Rosalia Rambles

Tag: mental-health

  • Redundancy Review: Day 321, “Career Uncertainty, Part 2

    (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 admirals and commodores, welcome to Day 321 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Off the back of getting rejected for a job role I was pretty excited for, I continue to persist in my goal to write a daily series. Heads up that this edition might read a bit more like a rant in some areas, as I am going to be talking about career stuff as I briefly alluded to yesterday.

    About eight years of my life has been spent either aspiring and studying to enter the tech industry, or working in the tech industry itself. As a twenty eight year old, this means approximately one quarter of my life has been spent in the tech space.

    This started with me going to university to study Computer Games Technology, with the hope of becoming a games programmer of some description, either working on my own independent projects or joining some large studio to be a cog in the machine. Admittedly it started well, with both my first and second year having good results in what I was attempting to do with my coursework.

    Not without struggle though. My second year in particular was plagued with a lot of struggle and tense moments as things heated up, particularly in the first semester more than anything else. 

    Third year… was the hardest. The first semester had me navigating a lot of personal issues that impacted my work in a negative way that whilst I was still fulfilling deadlines and getting on with things, I was not pushing myself on working on things that were not coursework, which is definitely one of the things that you need to succeed as a programmer by improving your skills.

    With the gift of hindsight, whilst I knew how to navigate programming, I am not built to be a full-time programmer. The idea of spending a full work day sitting in front of an IDE (or more realistic to the modern day, an agent prompt window) did not appeal to me in the slightest.

    This issue was compounded when my second semester was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing things online, disrupting the deadlines I had and disrupting the flow of the group I was working with at the time, causing things to fall behind.

    I still graduated, with a First class degree no less, specifically because the module I scored highest on, as part of a course dedicated to building me up as a programmer more than anything else, was Consultancy and IT Management, which was around building a case study to upgrade a company’s IT infrastructure… which I feel reflects the current me pretty nicely, but is still funny to look back on.

    As is evident from my many previous stories, I did not in-fact go into programming full time. Whilst someone in my life at the time tried to push me to work on personal projects so I could put together a more proper portfolio, the drive was not there, and I should have admitted that way sooner, both to myself and that person.

    So I spent six months unemployed, trying to work on writing when I can but mainly resolving a bunch of personal issues more than anything else. COVID jobs market sucked, and I did have some interviews, but not much success.

    That was until I interviewed for the position of QA Engineer at Codemasters, which I have talked about at length in my Day 118 Redundancy Review. This set the trajectory for where my career has taken me today, with a year spent in the games industry until I pivoted into working for an XR company that specialised in both bespoke VR content and an educational platform.

    This is where I have spent the majority of my career, building myself up as a QA initially before my mentor Gabi took me under her wing and started to build me up as a producer as well… I should reach out to her again, especially now with shit hitting the fan again. She is one of the reasons I have as much resilience as I do today, and I still try to internalise one of the last things she told me when the company went to shit:

    “You are a person worth knowing.”

    I gave a lot of myself to that XR company, pushing myself beyond my limits and learning as much as I could with each project. I definitely pushed a little too hard in some instances, as I had to have at least two periods of leave that were due to the stress catching up to me… well, the latter one was purely stress, the former was due to me catching COVID and severely underestimating how long it took to recover – I kept coming back to work only to have myself punched back down by how sluggish my body felt, something I still struggle with today as I most definitely have some variety of Long COVID after catching it twice.

    My aim was to make myself indispensable, if a little neurotic in how I approached things. Stubbornness is a genetic trait I fight against every day, and it definitely affected how I communicated with my colleagues at times, both in positive and negative ways. Regardless, I made my mark, and navigated responsibilities I would have never considered in the year prior. 

    But now we get to the hard details, and that is what it is like to work within startup/scaleup culture. I will try to frame this with the positive aspect first followed by why it can cause psychological strain in certain scenarios.

    First off, team size. After coming from Codemasters where a single platform QA team would be around fifteen to twenty people at peak times with the greater QA team easily being one-hundred people and above, going to a company which never went above fifty people at the peak was certainly a cultural difference.

    The primary perk of this was knowing who you worked with well, especially after my part of the company got reorganised into a proper studio team where we would have a general standup and retro alongside project specific meetings. This meant I got to know people on a personal level, learning about their hobbies, how they prefer to work, and who I could ask certain questions of. A lot of my old colleagues were incredibly chill people, and very supportive of me as a trans person – one distinct memory I have is absolutely bawling on the shoulder of one of them after I had to dip from a company dinner because of a murder mystery actor making a rather crass transphobic joke, which I spent a fair bit of time not wanting to ruin his very nice jacket with my snot or tears.

    The main downside of working this way is that responsibilities had to be shared almost all of the time, often leading to moments where my plate would be filled with all different tasks that needed to be balanced or differing deadlines, requiring precision prioritisation in order to get things done, which I managed to do most days, but the stress definitely felt intense on some days, especially while I was working towards being a producer, often having to balance QA responsibilities along with my production responsibilities.

    To bring things back to the positive, this does mean I can prepare, practice, and perform a presentation in a relatively short timescale, something I utilised in a recent interview to do the above in around half an hour. AI might be able to do a similar thing, but I can do it much cheaper with fewer resources, like caffeine and painkillers as opposed to context and tokens.

    Second main perk is being treated like an adult in regards to working patterns. Codemasters offered me flexitime but this was a measured arrangement, where if I signed out early on any given day, I would need to make up that time later on in the week, or vice versa where staying late one night meant I could sign out earlier. Work is hard and intense within startup culture, but so long as the work is being completed by the deadline, I was free to work however I wanted, which is an absolute relief to an ADHDer like myself, as forcing myself to work on a pattern that is not mine does my head in.

