, none of this I could have predicted or planned for.

    So as I slowly lose my relationship with the work that has enabled my current lifestyle, I find fear creeping in that I will lose everything, which I can recognise is catastrophising because I have proof I can minimise my lifestyle to a sustainable degree, and even if I was unable to find full time work, there are options I would be able to take.

    Making a change is hard, and even as I take the required steps to try enact that change in myself, I find myself struggling to keep the momentum going. For all my talk of “I will make it”, there is a fear deep within me that I will be in this pain forever.

    But I will make it.

    This is only temporary, despite everything my mind is telling me.

    Sometimes, a moment’s peace is all I need, which segues me nicely into the review topic.

    For all the problems I had with the hotel bed, there is one thing this room has that I very rarely encounter in hotels: a bath.

    There is a certain appeal I find in taking a bath, sure it might be lovingly described as “soaking in your own filth” by some, but the ability to immerse yourself in a tub of warm water to soothe your aching muscles, lift the weight off your shoulder, and weld together the broken parts of your soul once more is something I will always take advantage of.

    This bath was surprisingly accommodating to my height as well, being someone above six feet tall there are a lot of baths that force me to hunch up my legs if I want to get myself properly inside. Whilst I could not fully lay flat in the bath, this one was long enough for me to stretch my legs out and get just below my shoulders submerged in the water.

    Additionally, I went to Waitrose before the bath to grab some supplies for the evening, which included two bottles of low-alcohol cider, one of which was the accompaniment to my bath.

    Soaking in the water, stretching my legs out, and sipping a crisp apple cider put me at peace like nothing else has in recent weeks. My mind felt quiet, and even though the bath lasted a relatively short twenty minutes, that period of time was absolute bliss.

    That covers everything for today, I should probably consider getting ready for Metal Gear tonight. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to enjoy your Saturday, take it easy, have a good drink in the company of great people.

  • Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 139, “Restraining the Flip-Flop”

    (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 flops and flips, welcome to Day 139 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    So around two months after declaring I was weaning myself off my antidepressant medication, I have now been back to the doctor’s and decided to go back on the medication.

    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.

  • Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 138, “Sunday Guilt”

    (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 expectants and impatients, welcome to Day 138 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Daylight savings time has ended in the UK, meaning the clocks went back one hour last night giving everyone an extra hour in bed… or in my case, even more time to spend playing Clair Obscur.

    I am only slightly sorry, it has been a long time since I have had a game where I can do nothing but sit and let myself become immersed in a fantasy world, especially one with so many themes that resonate with my current situation. 

    Though I do feel a little guilty, and I know it is somewhat of an irrational guilt with some grounding in reality. I feel worried that I should be doing more on my weekends, that even after stressful weeks I should forgo any meaningful relaxation time in favour of doing even more job applications or working on every personal project under the sun.

    But that is the “grindset mindset” I have developed from being within the tech industry, of the desire to always be moving, to move fast and break things because you never know what will be born from the wreckage – and it is a mindset I do not want to be in anymore.

    Being real, I am struggling to write today. I have been writing, deleting, and writing paragraphs, feeling completely unsatisfied with whatever I am trying to output and subsequently feeling guilty over that lack of output.

    I am seeing my therapist in two weeks time, so, that gives me both impetus to keep moving and to add what I am currently feeling to my greater notes… should probably send her a link to these posts as well, they do a pretty good job of keeping track of how these past months have gone.

    Also seeing the doctor tomorrow, to talk about the stress I have been experiencing because of work and other life factors, potentially looking at a route back to antidepressants to take some of the load off my brain.

    I will make it through this.

    One way or another.

    There is still so much I want to do.

    And I am scared I may not get the chance to do any of it.

    But I will not know unless I keep moving.

    Considering I am struggling to write today, I am going to skip the review segment, and I am going to make the thumbnail a screenshot that I took during a Clair Obscur cutscene today, being thoroughly called out by one of the characters.

    Short, and not very content-packed as some reviews have been this week, but I am at least still consistent.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. If you are in the UK I hope the clocks going back has not messed with your system too much, or brought down by how early it gets dark now because of that. For everyone else, wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and that the Monday blues are not too hard to bear.