Rosalia Rambles

Tag: love

  • Redundancy Review: Day 101-103, “It 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 slackers and underachievers, welcome to Days 101 to 103 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, I have been resting.

    Crazy.

    A schedule slip that has come from deliberate, intentional, and honestly, needed rest.

    And it has felt weird honestly, to wake up on a weekend to find myself sleeping in on Saturday rather than rushing out the door to do errands or start working on something around the flat. Instead I chilled in bed for almost three hours past when I woke up, letting myself feel relaxed and trying not to worry about things.

    Even when I did head out with my partner when he was going to work, I only went to do minor things, such as having some lunch and buying a small amount of food to do dinner that night.

    Today has been no different… minus getting woken up by another false alarm fire alarm going off, that was not a fun start to today – though once my day had started I found myself taking things incredibly easy still. I hung out with a friend and all we really did was sit on the sofa for near three hours before heading out to a simple lunch combined with some shopping.

    It feels weird, to be willingly relaxing to this degree, for two main reasons:

    1. A good portion of my mind still feels I am not entitled to relax, that I still need to be pushing myself in every moment
    2. Outside of the usual paranoia issues that persist in my brain, I have not felt the resting anxiety that is present in my mind particularly hard

    Organising my time still feels difficult though, as there is a lot I want to do during my downtime but the most rewarding thing right is just doing not a whole lot of anything. 

    I think that might be the key to letting myself heal here, in that I can spend my future time to do various other activities, but right now my weekends need to be lowkey affairs where I do very little, so that when I enter my usual winter hibernation time around Christmas; my time can be used to enjoy what I want to do, and not solely on recovering my energy.

    The one downside to this is that I feel some social time will fall by the wayside because as much as I love all my friends, in-person socialisation can take a lot more of my energy than I often anticipate. Simultaneously though I can find energy by hanging out with people, so it depends on my mood on the day…

    …in short I am a fustercluck of mental contradictions, which makes it hard to figure out where I need to direct myself sometimes.

    That said, there is one constant in my life: good food. Oh yeah, we are back in action, a long-time coming next edition of:

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    God it has been a while I have got to type that title, and it makes me so happy to write it out again.

    As part of my hangout today, my friend and I went to a venue called Floro Lounge on Shrewsbury High Street. “Lounges” is actually a chain of casual dining venues across the UK, being a bit more upmarket/expensive than somewhere like Wetherspoons but offering more esoteric options in exchange.

    Specifically, I did not want something heavy from Floro today. Usually when I go in I get myself a bacon cheeseburger which I then add an egg on top of to make a sort-of breakfast burger – this normally fills me up for an entire day and was my traditional pre-D&D meal for the longest time.

    So instead of going for a burger, I instead went for a tapas board, where three small plates could be ordered as part of an offer, which netted me:

    • Louisiana Chicken with Chipotle Mayo
    • Korean King Prawns
    • Guacamole with tortilla chips

    The king prawns were the only thing I had ordered before, loving the flavour of the ssamjang-based marinade with a squeeze of the lime bringing a perfect savoury bite with a hit of acid.

    The guacamole was good as well, but at the same time it did not hit the spot I was looking for. It was perfectly creamy and not overly stiff like supermarket guacamole can be like, but I think part of my brain is craving a giant plate of nachos from somewhere right now. No complaints though, was a nice lighter bite compared to what I might have been craving.

    My main highlight though would be the Louisiana Chicken though, two thick chicken breast tenders in a lightly spiced batter served with an incredibly smooth chipotle mayo. It was absolutely fantastic, and I feel I could have devoured an entire board of the chicken with the other dips that were available (Maple BBQ and Sriracha with honey) easily.  

    For the price of £13.50 for the combined offer of the three plates, it makes for a perfectly passable lunch, especially if you are wanting to try new things.

    Anyway, that will cover it for today, I want to get back to relaxing. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review, wherever you are I hope you are also able to relax and that the Monday blues are not approaching you too hard. I appreciate you being here.

