Rosalia Rambles

Tag: writing

  • Redundancy Review: Day 202-204, “The Patent Pending Year End Ramble”

    (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 closers and finishers, welcome to Day 202, 203, and 204 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I’m waiting in my cold flat when the bell begins to chime
    Reflecting on this past year as it doesn’t have much time
    ‘Cause at twelve o’clock, they take me to the New Year’s Dawn
    The sands of time for me are running low…

    Bit of an Iron Maiden reference to end the year off. Was sitting here trying to think how to write an opening to the year end ramble and Hallowed Be Thy Name just got right into my head.

    2025 is almost over, and for a lot of us it has been one right stinker of a year. There have been plenty of high points throughout the year where the light of hope shined brightly to break through the darkness, but true to the sequence of days this year started with, it really was a “WThF” kind of year.

    Not sure what a “ThFS” year looks like, but I am ninety-percent convinced it cannot be worse than what this year was.

    I am going to get all the negatives out of the way first, because there is:

    1. A lot of them
    2. I do not want the positives being buried by the negatives
    3. Holy shit this year went so wrong in so many ways

    Going to start with the elephant in the room: redundancy. The whole reason I am sitting here writing a series with that word in the title. Working in the tech industry often means that you await news of your next funding round or new business arriving in with bated breath, desperately yearning for a job where you work on a ThinkPad instead, but when the reality hits that you really do not have a job anymore, it hits like a truck.

    For me, I was anticipating it, and had begun job searching anyway… though I was not anticipating it so soon in the year, I was at least expecting to see 2025 in my previous role, so getting sideswiped in May was not fun in the slightest.

    In the wake of being laid off, the lingering resentment I hold towards the UK government came right to the forefront as I navigated the Insolvency Service, Universal Credit/Jobseekers Allowance, and then setting up as a sole trader with HMRC, fighting through bureaucracy at every moment in the short month I was unemployed. 

    Which, yeah, I was only actually unemployed for a month after officially being made redundant. I cannot imagine how some of my former colleagues feel struggling to find work several months after the fact, because that month felt simultaneously long and slow to me.

    Even with the future still uncertain, I do feel I have developed a fair bit due to doing this contract role. Has it been challenging in its own way? Of course it has, I still struggle to reconcile who I want to be with who I currently am, which has been the source of several mental challenges over the course of the end of the year, not helped by seasonal depression being an absolute monster this time around due to how grey and wet the end of the year has been.

    I do feel hardened by everything I have gone through, and not necessarily in the cold & cynical way I was initially on the path of earlier in the year. I still put too much of myself into things that will likely not return the same love and care, leading to me overusing my energy during the day leaving very little in the tank for the evenings and making it so my weekends are more focused on recovery than actually enjoying myself. 

    But I feel myself slowly gaining an acceptance of the future holding whatever it has for me, as much as I feel a latent desire to be in control of my fate. There is very little I can do to change things other than stay the path I am on and wait for opportunities to arise, which this year has definitely had a lot of good ones.

    That is enough about job stuff, time to move on to some minor negative things.

    First off: a custom cosplay going awry two weeks before my big convention holiday to VExpo. That really sucked, even though the resolution to it was an overall positive due to me getting a full refund for shoddy work. It has at least taught me to be extremely anally retentive and specific when it comes time to define the specifications for a new custom cosplay in the new year, a goal I definitely want to try again with, though maybe not entirely with Hololive this time around.

    Secondly, and I mentioned this in the last Redundancy Review: having to fight an online fashion community for besmirching my partner’s honour, another event that came with a lot of negatives, but has some positive linings.

    Was it a traumatic ordeal for the both of us to navigate false and inflated accusations from a bunch of elitist randoms online? Yes

    Did it take away three precious days of our life navigating the ever changing goalposts those upjumped Discord mods enforced upon us? Yes

    Was our privacy violated by the amount of guilty until proven innocent assumptions a group of sad, lonely, and bored timewasters inflicted upon us? Yes

    Did I get a fucking thrill from taking their arguments apart piece-by-piece in an extensive Google Dockey and having a grudge to hold on to in order to live a beautiful life for both me and my partner out of sheer spite? You bet your arse I do.

    And again, if anyone from that fashion community is reading this post because you still feel the need to cyberstalk us, read my words carefully. I am more than capable of holding this grudge until the two year waiting period is up, and then holding it beyond that point to fuel the spite even further.

    God that feels good to get out of my system.

    And finally: not spending enough time with friends, something I have been working on fixing in the last months of the year and want to work on more in the early months of 2026. From pulling out of social engagements at the last minute, having clashing plans that prevent me from making the most of my time with people, or just simply having my mental demons catch up with me at the worst times, there has been less time I have spent with the people I care about most in my life.

    Think that covers every major bit of negativity this year, time to move onto the way more positive aspects of the year.