    Downside of this all? Overtime was very rarely compensated, partially due to the fact my compensation was already pretty generous, but this meant any time I needed to stay late or start early often resulted in nothing but a congratulations, which was actually less than what I got in the games industry, as I got time-and-a-half for any weekend work and double time for any bank holiday. Flexing my life for the needs of the business was also a requirement, which became particularly annoying on the day after my partner moved in with me, where I was supposed to cook our first proper meal together but ended up needing to stay multiple hours past my usual finishing time to help get something out the door, which ended with no result anyway.

    (small aside: I do not believe in the discussion of wages being taboo. Possibly a Gen Z thing, possibly a leftist thing.)

    And finally, the thing that I cannot highlight any positive for, or even try to talk about in a positive way: layoffs, and funding.

    There is no way for me to discuss this part of working in a startup or scaleup without going overly negative, because this shit absolutely destroys lives, morale, and direction of a company. In my five year career, I have survived three rounds of layoffs, and being laid off twice. Two rounds of those layoffs have been in the XR industry, where I had to watch friends and senior colleagues disappear whilst I was still around, leading to some serious survivor guilt developing which got worse during the second round.

    No one can dodge mortar shells forever, though it seems appropriate that for someone who survived layoffs three times, it would obviously take the nuke of administration/insolvency for me to finally get hit, leading to where we are today with the Redundancy Review and the “season 2” we are currently within due to the second layoff.

    So, what is the moral of me running through this all?

    Because whilst I can continue on in the tech industry, and there is definitely a real possibility I stick around if a good opportunity arises, everything I have run through has worn me down bit by fucking bit, and I am done. The games industry is undergoing constant shifts with layoffs, closures, and cancellations, the tech industry is going all in on AI which leads to fewer opportunities being created, and pretty much all of my friends have told me to move away from startup culture for the sake of my own health.

    That leaves me contemplating going down the path of the starving artist, which has its own set of pitfalls and would lead to even more career uncertainty than I am facing right now….

    …but when has that ever stopped me?

    The world needs more LGBTQ+ artists making works public, especially trans artists to try show those falling victim to culture war topics that not only are we real people, we are also nothing like what the media portrays – I literally do not like going to the toilet in public at the best of times I am certainly not going to be doing heinous shit in a women’s toilet.

    I did not intend for this to become such a long piece, but the words kept flowing as I kept typing, but now we need to do a review topic. Something shorter than usual, and I have something just for that.

    This is a can of Poppi, a brand of soda that was launched in the US in 2018 as a “gut healthy” soda with it recently launching in the UK in Pret A Manger and Tesco locations. I saw it multiple times in my local Tesco express, but considering it is £2 for an individual can or £4.50 Clubcard Price for a four-pack, I never really had the impetus to try it until today, where I went to grab a meal deal lunch for my partner and decided to include it as the drink as repayment to myself for running this errand.

    And I am very glad it came as the meal deal drink because holy shit I do not consider this worth £2 for a can and I would be at a stretch to pay £1.12~ per can in the four-pack.

    Comparing Poppi to a standard fizzy orange drink in the UK, Tango and/or Fanta, it barely has any orange flavour to it, or even much fizz to it, kind of tasting like a squash made with an extremely flat sparkling water. I am someone who does not even like Fanta, but if I had to take the pick between Fanta or Poppi I would take Fanta every time.

    But it is a healthy soda, so obviously it would not taste as good as a processed and high-sugar drink.

    I will concede that point, but counter with the comparison I made. A glass of orange squash has more orange flavour, but would also have more health benefits in term of hydration and be substantially cheaper than paying £1.12-£2 for a can of supposedly “healthy” soda.

    Note to self, Robinson’s Squash for a future Redundancy Review topic.

    Just about 2300 words for today, the longest I have written in a damn while.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to relax and that the Monday blues are not hitting you too hard.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 320, “Calmer than Usual”

    (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 salarymen and manufacturers, welcome to Day 320 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Sunday is usually a day I prefer to keep quiet with minimal engagements, partially out of an existential dread that comes from knowing I have to go to work the next day and wondering what the hell is going to come across my desk when I do.

    But now with the bizarre calm I find myself in from knowing my employment with my current company is coming to an end, today has been a mixture of relaxation and letting myself exist rather than worrying about what comes tomorrow.

    It has however been plagued by a pretty annoying headache, so I have not been able to push myself to do the amount of things I have wanted to today. Specifically was wanting to make a roast dinner for myself and my partner but ended up changing plans to a much simpler leftovers meal.

    Despite my pledge to wanting to keep this a daily series again, I find myself struggling to figure out what to write about for the “personal” segment of the review. Partially because whilst there is a lot I want to say about I feel in my current situation, I cannot properly express myself without getting sorely unprofessional in my conduct, and because it feels like very early days in these next steps.

    I am relaxed, which I consider the important thing. I know there is going to come a point where panic will set in once more and I very much will need a source of employment to keep the lights on, but, for now, there is a certain peace in having space to breathe again and not worry about things on Sunday.

    There is a joke to be made here about not worrying on Sunday because all I have now is time to worry about being unemployed, though I am going to remain on the optimistic side whilst focusing on writing, recovery, and slowly tuning up both the tech and the writing portfolio.

    Though if I am honest… I have doubts if I want to carry on in the tech industry after all this.

    If we include my time in university (bit of a stretch but stay with me), the year I worked in the games industry and the four years I have worked in the XR industry, I have an eight year career in tech.

    And outside of the money, which admittedly is very good, there is not much that draws me in anymore, and plenty that is pushing me out.

    I think I will talk more on that tomorrow – not exactly like I have much to do on a work day now.