  • Redundancy Review: Days 70-74, “Small Victories, Big Losses”

    (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 bassists and drummers, welcome to a massive catch-up post for a bunch of missed days of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    A lot of what I write for the review is self-indulgent. I talk about my emotions, things that make me feel happy, and food I have eaten that tasted good. The entire series is a reflection of myself written down as a living record.

    And so, given the fact I took a very hard loss over the last week, I am going to take today’s catch-up post to let my emotions fly a little bit, because fuck me do I need it.

    There has been a lot that has gone wrong in my life, wasted my degree years due to stubbornness, losing friends cause of a lack of emotional intelligence, and going through severe periods of distress due to transition related issues.

    But I can comfortably say that the last three months of my life have been the worst period I have ever experienced – and that is fucking saying something considering how dark my mind got during my university days.

    Ever since I got the news that the company I worked for was in the shit, I have been fighting every day to try get small victories, and I should not minimise the fact that even small victories mean a lot when I have gone through what I have gone through.

    But for every small victory I feel like I take a big loss alongside it, and I am really fucking tired of that happening.

    Even in the last couple of days I have taken a small victory and a big loss simultaneously with my custom cosplay order falling through two weeks before my convention. The seller was courteous and offered me a full refund for my disappointment, which is the small victory, but the big loss comes from the fact this outfit felt like it was going to be the centrepiece of my convention holiday – something I have been looking forward to all year and now I have to go put together a backup plan in a short amount of time.

    I am not going to name and shame the seller. As part of the refund I agreed that I would not leave a negative review, and I am sticking to that. I would much rather move on and try make something positive out of this mess… finding yet more small victories.

    Every day feels fearful to me now, as if something has changed in my brain that has shifted my outlook from nervous optimism to outright pessimism. I had a breakdown on my partner last night and when I started talking about some of the fears I have about upcoming things, I said a line that breaks my heart even now to repeat:

    “I am wanting to prepare for the worst because that is all I can expect nowadays”.

    Making the best out of a bad situation should be an admirable trait, one I can take pride of, especially as someone who has lived in startup culture for the last three plus years and has made a name for herself of trying to be adaptable in times of crisis, knowing how to problem-solve my way out of anything.

    But I resent the fact I have become that person.

    I resent that I can never go long without needing to put out a fire.

    And I hate the fact that everything I am going through is making me a colder person and I do not know what to do to stop it – which I am not even sure I fully agree with saying cause the main thing that differentiates this period of time from the previous absolute worst time of my life is that I actually recognise I have people to live for now.

    I will keep going, I do not want to stop… but I am absolutely praying for a better season to come my way, because quite frankly, this summer has sucked.

    Going to keep it simple with a different review today, talking about another Stardew Valley save of mine that I have with a friend, this time on the Forest Farm layout.

    I have mentioned it in passing before, but I have an obsession with building infrastructure in video games. Paths, roads, transport structures, all of it is fair game for me wanting to make neat layouts & patterns in whatever I play, and Stardew is a game I find surprisingly useful for that purpose, especially when presented with the challenges of any of the nonstandard layouts.

    Forest in particular has been an interesting challenge, in trying to find the perfect blend of farming crops, farming animals, and utilising the main feature of the farm – that being renewable forage and hardwood options.

    Initially I had struggled with this task, especially when it came to building layouts that could work with the sprinkler patterns I usually use without actually having the sprinklers to plan out the infrastructure.

    But as with my mind itself, things start to make a lot more sense around Winter in this game, and without needing to worry about (much) crop watering and focus more on getting stuff organised for the next year, I feel a lot happier plotting out paths and working out where things need to go.

    On this map in particular, it is evidenced by the massive tree farm I am trying to establish in the top middle of the map. This initially started small scale with each tree type being vertically aligned which made collecting forage from the tappers a nightmare, but once I had established where the animal pasture needed to go a lot of space opened up which has led to the larger scale farm pictured above.