    Starting with another elephant in the room: VExpo, the absolute highlight of my year, and focus of the best & biggest piece of writing I did this year what do you mean this was almost four months ago now what the fuck it was day 90 I wrote that and we’re on day 204 now.

    VExpo gave me a taste of a life I did not actually think I would have again. One of going out to conventions, meeting like-minded individuals who enjoy the same hobbies that I do, spending time engaging in all my silly hobbies and coming back feeling both the lows of post-con depression and the absolute high of experiencing such a wonderful event with so many memories made.

    It is my goal to return for VExpo 2026, and I want to make next year’s trip even better than the one this year, with hopefully the convention itself stepping up their game to put on an even better show.

    Next up, it has actually been a great year for me in terms of gaming and pushing myself to 100% complete various games, the proudest of which I definitely think is either Monster Hunter Wilds for the surprising reward of the size grind in that game due to how investigations work and how my friends and I were able to share investigations with one another, or Death Stranding Director’s Cut, for the fairly straightforward nature of all its achievements and the fact it is a Kojima game, so I was absolutely enthralled the entire time.

    It is something I would like to bring forward into 2026, picking up previous projects to finally finish off like Mass Effect Legendary Collection and finding new ones like Space Marine 2. Achievements are always special to me, and pushing myself to 100% games is something I seriously enjoy.

    One part of this year that has ended up surprisingly well for me is actually my financial situation. Without going into too much detail and oversharing sensitive information, for someone who lost their job in the middle of the year I actually end this year off with a stronger savings position than what I started in, almost doubling what I had at the beginning. Of course I still have to worry about taxes in a couple months time which will take a decent chunk back out of that savings cushion, but the fact I can be in a position to not be overly worried about that time is incredibly reassuring.

    And finally, I want to end this post off with what I think is definitely one of the biggest positives of this year.

    This.

    The Redundancy Review.

    A series born out of an unfortunate event, turning into my biggest writing project of my life, with several ups and downs and a lot of missed days, I still end this year off with:

    • 120 posts covering 204 days
    • Approximately 120,000 words across those posts, averaging about 1000 words per post and 584 words per day
    • 54 total food and drink reviews
    • 16 posts about VTubers and VTuber related content
    • 1044 views since kicking off the Redundancy Review

    All of which are insane milestones to consider when 2024 was one of my worst years for writing, and 2025, through a shit circumstance, ended up being one of my best.

    The year ends with a certain amount of uncertainty over my future still, but even in the face of adversity, I made the most of this year with amazing goals achieved nonetheless. For the thumbnail, I am going to post the bingo card I made at the start of the year alongside a group of friends in lieu of standard “resolutions”, which turned into a much more fun way to track the year gone by.

    And that does it for the Year End Ramble, and for the year. Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review, wherever you are, be it in the past or in the future, I hope you are doing well, and that life is on a steady path for you.

    2025 is ending, let us hope 2026 is a year of far simpler times.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 176-201, “Been a While”

    (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 snorers and dozers, welcome to… basically a catchup post for all of December covering day 176 all the way to 201 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I really hope I have calculated that day right, I am like ninety-percent sure that is the right number after checking the calendar several times.

    So, I basically wrote for none of December, which is funny, considering I initially was thinking I would be able to write through all of December with things calming down at work as they usually do in the last month of the year…

    …wishful fucking thinking looking back at this month.

    In a way this period of not writing has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that considering I was ill, without internet, and continuing to have my body collapse under the stress of navigating the insane year that 2025 has been, not writing let me focus on rest and recreation more than anything else. I did not need to put myself in a reflective or articulate mood after going through a day of coughing so much I felt I was going to vomit, and could just lie down while letting my brain shut off.

    But it has been a curse because the window where my internet was switched off was the ideal time to do a lot of writing, especially given opening Google Docs is one of the few things my hotspot could do with some reliability. Even if it was just rambling into the void about feeling frustrated by failing health and lack of action on getting my internet restored, though I doubt how productive that would have ultimately been when I was already in a rough mood from the illness itself.

    There is little point in dwelling on what could have been, the main thing is now trying to get myself back in the saddle for semi-regular writing once more to keep my skills sharp, and the story told.

    Speaking of, there are a good handful of story beats I need to catch up on writing down, so I will try my best to recall the last three plus weeks.

    Two major events in close proximity to each other: my birthday which coincided with me doing a fucking job interview at the local council that I did not expect in the slightest. It was a brutal interview, especially since it was my first in-person interview as a working professional in… well, ever. I think I did well, especially given the practical task was something I felt I smashed due to my background, I did stumble and trip over some questions, with my ADHD kicking in for one or two of them where I would forget the latter half of a question requiring me to try recover a coherent answer rapidly.

