THE TALES OF LIVING

I've started a new job - two days in and it is still a world whirling by like it's spinning in thousand miles an hour. Not even the 45 minutes on the commute has gotten me down yet - however these first two days I've managed to get in to work at 10am thus beating the worst of the rush traffic.

Day 1
I thought to myself:

Probably a correct assessment on the situation. The end of my first day was just around the corner - so I brought up this little thing called 'office hours'. They just shrugged their shoulders and said I have no set hours. It is up to me. This is a full quote:
"If you need to leave by 5 then leave by 5. If you are one of those people that can do all your work in half an hour good for you. It's all up to you as long as the work get's done.

Day 2
On my second day, I have my first big meeting as in an out of the office meeting - including people who work for a brand that we might be doing some cross-marketing activities with. The meeting was at 10am and far closer to where I live. No need to go to the other side of London before that meeting. So again I managed to not be stuck in the worst of rush hour in the tube - which everyone describes as a harrowing experience that may scar you for life.

Tomorrow I will try and make it to the office by 9am - thus probably hitting the worst of it. However I have been told that there is a sweet spot. If you catch the tube between 07.40 and 07.55 you should be fine. 10 minutes earlier and you might want to kill yourself because it is so so early and 10 minutes later  every single train is so clogged it feels like Tokyo.

You twist and you turn. The room is a little bit too warm, a minute later the room is a little bit too cold. You make yourself comfortable, instead of drifting off your head starts spinning. 
You think to yourself, thoughts start rolling up like clouds on a rainy sky. They start spinning in circles, matching the likes of the strongest tornado. You think about all the things you should do, that you should have done, all the things you really ought to have done. 
Then when you are just about to drift off, after fighting off those thoughts and struggling for relaxation.
You feel it, that familiar urgency. Roll off the duvet, step out of bed, time for a trip to the bathroom. Down the stairs and up the stairs.
Back in bed, you twist and turn. It's too warm, it's too cold. The thoughts play up again, your mind goes rewind and press play.
Finally you settle down and fall asleep.

You wake up. The room is cold and your body shakes from the shock of the cool air when you emerge from under the covers. Fumble with the alarm clock, press that little familiar button. Back in bed, it has never felt quite so comfortable, it has never been quite at such a comfortably warm temperature before. Your eyes have never felt quite so sleepy and your mind has never been quite so close to that lovely dreamworld that you were just so brutally ripped from.
You turn on your side and fall back asleep, ever so quickly and effortlessly.
Another sharp signal from your digital agony aunt, rips you once more from your foggy dream state. You get up, again shocked to the system by the cold air in the room. Stumble over to the noisy little thing, press the button.
Your mind goes rewind and press play.
Again you drift back to the welcoming fog of dreams and the perfectly warm cocoon of your bed.

Living with housemates, you will discover every once in a while - that there is a houseguest in the house that you didn't expect.

Sometimes they are talkative and friendly. Sometimes they just prefer to spend time with the person they actually came to see.

Last weekend my housemate had two houseguest over. Normally, when there are houseguest around I don't really mind it. I just go about my normal routines and don't act any differently.

This time, I found myself caring ever so slightly what I looked like. I found myself staying in the communal areas for the chance of a chat. I found myself staying up way past my normal bed time talking to this houseguest.

Why did I do that? Am I so starved for good company that I will change my behaviour in order to have a chance of getting it?

So as you may know, oh loyal reader. I have just gotten a new job and therefore I am leaving my current temp job position.
In terms of leaving there is some etiquette to it. I work in a team, with a line manager: a nice older gentleman known here as J. But I also work under a manager for our department: a lovely middle aged woman known here as D.

I told D. in private that I had received another job offer and that I therefore needed give my notice and leave. D. was genuinely thrilled for me, she told me that my new job was great opportunity and that I should go and work hard. That I would learn loads and that I should take advantage as this new position as it is within the music industry, for the sort of company I have only dreamt about working for.

