Not often I use the number 16, well in comparison to how often I use 15… but today is that day.

Miss you, Mum. 💜

Just when the evenings are getting lighter, the weather turns to shit. Typical England. Anyway, I guess while the rain circles the house, it’s a good chance to do a bit of a sort out. I can see a few rounds to the tip and a bit of time shifting stuff on Gumtree this weekend. I’m such an adult.

Outside of that, the new car is officially on order… So that’s cool. Had some work done in the garden and the van had an MOT. I’m so rock and roll!!

Dog is still a douche. Although much easier to keep clean now she’s been groomed.

So yeah. Just a quick update. We’ll sit down properly and have a catch-up over a brew soon, yeah?

Obviously playing GT7 wasn’t enough of a car fix, while I take a break from adventuring with Aloy on HFW. I have gone back to a bit of Car Mechanic Simulator over the last couple of evenings. There is something very satisfying about stripping a car down and building it back up fresh.

Coupled with ordering a new car and putting mine up for sale, it’s been a very motor heavy week. Well, the new one doesn’t really have a motor… then again, I guess the electric ones count.

I should sleep. I just need to reassemble these pistons and I’ll call it a night. Bloody V8s.

I have always had a problem with work/life balance. I mostly focus on my work before myself and I know it really shouldn’t be the case. Maybe it’s because something needs doing, I can get it done and so I need to get it done. Which is a win for achieving a goal and getting that sense of accomplishment, but also it technically never ends. There is always something else to do.

This isn’t always the case though, as the times I had lost interest in my work were when I didn’t have anything to do. I’m awful at being at the office with nothing going on. Although I see armies of people spending 7 out of their 7.5 hour days chatting to friends and drinking coffee, of which that might sound dreamy to some people. For me, no. Don’t get me wrong, I go for an occasional brew for 20 mins with a friend or 2, but I more than offset that with my hours. Plus more often than not, the conversation is talking about work anyway. The rest of the time, I’m working away. I have to keep myself occupied or I can just feel myself falling apart.

This has a knock-on effect. When I come to leave and head home, knowing that I have stuff I need to do, it takes me a good hour or so to snap out of it. In addition, especially on a weekend, I spend time pondering what I need to get done or how I’m going to get it done the next day I’m in.

Some days, I’m so stuck in a loop in my mind of what is next on Monday, that my weekend is spent battling my brain to a level of repetition that is only really stopped when I go back in. Arrgghh. What’s more is the constant need to then occupy myself with something at home, to steer the brain away from Monday, so much so that it almost feels like I’m just filling the weekend with trying to avoid waiting for Monday to come round. Mostly just to ease the noise in my head. The constant…

Build that, upgrade these, migrate this stuff, write this thing first, then it can build that bit for you whilst you do this…

… endless. I just need my head to switch off. Even raging at these machines who are successfully destroying Aloy repeatedly isn’t helping. Maybe I just need a drink and some mindless YouTube.

Stay safe out there. 🇺🇦

Another rubbish sleep, but I shouldn’t complain.

It has taken me a long time to accept that I’m not well and that is OK. I have occasional bad days, some of them worse than others and sometimes I’m absolutely fine. It’s only when I started experiencing it myself, that I understood a little about how exhausting mental health really is.

Just a few thoughts as I lay here, unable to sleep. I had a meltdown yesterday afternoon and it wiped me out for the evening. I felt absolutely exhausted and I thought afterwards, once it had eased up, that maybe it would help break the cycle of anti-sleep, but I’m still awake at stupid times. I can’t even pin it on the dog, as she hasn’t made a sound after her adventure yesterday.

Although being awake at this hour lends time to poke about the net, it does offer time to digest the news (as much as I dislike most journalism). The world is still a pretty ridiculous place and I hope those that are forced to be awake right now, dodging bullets and bombs, are ok. Many sleepless nights for those people caught up in something so horrible. I might be having some ups and downs in my head, but I cannot complain that I’m comfortable in my bed.

Stay safe out there. 🇺🇦

Excluding the fact that the dog herself was an expensive thing to fill a quiet house, she is now costing me even more money. Not in food (although she could eat for England) or vet bills, but in shopping.

How does that work you ask? Well, she is currently having an unsettled night. I get it, it’s annoying, but it happens. However, every time she wakes up with some barks and stuff, I head downstairs to let her out. Not a problem.

The problem comes after I let her back in. I head back to bed and try to get back to sleep and fail. There is little else going on, so I end up having a look about Amazon. The next thing I know is I’ve just spent another couple hundred coins on shit I probably don’t need.

Twice in a night so far and that’s just tonight. Damnit dog! Definitely her fault! 😂

The new Horizon game dropped last week and it’s outstanding. I’ve been really looking forward to it for a while and in the few days leading up to release, I’d got back into the swing of things by playing a little of the first game again. It has all been good fun so far and I’d recommend it to absolutely anyone.

However, the game appeared at the end of last week which finished off a first week return to work in a new job. It is like all good things arrived at once. Typical though, as all I wanted to do was play the game, but couldn’t moan at the fact that I was enjoying being at work too.

Another new thing that occurred recently, is my obsession with spreadsheet formula. I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous, it isn’t exactly anything new and far from exciting, but I’ve been working out pensions and stuff with the new job and I needed a way for my brain to process how it all worked. Trusty spreadsheet to the rescue! That is also another thing I guess that is (not) very exciting, is I actually understand how my pension works and generally how they work overall. It is something that you are never really taught at school, a bit like mortgages. Knowing what the different types are and how to make the most of things like “salary sacrifice”, has been interesting to figure out. Anyway… 🤓

What else has been going on? Oh… FPV RC cars! I definitely keep seeing them pop up more and more over the last couple years. I am very tempted to build one and it means I don’t have to worry about flying regulations like with a drone. Plus it does have a bit of a GTA feel about it… minus the explosives. I just like the idea of driving it around the village from the comfort of my living room. Not for any particular purpose, but more of a “because I can” and it could be good fun to learn and make.

Ok… here we go… again. I’m hoping after a couple years of mental health ridiculousness, lack of sleep, stress, meds and all sorts of feeling really unsettled… Oh and a pandemic(!)… I can get back on track this year. It’s a little after midnight and I’m about to head off to bed before starting a new job in the morning… number 3 in as many years-ish. Hopefully something positive.

Outside of posting about PowerShell and tinkering with CSS, I’ll be using this to just output the brain from time to time. Don’t expect it to make a huge amount of sense, my head hasn’t been very well recently. A monumental removal of social media in the last couple of years, has been really refreshing though. Not only deactivating accounts on most platforms, but also removing content has helped too (I think). Only a handful of pictures remain on Instagram, which is quite the scale back from multiple sites and piles and piles of content dumped all over the place. I’m hoping that having my own space here is a good way to not get swamped in the nonsense that those sites provide.

I do still have the occasional nose about on Instagram, but nowhere near as often as I used to. Mainly because it doesn’t really do much good for the head and it reminds me of the many people that I used to talk to. It’s funny how people vanish when they get someone new in their life. Some people you can speak to pretty much every day and then suddenly… Nothing. It’s ok. Just how it goes eh.

I think I’m at the point where I can count my friends on 1 hand… and I’m ok with that.