    Unfortunately I did not get the job, which definitely sent me into a funk for a day or two after getting the news. I had high hopes for myself in my performance and what I had accomplished, along with knowing that getting a full-time job in a local government organisation would greatly re-stabilise my current situation in regards to employment. I can still hold my head up high with what I did, but the disappointment was strong in the moment.

    My current job situation is… ticking on? I am at least not out in the cold before Christmas like so many of my contemporaries in the games industry have found themselves in, which is such a fucking dick move to make someone redundant right before Christmas that it could only be thought up in the mess that is the modern day gaming industry. I have work to be done, and I have built up a wide array of experience as part of being a contractor, so if my situation dictates that I need to become a professional nomad for a bit, then so be it.

    Christmas has come and gone, with the holiday period being surprisingly relaxing for me – something which I have honestly needed. Before finishing (mostly) finishing work for the year I was being plagued with illness like no tomorrow, simultaneously dealing with the remnants of my flu and suddenly picking up a stomach bug as well, leading to awkward days of finding various ways to put my guts under strain. Spending my days sitting on my sofa doing nothing much except playing video games, watching anime, and eating various indulgent bits of food has done wonders for both my mental and physical health, a period of recovery which I am extraordinarily privileged to have.

    I have a lot to say that will probably suit my year end ramble a bit more, for once having a place to put it that is not just throwing it out into the void, and I will be trying to make an effort to finish the year off strong in terms of writing, but no guarantees.

    Right now the story is in a calm before the storm when a new year begins, and a new brand of chaos is ushered in.

    That said, there is one thing in my life that always helps me make sense of the chaos. Something that I can rely on at all times, or rather, someone.

    This is my partner, or rather, it is a VRChat model of his fursona. This is my favourite picture he has ever taken of it due to how memeable the expression is.

    In the past he and I have discussed the notion of me “reviewing” him on the Redundancy Review, but given the events of recent days, I think now is a good time to do something of the sorts.

    We have known each other five years now, been in a relationship for coming up to four years of that time, and have been living together for a year and a half now. There have been challenges, ups and downs, and times where we have needed space from each other, but honestly?

    Nothing has ever got to the point where it is like: “this is the true test of our relationship”. Honestly we are not the kind of people to see things in such an absolute way, nothing is ever so severe that we think our love is being put to the test and that whatever situation we are in will “make or break” our feelings for each other.

    Are there tough moments? Absolutely, I would be doing a disservice to our story to try paint everything as rosy and perfect, but simultaneously, we have never really had any major arguments over anything and have never found ourselves to be angry at each other. Our love is just that strong that anything that could blow up into that for another couple is a simple hurdle for us – we get each other on a deeply emotional level and that has helped our relationship go far.

    He is extraordinarily patient with me as well, helping me to navigate through my various neurotic moments and easing me through panic attacks, working to make me comfortable afterwards so I can recover my strength and get back to being the Rosa I want to be. 

    There is nothing I would not do for him in return, and wanting to give us both a good life is one of my driving forces. We have worked hard to get where we are, and there is very little I would not do for him when the moment comes… genuinely, I waged a one woman war on a group of smug elitist pricks from an online fashion community because they made him cry. 

    If you are from that community and are reading my posts because you also feel the need to cyberstalk me in addition to him: I hope your conscience eats you alive one day, I hope one day the weight of the world collapses in on you, and you realise the error of your ways by assuming guilt rather than innocence.

    It took a while for me to find someone who gets me the way my partner gets me, but I am so happy I found him, and there is nothing in my life I am more thankful for.

    That about covers all of the major events that have happened in the past three weeks since I have not been writing. Here’s to ending off 2025 stronger than it started… not a difficult goal all things considered.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope the holiday season has been good to you. This time of the year can be tough for many, either missing family they loved or enduring family who do not love the real them. Cherish the ones who cherish you, and shield yourself from the pain that those who neglect you inflict.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    …that got needlessly dramatic, but hey ho.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But I am still going.

    Somehow.

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

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

    Right now though?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Thumbnail picture… thumbnail picture…

    Soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    For those who come after.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Redundancy Review: Day 152-158, “A Not So Good Writing Week”

    (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 puppies and kittens, welcome to me trying to catch up for a week of not writing in a post that covers day 152 to 158 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yup.

    This week has not been a productive week at all for writing. Taking into account work stress, personal stress, regular depression, seasonal depression, adjusting to my antidepressant medication,  and somehow getting a migraine even though I am not prone to them, there was very little time to sit down and write after completing daily activities alongside decompression time.

    And I feel perfectly okay with this.

    In the past I would have experienced an extreme amount of guilt over this fact, feeling as if I had failed as a writer due to not being able to keep to a regular posting schedule which forms the basis of my writing practice, working towards my goal of being able to make a living out of this passion.