I emailed a formal letter stating my notice period. A day later when I had received no response, I had a thought to myself "Who will tell my line manager J, that I am leaving?" So I drop her a follow up email and ask. She responds reassuring me that she will let him know. So I don't think more about the situation. A few days passes and I gently start telling those of my colleagues that I am close to that I will be leaving soon.

The next morning, one of my colleague asks me something about me new job in front of J. He looks at me and says semi under his breath:
"I didn't know that you were leaving, I had to find out from round the corner..."
He was referring to the fact someone from the department around the corner had told him.
I respond telling him that I've notified D. of me leaving and asked wether I should let him know and that D. told me she would tell him.
J. does not respond.

The next week on Monday morning I walk in and J. states:
I respond letting him know gently but firmly:

I sense a slight resentment towards the fact that I am leaving. So I spend the day asking some questions about our computer systems, so he can feel like a big man and show off about his knowledge.
By the end of the day I hear him passing off one of my ideas about our email systems to the tech guy as his own.

I live in a house with 4 other people - our ages range from 20 to 26 years old. The house consists of two students (one undergraduate and one postgraduate) and 3 professionals.

We all get up and have our own morning routines. For the simplicity of this blog post and the protection of my housemates privacy let's call my housemates the following: U (undergraduate), P (postgraduate), P1 (professional) and P2 (professional). Indeed clever reader I am the last professional in our house!

I normal wake up first in the house, when I use the bathroom in the morning no one is up and the house is quiet.
Moving down the floors of the house it is still quiet. So I go in the kitchen (closing the door behind me to minimize noise) make breakfast.
Go into the conservatory, close the door behind me. Sit on the couch and have breakfast while watching the morning news on telly.
By the time I'm half way through my breakfast, P1 is coming into the kitchen. I see him and wave through the glass door. P1 makes a face, indicating that some kind of grunting vowel sound has left his lips but it is inaudible from this side of the glass door.
I go into the kitchen and wash up my things. The room is silent, apart from the noise of P1 eating cereal and slurping the milk down. I tell him, like I do every morning before I leave the kitchen:
"If I don't see you again before you leave, have a great day at work"
He looks at me like I've just poked him with a stick, P1 is not a morning person. Another grunt escapes from his lips. I turn and start heading up the stairs. I can hear P1 wishing me a good day too somewhere in the distance.
When I pass by the bathroom on the middle floor, I can hear the shower going. It's either P2 or P at this point.
I retire back to my bedroom, perched on the top floor of the house with a south facing window. I watch the sun rise as I put on make up and drink coffee.
On my way down to leave, I stop off at the bathroom. Brush my teeth and fix my hair. The mirror is foggy from a recent shower (P1 or P has just left).
When I come down to the kitchen I meet U, she's just moving into the kitchen and has started on breakfast. Her morning mood is normally at a more sociable level. We chat about our days for a few moments when I put my shoes on and load my lunchbox into my handbag.
We wish each other a good day and I leave.

A normal morning in our house, we don't really have a schedule for bathroom times. It's just worked itself out naturally.

So very exciting. We had a power out - the whole block of houses had five minutes of no electrity. Like someone had flicked a collective switch.

In our times of advanced technology - why do we even have power outs?

My guess - it's because someone has leaned against the off button in the control room.

I wake up, feeling slightly sweaty and shaking. Do I have a fever? No, I'm just hungover. As the alcohol is leaving my body, panic is raising up. I throw myself out of bed and go for a hunt around my room.

Then plop myself back on the bed. Initial panic over I try to fall back asleep. But it's impossible, I start recapping what happened the night before. The big party and try to pinpoint where my memory starts going foggy. Then it strikes me - did I drunk dial anyone yesterday?

A quick sweep of untagging of pictures and a long hot shower, make me feel slightly better.

So I'm coming up the last week of my old job. Before I go on to bigger and better things (hopefully) and there is this guy that I work with. I kind of like him.