    There is definitely still a lot of work to be done on this farm, but considering this is only the end of Year 1, I am extremely excited to see where this goes next.

    Here is where I would usually say something about getting my rhythm back, but honestly, as much as the Redundancy Review will keep going, I am not sure how well I will be able to write individual days depending on my mood – I definitely want to try chronicle my convention holiday each day, but, we will see how it goes.

    Thank you for reading this far if you did, I hope you are able to have a relaxing weekend, a longer one than usual if you are in the UK.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 36, “Neuroplasticity”

    (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 geniuses and boffins, welcome to Day 36 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yesterday was a little difficult honestly, ended up needing to have a bit of a cry away from my desk cause of having some intense emotions spring up as I was trying to get through my work. The afternoon was a bit more settled with me actually being able to get some stuff done, even if I did not feel too great with it.

    Part of my contracting work involves topics I am somewhat familiar with due to my degree, but considering I graduated in 2020 and abandoned what my specialist subject was, it does not feel entirely fantastic to be working with it again – even for the day rate I am receiving. 

    I have booked an appointment with my therapist to discuss how my life is going. I last saw her in April when I started to pick up the writing on the wall for my old company and talked about wanting to make a change in my career before the shit approached the fan at a great velocity, and part of my main plan moving forward has her advice ringing in my ears once more.

    Whenever a challenge comes my way and I told her about it she would always emphasise one thing:

    “Neuroplasticity states that the brain needs twenty one days to start adapting to a change”

    Catastrophising is something I fall into often, especially when it comes to trying to maintain my professional identity. Even when I know the people I am working with I can often develop feelings of inadequacy about my output.

    But today is only my third day, and whilst I have struggles I do have wins as well, with me being certain that new stuff will appear soon enough that takes my interest a lot more.

    For now, I will try take each day at a time, take pride in when they go well and seek comfort on times they are harder.

    Comfort is going to be the theme of today’s review, with me talking about one of the most important aspects of being transgender. 

    Is it a good bra? Not today, although having been eaten alive by underwire that is definitely something to properly invest in.

    Good shoes? Shoes are important to everyone, I just wish finding comfy goth stompers was not so difficult for my massive feet.

    Nope, what I want to talk about today is an essential aspect of comfort to trans people and one of our most recognisable stereotypes.

    Yup, it is time for me to talk about the lovable IKEA shark: BLÅHAJ.

    Pronounced either as spelled or as “blue-hi” for those wanting to conform to the Swedes, this shark plushie comes in two sizes as a 55cm variant for £5 or as a 100cm variant for £22, both are incredible plushies even outside of the meme. They are extremely soft and squishable, making them perfect to hug tight on hard days. 

    I have had my own personal BLÅHAJ since 2022 when I moved out of my parent’s place which enabled me to start living my truth, and “Sharky” as my main one is called has provided me a massive amount of comfort on my harder days, to the point he is very flat now with the stuffing deflated from multiple cuddle sessions.

    To be loved is to be changed though, and whilst I would not mind getting him professionally cleaned, I do not think I would want to get him restuffed for a while yet… especially as I do have a fresh BLÅHAJ who lives on the sofa for that exact reason… and two smaller ones who live on my giant plushie shelf.

    Even as my nephew was born the first gift I sent to him was a 55cm BLÅHAJ, both as a perfect soft toy for a newborn but also to serve as a reminder of who his Auntie Rosa is – a badass trans woman who will cry a lot, but still get the job done.

    And I definitely cry a lot still, especially over these last few months, but I am still here, and I am still getting the job done.

    That will be all for today, I hope you are enjoying the cooler weather wherever you are and that hitting hump day is not too hard for you.

    For more information on BLÅHAJ, visit the IKEA website here: BLÅHAJ soft toy, shark, 100 cm – IKEA UK