    Gonna reach into the backlogs for something to review today, which came from the local market about a month back… which means, I can finally do one of these again…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    God, I missed doing that one.

    Anyway, at Shrewsbury Market there is a stall simply called “Eat In”. It offers a decent variety of Italian ingredients for making pizza, pasta, or antipasto alongside offering Roman-style sourdough pizza by the slice, topped with your choice of oil or hot honey.

    My usual order is a simple pepperoni slice, but on this day in the past, one pizza caught my eye and I could not resist trying it.

    This is an XL piece of pizza topped with Shropshire ham and mushroom, which was then topped off with Kashmiri chilli oil, also made by a local trader. This cost me £6.80, which is slightly higher than what I would usually pay for my pepperoni sliced topped in a similar way, £4.50, but is also way bigger than that slice.

    Pizza by the slice is something I wish more independent places in the UK would offer. There are not many options outside of Greggs, which is… passable but not really what I would be looking for in terms of a pizza lunch, and I do not exactly want to purchase a pizza from somewhere like Domino’s or otherwise as it is both a bit overkill and would spoil my appetite for dinner.

    Eat In serves my needs exactly, and it helps that each slice of pizza is made with absolute love, having amazingly fluffy dough, a crisp crust on the bottom, and a spicy oil on top to bring out the best of the local ingredients.

    Now I have made myself hungry damnit. 

    Ahh well, I can just go to the market on Tuesday and indulge.

    That will do it for today, I am going to spend the rest of my evening relaxing and maybe jamming some Umamusume in before bed.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to rest easy knowing what approaches tomorrow. I hope that work is easy on you and nothing massively brings you down.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 319, “Eepy”

    (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 baristas and bartenders, welcome to Day 319 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Being upfront, I am knackered right now.

    Saturday is normally a sleep-in day for me anyway, but things moved slowly up until I got the impetus to go shopping for the supplies needed for tomorrow night’s dinner and snacks for a film night with good company – said film night then taking up most of the time I could work on writing afterwards and now I am just lying here in bed typing out whatever my brain will allow me to.

    Which is not a lot, honestly.

    So uhh…

    Here is one of the megastructures I have built in Satisfactory. I refer to it as the “Basin Shell”, because it is built over the basin of a large waterfall and whenever I build a structure in Satisfactory over water I tend to append “Shell” onto it after the Big Shell in Metal Gear Solid 2.

    This was built as I severely needed to upgrade my power infrastructure going forward in order to accommodate the amount of structures I would need to construct and wanted to avoid brownouts or the fuse blowing wherever possible… there is a slight possibility I went overboard in this construction project as I was able to support a large factory in my home base and then build a massive shell project over another body of water, fully rig that up with power, and then nowhere near run out of power until I upgraded the grid yet again.

    Building megastructures is the thing I enjoy the most in Satisfactory. I know the overall goal is “the factory must grow”, and Part A needs to make Part B and Part C, but there’s a certain satisfaction (get it) in building a massive structure that only fills one purpose rather than having new components introduced to an already spaghetti-like machine.

    Maybe when I finally finish it, I will talk a bit about the other shell project and how it came together.

    In the meantime, that will do it for today. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you can rest as well as I am going to tonight.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 318, “Season 2”

    Redundancy Review: Day 318, “Season 2”

    (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 slingers and flingers, welcome to Day 318 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Two quick points of order before we get into the swing of things.

    First, after a friend in a Discord server pointed it out, yeah, this is essentially Season 2 of the Redundancy Review. Hopefully now that we have been renewed for a new season we develop certain plotlines further and introduce yet more intrigue to the story.

    Second, another friend of mine pointed out there was an amazing gif to use instead of the “what now?” one I used yesterday:

    I think this one helps sum up how I am feeling with the spectre of unemployment this time around. During the initial period of redundancy there were some aspects of gallows humour in how I handled things but I was primarily navigating the difficult aspects with a heavy heart.

    Now?

    The idea of being unemployed still does not appeal to me, but if I have to be real, there is a certain sense of relief that comes this time around, leading to more gallows humour – I even pulled the sarcastic “What are you gonna do? Fire me?” on my boss when we were talking about my last few light duties until my time is up.

    It feels weird to call this being “laid off” as well, cause I was a contractor, meaning my time could have been up at any moment due to the nature of the role – though I was under the impression that the ball could have kept rolling just a little bit longer.

    But, the weekend is upon us, and I intend to spend it in the company of good people, enjoying good times, and eating good food.

    Speaking of good food, it seems appropriate to christen the new season of the Redundancy Review with a food review, although not from my adoptive home of Shrewsbury this time so I do not get to do my usual intro.

    Instead this review comes from Telford, a short hop on the train, taking us to a wide array of eating establishments including the subject of today’s review: Wingers.

    Wingers is a chain of fast food chicken restaurants in the UK, and this was my first time trying it out, having caught both mine and my partner’s eye multiple times whenever we chose to go out shopping around Telford.

    Now, even though the UK has a good chicken shop culture, I unfortunately did not have the blessings to grow up in an area with many of them, meaning all I really had to make do with growing up was KFC on the off chance I got to go to one. This influenced my outlook going into this as I assumed it was going to be quite similar to KFC.

    It was not.

    And I mean that in the best way possible.

    My choice of meal was a four-piece chicken tender meal, which comes with fries and a drink, which I paid £2.50 to upgrade that to a ridiculously thicc Biscoff milkshake, topping things off with a dip pot of garlic parmesan sauce for £1. In total, combining my add-ons with the base meal’s price of £9.75, this came to £12.25. My usual KFC order of either a Zinger Stacker or a Boneless Banquet would come to around the £10-11 mark, making this just a hair above what I would pay there.