I don't really know how much I like him. Whether I want to be his friend or if I actually fancy him. But I doubt that we will ever find out, as I am too stubborn to ask if we can hang out outside of work.

I guess that it would be up to him whether he will ask me or not. Just a week left and the window of opportunity is shrinking...

I know I won't ask him, and I doubt that he will ask me. So what is the point? Of him holding my gaze a little bit too long, for coming down and talking to me. For acting like maybe he is interested? Is he just nice and I'm over interpreting the situation. Or is there something small simmering there? Even if there is I doubt that it will ever amount to anything.

The summary of pointless, the small shiver of something being crushed before it is even developed.

The last boy I actually liked was too much of a head ache. I would drive the situation, to a point where I asked myself - if I don't text him, will he text me back?
And guess what, when I stopped speaking to him. He stopped speaking to me. So I let it wither down and die.
Because if he can't make an effort to get in touch with me - then why should I make an effort with him?

He made me realise that I should probably be a little bit more skeptical in the future. That there actually are guys out there that will say anything to get you where they want you. Clearly, he was just feeding me a lot of bullshit - talking like he really had feelings for me and speaking like he had been hurt by someone in a relationship recently. Oh, well let's just say that from now on - I need to not trust people a little bit more. Not be so naive and make sure that people back up what they say with actions.

So today I will have to tell my boss that I'm leaving. Yes it is true I'm moving on to a new job.

No more temping for me, I'm moving on. Okay I'm not moving onto a full time position but it will still be more permanent that what my current position is. Most importantly, it will be 100% closer to the right industry.

It's a strange feeling, yes I am really happy that I'm moving on. Going from admin towards the field/career that I actually want for myself.
But at the same time I feel guilty for leaving - the reasonable side of my brain is telling me that rationally there is nothing to feel guilty about.
But I know that they have a really busy period coming up, and I have just been trained on how to deal with it. I feel like I'm in a way leaving them in a stitch. But at the same time - they knew I was looking for other places. It's been no secret.

Why is it that when people fill out forms - other documents by hand, their handwriting is still completely unreadable.
Do these people, who alarmingly seem to be in majority, think that those who deal with the forms magically have been blessed with the ability to read Sloppy Joe's handwriting?
Or don't they consider the mass of errors they are creative by scrawling their handwriting like a limp sailor from the 18th century? After all the form is concerning them and it is in their best interest for the receiver to understand all of the information on it.

I have become so addicted to music and my earphones, that I did something the other day. Something that I have been considering many, many times but actually never gone through with.

It is not the brightest of ideas and it is certainly not smart from a health and safety perspective. But let's face it, my addiction to constant music in my ears is taking on new lows.

I actually proceeded with washing my face - splashing of water, lathering of soap and rinsing, repeat. All with my earphones still in my ears.

Classy.

Today, I had a flashback to a book called The Wind On The Moon by author Eric Linklater, published in 1944. The story holds up to this day and is one of my favourtie ones from my adolescent.

It's a fantastical story, where the two main characters the sisters Dinah and Dorinda turn into kangaroos - amongst other things! It's such an entertaining and gripping story. Earlier in the story they eat themselves to a point of being rolled down the street like big balls, by their mother. Then being mistaken as balloons by the other children in the village and attacked with pushpins - when they try to pop the "balloons". They also mess with a judge putting rotting fish in his house trying to convince him that him not changing his opinion in a case has made him stink.

I've hear people discuss that our thumbs will be the next part of the human anatomy to evolve, seeing as we use them all of the time - as a part of the increased usage of mobile phones and smart phones. We are also more likely to create new injuries as part of using technology. I find my back and neck hurting when I work to much on my laptop. I'm sure we have all had our fair share of technology based injuries.

A few days ago walking home I found myself getting a small electric shock from my earphone. It shook me a little bit, as I haven't experience anything like that before.

Speaking about earphones: I listen to music in my earphones when I fall asleep, during the night, to and from work and during my workday as well. So I've realised that it is pretty much a 24/7 habit of mine. Sure I'm a bona fide music addict and that's fine. But what is it doing to my ears?

