Rosalia Rambles

Tag: loneliness

  • Redundancy Review: Day 459-460, “Morale is evershifting”

    (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 officers and infantry, welcome to Day 459 and 460 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, missed a post yesterday after having a very good weeklong streak, but it was for a somewhat good reason as I spent the majority of the day at a friend’s house for a BBQ and general social gathering, coming home at nine in the evening and being thoroughly exhausted alongside being a bit demoralised.

    Last night was the First Come, First Served sale for the Vexpo meet and greet tickets, and it was confirmed that every talent had at least one ticket available, meaning I had a shot at grabbing one for Shiori. In hindsight, I should have focused my bandwidth on going after some other talents instead like Mint, Matara, or Wunder Riku, all people I would have loved to meet and chat with for a short while, but the chance to meet my kamioshi was too great.

    I did end up getting one ticket I had applied for but not won in the form of Dr.NOVA(e) from V4Mirai, and I still have my ticket to meet Ironmouse as well which are going to be two fantastic opportunities, but I cannot help but feel some amount of hurt or disappointment in not being able to snag Shiori.

    There is a lot I have done to try comfort and console myself in the aftermath, seeing that many prominent community members have got tickets is awesome to see, as I know they were probably as locked in as me to try see if they could get anything in the sale, and part of me knows that if I got the chance to meet Shiori there is a full possibility I would flub my words entirely resulting in me just crying for the majority of the meet.

    But it still hurts, and it still did a number on my already-depleted morale that I felt I was not clever enough in my approach to the sale, when the majority of it would have just been luck anyway. I know there will be more chances to meet her in future, and that I will still have the opportunity to cheer her on as part of the Serendipity screening on Thursday. 

    It would have been nice, all the same.

    Keeping my morale up in general during this time feels hard, as some days I will wake up ready to conquer the world and do everything I need to do to get my life back on the track I want to be on… and some days waking up is extremely difficult, as I try to muster what little strength I have to even function, resulting in me feeling negative for the rest of the day.

    The worst part about those days is feeling as if I am not entitled to have them, that I need to keep myself together and present a strong front so I can support those around me. I know this is not the case, and I am allowed to feel sad on my bad days, but this crushing weight of expectation never seems to leave me how much those in my life affirm that I am okay to not be okay.

    Writing it all down helps, cause otherwise I definitely would let everything bottle up inside, and even then there are moments where I keep it all on the inside for fear of letting my own mind overwhelm me.

    I will make it through, and I will see a better tomorrow. There is so much I still need to live for, and I want to be around the people I love when it happens.

    For now though, I will take whatever boosts of morale I can get, which includes the subject of today’s review.

    On Friday I went out with my parents for dinner at a place called “OK Diner”, a small chain of American-style diners in the UK that offer a melange of options for hearty and filling meals, with my eyes firmly set on having a big and greasy burger to warm my soul.

    Disclaimer, my parents were the people to pay for this, and admittedly I did go overboard with the knowledge that someone else was paying for my food that evening, but I will include the price as always. Thanks again, mum and dad, I really appreciate you treating me to things like this when life has really been getting me down these last months.

    Without further ado, behold: the double patty breakfast burger served with curly fries.

    My heart was set on a burger, as it is one of my all-time favourite things to order from any big restaurant to lift my spirits after a rough time period, and one of my strongest food opinions is that any burger can be improved with the simple addition of a fried egg on top, meaning that a burger topped with bacon, egg, and hash brown to form a breakfast burger was the perfect thing to indulge in after restraining myself from eating out due to not having a job.

    Although I will admit, going for a double patty rather than a single six-ounce patty was a minor mistake on my part. Whilst I was still able to clear my plate and had a whale of a time doing it, I did feel a bit ill afterwards due to eating so much food

    That said, I could have cried when biting into such a decadent feast after so long of practicing restraint to ensure my runway lasts as long as possible. It feels silly to say, as after all it is just food, but meals out with my partner were one of my favourite ways to spend time with him when I was still gainfully employed, and I hope to enjoy another during our Vexpo trip as part of the “forget about all the problems” aspect.

    But what did this indulgence cost? Including an 80p charge for upgrading my fries to curly fries, the total came to £20.30. Whilst I would fully be comfortable paying for this myself in any other circumstance, the fact I was able to get such a delectable treat essentially for free feels so amazing.