    This was worth the small price increase.

    First off, the chicken, which came drenched in Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo sauce. These tenders were absolutely massive compared to the mini-fillets you would get at KFC, they were incredibly juicy on the inside, with a deliciously crisp crust on the outside, even as the spicy sauce seeped in. Four of these tenders were more than enough to start filling me up on what was a somewhat indulgent lunch.

    And then came the skin-on fries. I am used to KFC giving you a middling amount of fries as an accompaniment to a meal, hence why I was fully unprepared for the surprisingly large portion size that Wingers provided. I even commented as I worked my way through them that I felt it was almost too many fries to go with a lunch meal, but I persevered as they were absolutely delicious, if just a very bog standard fry.

    The garlic parmesan sauce was… alright. It definitely tasted both like garlic and like parmesan but it did not feel particularly special, at £1 though it is hard not to complain, and it definitely added some complexity to the standard fries.

    However, the true star of the show was my milkshake. I am somewhat of a milkshake connoisseur, self-described obviously, but I have tried multiple different shakes across many different fast-food establishments.

    This was, hands down, one of the best I have ever tasted.

    The Biscoff flavour was extremely pronounced, the shake itself was straw-standingly thick requiring several gulps of air to even get it to come up the straw, and considering I had picked the spicy sauce to go on my tenders, it was the perfect accompaniment to cool my mouth down.

    Definitely want to return to Wingers if given the chance, especially considering with the portion sizes on the fries and how well four tenders filled me up, I feel it could make a surprisingly economical treat lunch for my partner and myself if we split a £13.75 eight tender meal between ourselves with only needing to add an additional drink.

    This is… the first time since January that I have actually managed to post a Redundancy Review back-to-back. That is something to be proud of given the circumstances.

    But that does it for today. Thank you for reading this edition of Redundancy Review Season 2. Wherever you are, I hope you have satisfying weekend plans put together. If not, and you are simply using the time to recover from whatever the week brought upon you, I wish you a restful time to forget the burdens of the world.


  • Redundancy Review: Day 289-317, “A New Beginning-wait I already used that title”

    Redundancy Review: Day 289-317, “A New Beginning-wait I already used that title”

    (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 unemployeds and underemployeds, welcome to Day 289-317 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    The title now makes sense again!

    Though, that is because yesterday, April 22nd 2026, I was told that my role at my current company would be coming to an end May 31st, or more realistically, May 29th will be my last working day. But either way, come the start of June, I am back searching for a job in these crazy market conditions, fighting against AI at every stage and not knowing where my next proper paycheque will be coming from.

    I intend to remain professional, as I am still supposed to be getting paid up until the end of this time period along with finishing up my last few responsibilities. 

    But, being completely honest… it hurts being back in this position. It really does. Ever since being made redundant from the previous company almost a year ago now, I have spent time trying to recover the trauma that redundancy inflicted upon me. Worrying about the future, trying to stay positive even in adverse conditions, and trying my best to make my own way in the world whilst everything feels like it’s collapsing.

    I had started to recover from that, I felt more positive about the future. More often than not my brain was in a relaxed state rather than worrying about stuff, I was going on trips with my partner, enjoying good food with good company, and engaging in my hobbies more thoroughly than ever.

    And even with the knowledge that I have two pay packets still to come, it makes me feel that I am back in that position a year ago, surrounded by the uncertainty of the current UK jobs market whilst the tech industry undergoes rapid change due to the implementation and proliferation of AI.

    So, I ask myself the question that I asked right as the Redundancy Review started…

    First, acknowledge that whilst it very much feels like the world has come to an end, it has not. Life will still move forward, and I knew that this was not going to last forever, even as much as I hoped that the business could continue with me for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, I planned for something like this happening, with contingency plans for finances in place to keep myself sustained during a long job search alongside whatever comes next.

    Which brings me nicely onto the second point: what does come next?

    Well for a start, I need to get back into the habit of writing daily Redundancy Reviews. They fell by the wayside as I navigated stressful work situations but now that those are seemingly behind me, I need to push myself to get back into that groove both for writing practice and to keep myself engaged on a day-to-day basis.

    Alongside that, I need to take the plunge back into fiction writing. One of my goals this year was to write a semi-fictionalised story about my experience being a transgender woman, and I need to decide what shape and form that story will take. The general goal is a story that helps reassure trans people in my age bracket (the weird inbetween space of Gen Z and Millenial) that it is never too late to start, and that experimenting is how you get to become who you want to be. Aside from that, getting back into short, character-focused stories would also be fun.

    Reminder that I am available for commissions still, if you look at the top navigation bar there is a “Commissions” tab that highlights the work I have done for others… I think I still have one I need to post too. Writing commissions are a good way for me to keep busy whilst earning some extra cash to help keep things ticking along. Get in touch if you want fiction, or even a Redundancy Review on something you are curious about.

    But the main priority?

    Healing, and deciding what to do next.

    The tech industry I worked towards joining, the XR industry I have found myself a home in, and the startup culture I developed my edge in have all helped me advance my lifestyle and career, though it has come at an intense mental cost that comes with being a part of it.

    Whilst I have the skills to pay the bills within that space, I need to seriously take stock of where I am in my life with perennial burnout alongside what career I can see myself being happy in for however long it would accept me. At this present moment, my thought is to just go all in on being an artist or entertainer, as several tweets I have seen throughout my time have said:

    “Job market is shit one way or the other, so why not follow your dreams?”

    I have nothing to really lose. If I end up facing down the barrel of a long unemployment period, I may as well put as much energy as I can into the creation of what I want my artistic legacy to be.