I think we have all ready news stories about the increase of Tinnitus in young people. We are actually damaging our ears from an early age with too loud music and too much of it. However, I read a Swedish article about a concert where the music was too loud - where they had done a study on how much if had effected the concert goers hearing and so forth. The study showed that those who enjoyed the music showed less signs of damage to their hearing than those who didn't love the music.

I keep holding onto this article when I get worried about what I might be doing to my ability to hear. Because there is no way I can wean myself off music or my overuse of earphones.

So me and the other temporary worker in the office are being trained up for a new position. This new position includes being on the counter - a public facing role where people walk in off the street and ask us questions.

So we are standing by the counter and being trained by a woman colleague of ours (she's a permanent full time employee). One of our other colleague walk past the counter and is heading home, let's call him the Office Romeo. He stops on the public sector part of the counter, leaning over it for a few moments and talking to us and then he walks out the door.

5 minutes later he comes back. He says:

"Can I just borrow this lovely lady for 2 minutes?"

Interrupting our training and stopping our female colleague mid-sentence. Office Romeo takes the other temp worker into the office away from the counter. A few moments later they come back, he walks back to the other side of the counter heading out yet again. He chats casually with us for a few moments, gripping a post-it note in his hand which I can clearly read parts of a number on.

This is what happened from his perspective:
So he leaves, changes his mind. Decides that he needs her number. Walks back in and is cocky enough to interrupt our training, asks for her number. He get's it and then casually walks out like he's the man. I have to give it to him, he kind of is.

So let's talk about when you are ill and you are just a few keystrokes away from a self-diagonosic. Sometimes this is a good idea and sometimes it is just terrible and really freaks you out.

The Good Example
When it's something minor, you have had it before. So you just quickly swoop on google and confirm. When you are 100% certain you call your doctor up to let them know. Get in, get treated and then the situation is resolved.

The Bad Example
It's something that you haven't been through before. Google just freaks you out - it gives you a number of illnesses that mach your symptoms and one is worse than the other. When you consult your doctor she tells you that it's probably nothing and the best thing is to wait out the situation to see if the symptoms go away or change. Then Google self-diagnosics is really just being a head fuck.

Are you for or against trying to self-diagnose your symptoms on Google?

So as you may know I live in a house with 4 other people, it's a house share and sometimes you have to make allowances or compromise. To add to the story, the house has slightly thin walls, so you can actually hear quite a bit of what's going on in the other rooms in the house.

I live on the top floor and one floor below my bedroom is one of my housemates bedroom. That's fine, if he's playing music too loud I will let him know and visa versa. But here comes the million dollar question - should I really complain every since time he's being a bit too loud?

His girlfriend gave him new speakers to his computer for Christmas - before I could hear the music slightly if they were watching a movie. Now I can feel the base of the soundtrack to the movie vibrating through my floor and bed.
So if they watch a movie on a weekday and it's past eleven - sure I'll text him in a nice way and let him know.

However, last Friday night his girlfriend and him was having a drink in his room and chilling. Just after eleven I was 2 seconds from falling asleep when I could hear my housemate raising his voice in a wild discussion with his girlfriend, pulling me out of my sleepy haze and making me wide away.
I considered texting them to keep it down but I thought - it's not even midnight and it is technically the weekend. So I let it slide.
I fell asleep and about an hour later I wake up from a loud thud. My housemate has fallen off the chair/bed that he was sitting on in his room and woke me up. I let it slide and try to fall back asleep.

I know that it's a bit a granny move from my part, wanting to fall asleep before midnight on a Friday night. There is also the balance between when to ask them to keep it down and when to let it slide. To be fair, there will be nights when I would want to have a bit of a loud time in my room and would want him to let it slide. So it's just the question of how to deal with it and try and be nice about it.

So I love the view from my window. I find myself more fascinated with the sunrise and the skyline than anyone else I know. It's just something about the sky and its colours that keeps me in a grip.