    But I feel good, possibly down to the sertraline kicking in properly removing the sluggishness I had been experiencing as part of the adjustment period, leaving me feeling less physically tired today than I have been during the week. There is still a degree of “existential tiredness” as I call it, less a physical state of exhaustion and more feeling worn out by my current routine.

    That said, yesterday was actually one of my best work days in a while. I was actually able to find my rhythm in my tasks and get a substantial chunk of work done in a day, something I had found a great deal of struggle in earlier in the week. Stuff would get chunked down throughout the week as I was still on shift, but I ended the day feeling behind the curve on what I had set out to do.

    I am still taking steps to change my current situation, there are a handful of jobs I need to apply for over the weekend that sound right up my alley, and even outside of that the fact I have found my rhythm in working again should mean that the days go by quicker than before, pushing me towards more exciting events in my life such as my birthday, Christmas, and the obligatory Christmas break where I can find time to indulge in all sorts of gaming activities as I finally have proper, uninterrupted rest.

    There is still much on the horizon that I could worry about, but, I find myself oddly at peace right now…

    …god antidepressants are great, it has actually been so damn long since I have had this level of stability. 

    Suppose I should actually do a proper review segment today as well to make the most of this energy, and there has been something in the back of my mind I have wanted to discuss on the Redundancy Review ever since my partner and I watched it together on the sofa, the final race of Umamusume: Pretty Derby Season 2.

    Spoilers ahead for Umamusume: Pretty Derby Season 2, so uh, look away if you care about horse girls

    Still with me? Rad, time to embed the clip in.

    Small bit of admin before I get into this, I do not endorse Crunchyroll as a service, especially after they have swapped their subtitle company to one that heavily advertises the use of AI in their transcription services. Localisation is an art form that is extremely underappreciated and the use of AI in this area leaves a lot of nuance to be lost from the delicate fine tuning a skilled human localisation specialist can provide.

    However, this is the best clip I could find on Youtube of the “Miracle Run” as it is called, Tokai Teio’s final race after a series of injuries, hurdles, and setbacks. Throughout this season there are several moments where Teio is told she will not be able to race the same way as she used to, and whilst she has moments of victory, there is still a lot of difficulty in trying to run to the standard she wants to be.

    This is likened and contrasted with the struggles of her friend, Mejiro McQueen, who has developed a muscular disorder that also threatens to end her career as a professional racer for fear of losing her mobility entirely. Teio uses this as fuel on her journey to win the Arima Kinen, a race where fans vote on the participants.

    What the clip does not show is the preamble before the final stretch, Teio is close to the rear of the pack, not being able to make up positions as her trainer, teammates, and fans all wonder if she is now truly past her prime as an elite horse girl…

    …right up until the moment where she starts zooming through the competition, moving up several positions as the commentator says:

    “Tokai Teio is moving up!”

    And pauses.

    “Tokai Teio is moving up?!”

    Everyone was surprised by Teio being able to run like she used to, taking over several similarly skilled competitors, right up until she gets behind Biwa Hayahide, acknowledging the amount of strain her body is under as she flashes back to the challenges she has faced over the season, several moments where she could have quit for good.

    And as she builds up for the final spurt, McQueen, her trainer, and her idol Symboli Rudolf all egg her on to give it her all. Several other fans all encourage her, including the doctor who told her she might never be able to run the same way again,  seeing a legend be made in real time in front of them, as Tokai Teio, someone who has not step foot on a racetrack in over a year, wins the Arima Kinen.

    Being real, the entire Season 2 of Umamusume made both me and my partner cry at a lot of different moments – especially when being presented with Teio’s struggles. There is a moment in the tenth episode where footage is shown of Twin Turbo winning a race for her to dedicate it to Teio in the hopes she would run again, which is followed by all of Teio’s friends encouraging her not to quit as well, eventually leading to the events of the miracle run.

    We bawled our eyes out at that scene, as we both found relatedness in Teio’s struggles of feeling like she was not good enough no matter how hard she tried to overcome her challenges. In general watching Umamusume is way more emotional that either of us realised, we got super invested in all of the character’s arcs across all three seasons currently released in a way that caught us completely off guard. There is a surprising amount of emotion in an anime about reincarnated horse girls racing together.

    As always, need a thumbnail when I am talking about a video, and got this pretty decent screengrab from the clip above of Team Spica and their trainer cheering on Teio. 

    My favourite out of the bunch is Daiwa Scarlet, which is the orange-haired one with the tiara. She has such a cool design and I always find her rivalry with Vodka to be entertaining.

    Good to see I can still write after being out of practice for so long, and that will do it all for today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Thank you very much for reading. Wherever you are I hope you are able to enjoy the weekend and recover from whatever might have brought you down during the week.

    Go watch Umamusume: Pretty Derby through your streaming method of choice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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