    As many trans people have been told when considering a major life change: “Do not die wondering”, which ties nicely into the philosophy I used when starting out under the Redundancy Review banner: “Do not let it die in your head”.

    Well, here’s to the new beginning. I hope you will join me for the ride.

    Thank you for reading the inaugural edition of the second evolution of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are navigating this crazy world as best you can, and if you are like me and also dealing with the spectre of the job search: we are in this together. You are not alone, and even when it seems darkest, we are going to make it.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 259-286, “Building Things”

    (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 constructors and builders, welcome to Day 259 to 286 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    On the plus side, it was only a twenty-eight(ish) day gap between posts this time!

    On the down side, still a long ass time not to be writing anything.

    Past me would have said “long time not to be doing anything productive”, but honestly, the reason I have been away so long is because I have been finding my own ways of productivity outside of my work that has kept me away from writing, alongside a holiday taken a few weeks back that served as a major reset to my system that has basically reshifted my current outlook on things substantially.

    There was a lot of stress at my day job, which took priority during the day and I was working on other small projects at the same time, but after that holiday and having an extended period of time to just zen out not doing much put my brain into this current state where all stress and anxiety are basically on the back burner… which has led to me joking that I actually just burnt out the part of my brain that feels stressed causing me to be incapable of feeling it anymore.

    Outside of the jokes, there is a certain paranoia that has come with this relaxed state: why am I not stressed?

    It could be entirely down to the fact that I have spent the last couple of months dealing with stress meaning now that my body has been given the absence of stress it does not actually fully know what to feel. Or perhaps that these feelings of relaxation in the past have often been omens of impending doom on the horizon relating to job news so I am constantly thinking about what might be coming.

    Whatever comes, I feel I am adequately prepared for it, especially when looking back to a year ago. A year ago I thought I was in a relatively secure position, some amount of savings, and things starting to settle right after a big move forward in my life – right before everything became suddenly unsettled with the collapse of the last company I worked at.

    Sitting here now, writing a piece that was meant to start as something else and has now evolved into a reflective piece, I look over my situation seeing a much improved position. I would still be fucked six ways from Sunday if I were to lose my job again, but in terms of financials I would at least be able to take time for soul-searching in order to properly find out what I want to do next.

    There is one thing I know I will always want to do in life though: build things.

    What do I mean by that?

    Well, it can mean almost anything in a way. When someone says they are building something, it can be a piece of software, a physical item, or the vague concept of a “brand”. Humans are creatures that enjoy building things, and there is joy to be found through the process of creation.

    For me, I have several things I can build, and I have always found a fascination with being able to build things.

    Writing on this site is me building my “brand”, one focused around human creativity, honesty in the face of adversity, and talking about my hobbies in a roundabout way.

    But the hobbies I have are also about building. I am back into the flow of building Warhammer 40k models, something which I hope to finally talk about now that I have found my writing spark again. I play a lot of video games that involve building mechanics of some kind, more so now that my partner has tempted me to the dark side with playing Satisfactory. And I build complex flavours into the food I make on a daily basis when the passion and creativity hits me in the kitchen.

    I will always want to build things, and I will always want to take the time to build those things because the journey of creation is what makes the final results satisfying.

    And now, for the first time in… seventy six days fucking hell, it is time for the Redundancy Review to actually feature a review about something… though not about something I built, in fact the review topic for today was picked on impulse based on the route I had to take on my lunch walk today.

    In the past, I was someone that went to KFC fairly often. The allure of a Zinger Stacker topped with a hash brown brought me in a number of times over the years, but as time went on, I found myself going less and less, with the times I did go back in often yielding disappointment as the quality dropped further down in comparison to the prices going up. It was only cause of a recent promotion I found completely by chance when checking the website to see what offers they might have that I decided to go in today, specifically because, as a self-respecting trans woman, I cannot pass up the opportunity for pickle-based foods.

    “Pickle Mania”, as KFC is calling it, is a series of special menu items revolving around the humble pickled cucumber. A staple addition to most fast food burgers now brought to the forefront through a series of pickle-themed offerings, including a chicken burger with two types of pickle paired with a “creamy pickle ranch”, and pickle loaded fries featuring the crispy pickle pieces, popcorn chicken, and the creamy pickle ranch again.

    But the one that caught my eye, both for being one of my favourite items of fried food in existence alongside the fact a mainstream fast food has put them on the menu were the frickles. Sliced pickle that are coated in batter and then deep-fried for a crunchy & briney bite that is hard to beat.

    So naturally, I decided to try all three offerings. Loaded fries on the left pickle burger in the middle, and the frickles on the right.

    Small aside, “loaded fries” is definitely a food trend right now, as I have seen several places do their own variations on the dish. I am not entirely sure where it has come from but considering the infinite possibilities for loaded fries and the fact it has been a concept long before this current trend makes me tolerate it a lot more than whatever the hell was going on with matcha or Dubai chocolate.

    Anyway, I will go in order from left-to-right across the items, starting with the pickle loaded fries. These are standard KFC fries topped with the creamy pickle ranch, crispy pickle pieces, and standard popcorn chicken.

    These were… alright. The crispy pickle pieces are an interesting take on pickled cucumber but I felt they lost a lot of what appeals to me in a pickle, they were not briney, they were not salty, they just kind of tasted like dehydrated cucumber more than anything else.

    What stood out to me though was the creamy pickle ranch. Ranch is not a sauce you find often in the UK due to cultural differences but this tasted absolutely divine… provided you like briney/vinegary flavours as it was strong in the sauce, to an almost overpowering degree. Good for my tastes, but might not be to someone else’s.