    That covers it for today, we only have about three reviews left until I head to Vexpo in the coming week, so I will aim to make them good ones. Thank you for reading today’s edition. Wherever you are, I hope you have had an enjoyable weekend, and that the Monday blues do not bring you down too hard tomorrow. It feels weird to not dread Sunday as I have done in the past, but I hope you have a good day at work tomorrow.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 78, “Better On The Inside, Better On The Outside”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning homebodies and wanderers, welcome to Day 78 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    So with me putting together a cosplay at almost the last minute given my initial plans fell through, what I am technically going through is my first experience of con crunch.

    I do not know how cosplayers can do this on the regular. My head is in near constant pain due to worrying about needing to put things together and the stress of having things continue to go wrong even up until today is really taking its toll on me – not to mention this is compounding on top of work and personal stress leaving me paranoid about a lot of different things.

    But I carry on, I persist.

    Part of the Redundancy Review is recording how I feel on a daily basis, sometimes through the lens of an annoyed rant, sometimes through rambling self reflection. Today we are going for the latter, talking about what I have decided to title the review today.

    When it comes to improving myself, I simultaneously want to be healthier in body and mind. Over the years I have put on a significant amount of weight due to various coping mechanisms I engaged with both previously and persisting in to today, with the usual reasoning of everything that happened during COVID not helping the situation either.

    To put it in more practical terms, since 2017 I have added on about 30cm/12 inches to my waistline. My goal with slimming my body back down is to fit in to my oldest cosplay, Junko Enoshima from Danganronpa, and that goal stays in my mind when it comes to losing weight, even though getting back down to that point would bring a multitude of other benefits – the only one in sight is being able to fit into old clothes once more.

    I had committed to Beat Saber as part of a workout routine, but that fell off once heatwaves had started setting in along with getting ill again, and I keep thinking about restarting, which will probably be a post-convention activity at this point.

    But when it comes to being better on the inside… that has been a long time journey, and I am not really any closer to figuring out how to be so. My awareness of my own mental health stretches over twelve plus years now, and whilst I can definitely say I am in a far better place today than I have been at any other points in my life; the challenges that define my mental health have also switched drastically during that time.

    Academics, friendships, transitioning, career changes: all of these have shifted what battles I fight on a daily basis, and being real for a moment… I do not think I am winning any of them right now.

    I carry on, I persist, but ultimately I feel as if I am drowning most days. 

    I have always had a difficult relationship with my depression, especially as someone who experiences, for all intents and purposes, a life of relative comfort. On paper I very rarely have reasons to be sad, and yet the sadness remains, feeding into my stress & paranoia to make me feel I am in danger of losing everything that keeps me together right now.

    My hard work does not feel like enough some days, constantly feeling as if the immense pressure is going to crush me at any moment and I will find myself in a dark place very quickly.

    I am terrified of being alone again, but some days I feel like I am closer to that pain than ever before. I know it is ultimately all inside my head, but for all the therapy, medication, and healing I have tried through this long journey of having a shit brain, sometimes the hardest part is leaving my head for a short while to see that things are not so bad.

    It might just be the last three months talking in all this, even though I have said I might finally feel like I am healing from the initial hit of redundancy a few weeks back. Maybe recovery is a lifelong journey for me, or maybe I will never truly be the same again, building upon scarred tissue a new life with the pain of the past still prominently present even today.

    Or maybe I am just tired, in desperate need of a break I cannot take.

    Regardless, I will be here. A record of my every day uploaded for the world to see, a slice of vulnerability in the landscape of cultivated profiles.

    …feels a bit weird to go in to a review about shoes after baring my heart out about self-improvement, but that is the way we roll around here.

    Specifically these shoes are New Rock M-WALL373-S11 platform boots. I bought these ages ago back in March specifically to act as part of my cosplay for my upcoming convention whilst also finally getting a real proper pair of stompers that were not from AliExpress.

    Sizing was the primary reason I decided to purchase from New Rock, as an extremely tall trans girl my feet are absolutely massive and were even classed as wide when picking up male shoes back in the day, meaning it is extraordinarily difficult to find cute & stylish shoes that fit me – so you could imagine my relief when I found that New Rock not only included my size, it went beyond my size too.

    The boots are extremely comfortable, having plenty of space around my toes to ensure nothing feels pinched when I am walking around. The platform itself feels extremely solid too, and the bolts embedded into the side walls of it give the perfect industrial gothic look that I was looking for.

    And in terms of high-quality footwear that fits my feet, the price point of New Rock was not actually that bad, being €257.62 or around £222, a reasonable price for larger than normal shoes and with such good design.

    However.

    I live in the UK, and if you have paid attention to any UK politics within the last decade then A. I am very sorry for your loss and B. Brexit is a thing, which meant that, as New Rock is a Spanish company, I had to pay import tax on these, adding a lovely £54.30 on to the bill.

    But hey, taking back control am I right?*

    *this statement is a joke, if you have not already guessed that my politics are extremely left-leaning then I am clearly not doing a good enough job here.

    Think that covers everything I wanted to talk about today, thank you for reading this confusingly honest edition of the Redundancy Review. I hope getting past hump day has been easy enough for you, and that the weekend is not too far away for you.

    For more information on New Rock products, visit their website here: https://www.newrock.com/en/ 

  • Redundancy Review: Day 35, “Chasing Ghosts”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning spirits and geists, welcome to Day 35 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    It was a fairly standard work day for me yesterday, got onboarded, started breaking things as is my want, and started to fight with the HMRC Self-Employment registration form which will probably also form a good chunk of my work today in between breaking things, needing to be set up as a sole trader in order to report my income.

    I can not tell if what I am suffering from right now is impostor syndrome or not. My brain tends to be a catastrophising one anyway so I need to give myself time to settle down into a routine, but part of me feels almost inappropriate where I am right now. 

    My heart still lies with my art, and whilst I feel comfortable viewing working in tech as a means to an end, there is definitely some part of me that feels that I should have left this life behind and kept walking in my own direction. I was not making any money in that direction but I felt a peace I had not experienced for a long time as I found my redundant rhythm.

    Admittedly, I did avoid doing some soul searching after I had been made redundant, choosing to focus on enjoying myself rather than thinking about what I want to do moving forward – which helped start to remedy my burnout, but did not end up addressing the root cause.

    If we consider my degree, the last eight years of my life have been in some form of hands-on role in the tech industry. I abandoned the idea of becoming a game developer shortly after my degree finished as I realised far too late that programming did not bring me any tangible joy, which led me into my current path as a QA where I have been for four years now.

    And there is no denying I am good at what I do. Even if I have moments of panic some days and have some fumbles, I am a bug finding machine with the ability to write clear & concise reports with appropriate supporting evidence…

    …I am just not sure I want to be that person anymore.

    Stay tuned as I slowly try to unfuck my brain over the course of the coming weeks, but in the meantime, time for the review – and it is Tuesday with me feeling a lot better, so it is time to review the Hololive song review!

    IRyS is a HololiveEN member initially debuting in July 2021 as part of a ‘group’ known as “Project: HOPE” before eventually joining the reformed Promise unit as their fifth member, having always been adopted by previous Council members for the purposes of collabs anyway.

    Project: HOPE initially started as a music-focused group and even after becoming a member of Promise IRyS has continued to focus on making incredibly good music across a range of genres, though one I find myself returning to often is the focus today: Gravity.

    A sombre song that speaks to me as someone who has had several experiences with depression, anxiety, and figuring out my identity, ones that persist to this day if my initial ramble is anything to go by.

    The lyrics give me the impression of what it feels like to be stuck in a rut as well, with the second verse really standing out to me:

    “Aim, somewhere along I lost my aim

    Thoughtlessly counting up my days

    I don’t know, I don’t know, it’s really tough to say

    I’ll probably be stuck here anyway”

    Ruts can often feel comfortable, and even if you are aware of the fact you have found yourself in one, it can feel almost impossible to pull out of it. But what overpowers both ruts and the theming of ruts in the song is that no one is truly alone – especially not in feeling stuck, with the bridge before the final chorus going:

    “Bet somebody’s out there, just like me

    Feeling all the same things

    I don’t know what I should do

    At least, though, you’re like this too

    I’ve found a bit of comfort”

    With the way the world is right now, with everyone going through degrees of their own shit, finding comfort in each other can be the difference between surviving and thriving, even when circumstances are not ideal.

    Also, obligatory screen grab for the thumbnail

    That covers everything for today, thank you for reading today’s Redundancy Review. You are not alone, there are those around you who can help, and the world is a better place with you in it.