    Next up was the pickle burger, which kind of gave me the vibe of what a standard American “chicken sandwich” is like compared to the chicken burgers you often find over here. No cheese, just chicken, sauce, and two kinds of pickles: the crispy pieces plus your standard gherkins. This was also just alright, outside of the creamy pickle ranch it tasted like a standard chicken burger, which would be great if the price reflected as such, whereas this was priced at £1 more than other burgers on the menu.

    Finally, we came to what I had come to try, the frickles. These were slices of pickle coated in a black pepper infused batter, which bizarrely did not come with a side of the creamy pickle ranch for dipping. Some places do their frickles as spears rather than slices, but I have a soft spot for slices, little discs of perfection.

    Whilst these were the highlight of the spread for me, I do also sadly have to give them another rating of “alright” with an added “but” afterwards. As far as frickles go, these were not the best I have had, not the worst I have had either, just simply “alright”. That said, for the price of £2.49 for a small portion of frickles in KFC of all places, you could do a lot worse, especially when compared to the price of £8.99 for the pickle burger meal with a £1.99 charge on top of that to add the loaded pickle fries – on their own the pickle fries would cost an almost disgraceful £3.99 which I do not think is worth it on their own at all for what you get.

    It is an interesting little experiment KFC has tried out with these ones, but sadly, it is not really enough to draw me back in regularly compared to the other places I can find lunch where I live. A shame, but we carry on.

    First time in a while writing a proper review, hopefully I managed to get my points across without much rambling. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to relax with whatever brings you comfort in this weird, fucked up world that we live in sometimes.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 218-258, “Inspiration, or lack thereof”

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

    Good morning cadavers and corpses, welcome to quite frankly an absurd amount of days between my last Redundancy Review and today of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    And now, a silly bit.

    Charging to twenty days.

    Clear!

    Still not enough motivation, charging to forty days.

    Clear!

    Right, that should have injected enough life into things to write for a bit.

    So… why the long unintended hiatus? Whilst I am no stranger to them, this is definitely up there for the longest one taken of this so called daily series. 

    In short: depression.

    In slightly longer: depression plus inspiration.

    In full long form: well, keep reading and I will get there.

    Seasonal depression kicked my ass hard, as is noticeable from some Redundancy Reviews before my long break, which led to a lot of days blurring together as I tried to navigate through the wet haze of greyness that is the UK in winter.

    And when I was in that mental state, I did not particularly want to write. Not because of lacking ideas to talk about, but more because I did not want to only talk about my sadness or mental condition, because I want to try focus on the positives rather than the negatives.

    Which, yes, I know is a pretty shitty attitude to take towards myself. All of my feelings are valid, but, there was a certain guilt that I felt whenever I would open a document and start trying to write what my view on the world was at that given time when everything in my mind was just doom and gloom.

    But, as much as I want to keep things positive and write Redundancy Reviews based on what good has occurred in my life recently, that does not mean I should suppress any inkling of negative emotion just to make “good content”.

    Things have been tough lately, with my day job especially putting some strain on me for the bigger push to use AI tools in our workflows to try make things more efficient/productive – a total misrepresentation of the facts considering I feel what the tool is doing is neither of those things and just adds layers of complication that waste time in the fixes that need applying where we could have just made base level improvements to the current processes instead of introducing a hallucination layer instead.

    There is a certain pressure from within my own psyche to be “grateful” for the fact I have a job currently, especially in the job market of today – and do not get me wrong, I do fully appreciate how lucky I am to have a job in the wake of a layoff when so many of my contemporaries in the industry do not, but “grateful” is not a term I would really use.

    It gets me by, and I do at least learn new things even if I do not put much value on the skills I learn in navigating AI slop, but currently that is all I feel to my job: a means to an end.

    The end in question is just getting to live my life as I want to, although with everything going on lately it has been hard to do that, with just surviving each day and getting to the weekend feeling like an accomplishment.

    That is not to say that things are all bad. There is plenty I am actually finding enjoyment in outside of work, work is just this malaise over my brain that depletes what little energy I can muster.

    I have got back into building Warhammer 40k models, admittedly an expensive hobby to undertake, but as I was looking at the various offerings of plastic crack that is available to purchase my conclusion was that I was fucked no matter what route I took and at least I had some familiarity with 40k from my past experiences. Built a full box of models over the last couple weeks with another one to start work on soon, not to mention painting which was one of my goals for this year.

    My gaming life continues to be plentiful, having recently 100%ed the first Hades game before moving on to Mewgenics, with Umamusme sprinkled in and Monster Hunter Wilds returning for another round of buffet selections with how many new quests are being added in as part of the final update before the expansion drops at an indeterminate time in the future.

    Finally had my first consultation for voice training, which should give me a boost in confidence and let me explore my identity a bit more. 

    Writing just… kind of falls by the wayside when things get intense and I want to focus on living. I suppose it is the dichotomy of being a writer in my current situation: my main body of work revolves around making “content” that takes inspiration from my daily life, but when my energy levels are low, I want to focus that energy on living rather than writing about life.

    And if I do not have energy to write about life, that usually means I do not have the energy to write whimsical fiction of any description.

    If anything, I just need to find a new source of whimsy for myself to latch onto, to hold tight in the darker moments.

    Have a picture of some ducks that I took when I was out shopping with my partner over the weekend, they were pretty cute.

    Think that will cover everything for the meantime, hopefully I can get back into some kind of groove after finally sitting down to write a piece and not let my true emotions get filtered out. 

    Regardless, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are safe, happy, and comfortable. Times like these are hard on everyone, and finding whatever small bits of hope we can hold onto can help make life feel that much more worth it.

    (and thanks to my friend Rhys for checking in on me after noticing I had not written one of these in a while. Thanks man, it actually did kind of spur me to write again.)

  • Redundancy Review: Day 213-217, “Getting Distracted”

    (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 latecomers and no-shows, welcome to Day 213 to 217 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Spent time over the weekend not writing to focus on spending time with friends and doing my own things.

    Did not write.

    Got too involved in games last night to take some stress off.

    Did not write.

    So tonight, after one of my regularly scheduled gaming sessions, I am forcing myself to write something before I do anything further for my own entertainment tonight.

    Maintaining discipline is hard, especially when I work a full-time job in addition to handling day-to-day tasks, often leaving little time for writing when all I really want to do is play RPGs or watch cartoon horses run around a track. The ADHD does not help in this regard, though that affects both my personal and professional ventures.

    It can sometimes be a blessing, usually when the hyperfocus hits just right to allow me to belt through a massive chunk of work in a short amount of time or hit the writing flow exceptionally well to the point I will ramble on for several paragraphs about whatever topic sits at the forefront of my mind, but this boon of hyperfocus comes with the downside of what it feels like to be at the opposite end of the spectrum.

    Complete.

    Shutdown.

    No work gets done, no nothing gets done unless it provides the adequate of dopamine to kickstart my addled brain once more, and the worst part is when this state comes right after a period of hyperfocus – usually being knocked out of it by something happening in the middle of my work, or as is often the case nowadays, finding myself frustrated at something to where it snaps me out of my flow state into a short period of sulking where I need to do something completely different or else my brain does not want to cooperate.

    This is where having a remote job with a flexible work schedule really helps me out, as I am able to take that time without a manager looking over my shoulders wondering why the hell I have stopped for a bit and get myself back into the right state of mind, along with not having to worry about not being able to stay later due to that interruption, I have the time to get my work done.

    That freedom is something I definitely do not take for granted, and my working environment is what has allowed me to be my best self all this time because I am free from the psychological distractions that usually come from being within an office. Part of me wonders how long it would take to resocialise me if I were to ever work in person again, because I know I can be equal parts abrasive and weird when it comes to my working style, not to mention the copious amounts of swearing… did hit an extremely satisfying “son of a bitch!” during work yesterday though, that felt great.

    Alright, that is enough sidetracking. It is very rare I managed to hit Tuesdays on schedule given recent slips so I wanted to make the most of it with a proper VTuesday segment, once more talking about a song, this time from a contender for my Hololive English kamioshi, Ninomae Ina’nis with Tako Takover.

    On stream vibes alone, Ina worked her way into my heart with cozy gaming and art content, but she is equally talented as a singer, leading to beautiful pieces like Violet all the way to surprisingly intense pieces like Tako Takover.

    And when I say intense, I mean there is a part of me that is dying to be in a crowd whenever this is played live because I feel the call & response and chanting would be absolutely insane to be involved in.

    Right after the opening lyrics there is repeated chanting of “ICHI! HACHI! TAKODACHI!” followed by “INA INA INA”, which never fails to get me into the listening mood for this song, finding myself singing along very soon into the song…

    …which is completely the point given the insanely clever lyrics written by fellow HoloEN member Mori Calliope, combining the beautiful puns that Ina herself is known for whilst weaving a story about the Tentacult rising to power in the world with Ina herself as the leader behind the new world order.

    I am not immune to propaganda, and considering this is essentially a propaganda piece for a cult of weird little purple guys following a priestess of the Ancient One… sign me the fuck up. 

    In a way I am glad I fall for fictional propaganda more than I do real world propaganda because if I were not as politically aware as I am I feel I would have fallen into a cult or an alt-right pipeline by now.

    That is entirely beside the point though, what is the point is this song is awesome, though, given it was composed by Aiobahn +81, composer behind Internet Yamero, a similarly intense and catchy song with crazy lyrics, it is no surprise. 

    Yeah no my brain has stopped working now. Listen to the song, or both of them, and feel the rhythm of the bass hit you, I guarantee either one of them will be stuck in your head after.

    And I have to thank Ina herself here for posting a nice full size picture of the thumbnail of Tako Takover on her Twitter account so I can use it as a thumbnail.

    That about covers it for today, hopefully I can keep the discipline up to get back to a reasonable schedule. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and take the week easy.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 211-212, “Deep Sleprived”

    (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 nocturnals and diurnals, welcome to Day 211 and 212 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review. 

    Missed yesterday due to being severely sleep deprived, and it is extremely late where I am as I attempt to write this so to keep a modicum of my streak up, should manage at least something.

    Not having enough sleep is ass, especially when you are someone like me who tosses and turns a lot in the lead up to falling asleep and has a resistance to traditional sleeping aids, leading to me turning to CBD gummies to help lull me into relaxation enough so that I can start to get some proper shut eye in.

    The downside to this is knowing when I should indulge in a cube of gelatinised weed or hold off and potentially suffer through the night so not to build up a resistance to one of the few things that can actually help me in case of actual emergencies – such as needing to get up early in the morning for travel or needing a proper night’s sleep before a big event the next day.

    It also has a knock-on effect to my plans after navigating the main bulk of my day. I drift through work like a zombie due to my brain not even responding properly to caffeine in that state, and once that is over with I find myself with no notable mood or energy improvements, leading me to engage in solo activities rather than enjoy my time with friends due to how irritable lack of sleep can make me.

    And finally, after navigating a day with poor sleep, I finally get ready for bed of the evening time, having dodged the dangerous trap that is an afternoon nap which could have jeopardised my schedule even further, and I fall into a deep & dreamless sleep for the required amount of hours… only to wake up the next morning feeling better but still like I am dragging a massive tire behind me for the day after.

    Moral of this short story? Sleep well… easier said than done for many people.

    But that short tale will cover for today, and help maintain my streak. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax in this cold weather and are able to find comfort in your own sleep.

    Need a thumbnail, have this picture I took of a light snowfall as my partner and I were going for a lunch walk around Shrewsbury.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 209, “Flipping Freezing”

    Redundancy Review: Day 209, “Flipping Freezing”

    (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 hyperboreans and cryomancers, welcome to Day 209 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    As per the title, it is flipping freezing, one might even say fucking freezing… one is me, I think it is fucking freezing, I just do not like to put swears directly in the titles of articles.

    Swearing within the body? Will do so to my heart’s content, but profane titles are off limits.

    I guess I can use today to talk about my relationship with swearing. If you read enough Redundancy Reviews or know me in-person you know I am no stranger to flowery language, dropping “fuck” in every second sentence and having a love of a good “shit”, but where did my sailor mouth come from?

    In a few short points:

    • Family
    • Work
    • ADHD

    The first one is pretty obvious, whilst they started off pretty well with not swearing in front of myself or my brother, things eventually turned to infrequent swearing in front of us yet at the same time not wanting us to swear, before all pretense was dropped and swearing once more became a common feature in our household. 

    This alone was not enough though to get me to the level of swearing I am today, which is where work comes in, specifically, my old platform lead when I worked at Codemasters who went by the name of “Rye”. Was a lovely guy, really helped me out in the early days of me working there and was generally understanding when I messed things up or needed additional guidance.

    Being from Coventry however, he was someone who dropped swears like they were treat-size chocolate bars on Halloween, and considering after a period of time I was working with him quite closely due to the Live Ops team being a smaller group, it was only a matter of time until I picked up his habit of profane language.

    That said, he was not entirely responsible for me picking up that habit, and if anything, the line of work we both found ourselves in almost necessitated swearing as a coping mechanism for dealing with the deluge of shit we encountered on a near-daily basis. It was a running joke in our Teams chat that if it were not for the security locks holding our devkit consoles to our desks, they would have been thrown out the window long ago.

    Quality Assurance is a field of expertise that requires a steady mind to stay focused on getting a bug replicated or an issue to occur on a long playthrough – cussing out whatever you are testing is a good way of stopping your brain from shutting off during the necessary repetition that this brings, which is where the final point of ADHD comes in.

    It might seem confusing for me to correlate neurodivergence with swearing, but bear with me for a bit. My area of specialisation is within the Extended Reality (XR) industry as a QA tester, this often means I have a moderately heavy lump of circuitry and screens strapped to me head with a non-breathable cushion of foam pressed right against my face, leaving only a small gap where my nose is for moist air to escape.

    Given that sometimes the experiences I am required to test will last me up to forty minutes at a time with very repetitive tasks or a large number of tasks, the only thing that can keep my focus is muttering swears under my breath or, as is often the case, venting my frustrations at the virtual avatars around me to once more stop my brain from turning off.

    These mid-test vents eventually became a source of comedy when it came to watching back my test footage, as my creative application of language would often get caught by the Slack auto-transcriber, leading to questions about the suitability of the content if it featured such harsh language… before they realise that, no, the experience itself did not have swearing, the idiot behind the headset was the source of all that.

    A lot of people consider swearing a dirty habit to have, especially in a professional context, but to me swearing comes part and parcel with the stresses that any job can bring, be it retail or corporate. The important distinction is knowing when it is the appropriate time to use curse words and when they should not be said under any circumstance. To reiterate a piece of advice I was once given and have brought up in a previous review:

    “Professionalism is delivering your points clearly and not saying fuck.”

    The line has often blurred for me given the fact I have been working remotely for so long, which I do worry has negatively impacted my socialisation skills for the day I might have to return to being in an office full time, but for now I enjoy the benefits of being a remote worker whose line of work allows her to curse to her heart’s content – which is a lot.

    I did not plan at all to launch into an unscripted diatribe about the origins of my swearing habit along with defending the character of those who do swear in professional scenarios, but that is the beauty of the Redundancy Review. We have random topics at all times and sometimes they take on a life of their own.

    It probably does not help my current situation that I am quite attentively playing through Nier Replicant “Ver 1.22474487139…”, speech marks added so as not to confuse the ellipsis that is actually part of the title with my habit of adding ellipses when a thought needs dramatic impact.

    Through playing Replicant, I have once more come face to face with one of my favourite characters in gaming, a lovely, wholesome individual that goes by the name of Kainé…

    …who has some of my favourite profane dialogue in all of gaming.

    She is a character you encounter fairly early on in the course of the story, who eventually joins with your party after defeating a boss she wanted revenge on. Her NPC AI matches similar to what the player character is intended to be, a spellsword brawler who can dish out a good amount of physical damage whilst also using magic spells to support longer combos or enable quick executions.

    True to form with any Yoko Taro game though, she has hidden depths that come to light as part of the multiple playthroughs required to fully understand the story, with her even getting an extended story in “Ver 1.22…” after completing the entirety of the original game. 

    Fun fact, this game is the sole reason that “hussy” features so prominently in my lexicon, due to the acidic banter that exists between Kainé and Grimoire Weiss, your floating magical book that is the source of all your spells.

    This does remind me I should take more screenshots of the game after I make it through my first playthrough so I can have some material ready to use when I eventually want to talk about this game after 100%ing it, but at least I can use this review to post another one of my favourite lines from Kainé.

    There is one more line that I consider my absolute favourite, but I will wait until the proper review to share that one.

    I think that covers it for today, thank you for reading this surprise discussion of swearing in real life and swearing in video games style Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope the Monday blues of the first working day back of the year have not brought you down too much, and if they have, try turning the air blue with a bunch of swearing, that always makes me feel better.