all made up with nowhere to go

A sort of list post:

# Work continues to...exist? I guess? The current situation, especially in my department, is a whole load of Not Great. Which I'm not going to go into detail about on an unlocked post, and I'm unlikely to ever make a locked post about it, since I don't really do those. But it's not a fun time, and I am so glad I have had another week off, even though it is only two weeks after the last one.

(I was a bit miffed it turned out that way to start with, but then sitting here now, I'm kind of glad it did, because I really freaking needed this week off).

# Me and a friend from work took some stuff to the tip the other day, as it was pure coincidence we both had the same week off (almost like we planned it, but we didn't). I am so glad to have that stuff gone - most of it has been waiting for literal months, but I've been at work so much lately that I haven't had the time or the energy (or an available person with transport).

But I'm glad that's out of the way. I'm sure there'll be another load to go, but that isn't for some time yet, and maybe that will be the last of it.

# My nephew, who will be THIRTEEN on his next birthday, is getting a PC for part of his presents. When I went to visit on my brother's birthday, I was told this, and my nephew said he didn't even know what he'd play on it (he has been mostly a Switch gamer up to this point).

So, me being me, I said: "Final Fantasy XIV!"

Which then led into my nephew saying he'd never played an FF game. I think I said I wasn't sure if he'd like them (he hasn't played any RPGs, to my knowledge), but I said I would have to show him FFXII at some point (because I'm me).

# And then talking of Final Fantasy! Specifically music!

I have started, over the last few days catching myself up on FF music I have missed out on - so that means FFXI, FFXIV, and some of the Tactics stuff and some other stuff besides. I also am listening to more stuff by Hitoshi Sakimoto, because I think he is my favourite composer, and not just because he scored my favourite video game of all time. I just, I dunno, I like his general vibe!

ANYWAY THE POINT IS THAT I AM HAVING AN ABSOLUTE BLAST.

Like, I am finding so much stuff that I didn't know or think I would like, and then there's also arranged versions of tracks I already know, and then orchestrated versions of stuff! I wish I could adequately explain how listening to music makes me feel, but I don't think I can get it across in text apart from maybe !!! but that's a happy !!!

And I'm in a pretty positive mood a lot lately*, and that's only making the !!! more intense. Which is fucking delightful, let me tell you!

I have done a lot of (positive) muttering to myself while listening to stuff, as it is only me and the cat, and she doesn't care how I feel about music (unless I try to play her a sea shanty). I have also tried to convince myself that no-one needs to hear my thoughts about the things I'm listening to. Because y'all do not, I promise you.

# And finally, also on an FF note: I saw someone describe Stranger of Paradise as "the most underrated Final Fantasy game ever". And like, absolutely not, my dude.

I'm sure there is one, but it isn't that. (My opinions do not count here, because ninety percent of my FF opinions run counter to the fandom at large).

~

*It feels weird saying this, considering how shit things are at work, and how bad it's recently made me feel, but it is true. I feel pretty okay, and find myself smiling for no reason, and just feeling chill. Which is nice!

The only thing I really have to say since I last updated is that yesterday I did something that was absolutely nerve-racking, but I did it! and I am still alive! and not as anxious today as I thought I would be! because pretty much nothing regarding the situation has changed.

I did sleep like ass, but it wasn't because I was (still) full of adrenaline, it was because I was thirsty and I had to get up for a drink.

I am (sort of) mortified by what happened, even though it was FAR from a bad thing, but that's because I am an introvert, and I tend to gabble when I am nervous. So that's down to knowing I could have done that better than I did, but the other person involved didn't tell me to do one, so I'm going to count that as a win. Even if I did kind of confuse the fuck out of them (but honestly, if they haven't realised I am an awkward a f dingus by now, they're even more unobservant than I am).

In conclusion: [internal screaming]

Bullet points because I don't do coherent segues!

# I am not going to talk about how many hours I am working this week, suffice to say it's ridiculous. One shift was my own fault for taking it on, but the rest were not.

Maybe I'll whine about it next week.

# I was supposed to have counselling today, but I got a text from my counsellor very early on saying she was sorry, but she had to postpone our session because she wasn't feeling well. Which is fair! And also I'm relieved, because I didn't have anything specific to talk about, apart from telling her how my new meds are going. I'm hoping next time I speak to her, I will have a bigger update for her/something else to talk about, hopefully.

# I'm changing my mind about what I want to do with (some of) the walls in my house - I was originally going to wallpaper upstairs and paint downstairs, but now I think I might just paint the lot? Especially because I think the colour I picked for the hallway has been discontinued??? I have one can of it, but that won't be enough for all the walls that will need doing.

But it's annoying, because they've literally made this colour FOR YEARS, and now I choose it as the one I want, I can't get it anywhere!

(There is a similar colour by the same company, which hopefully is still in production, so I can get that, but I am currently very >:( at it all).

I don't know what I will do with the wallpaper I haven't used, though. (I did think about partially papering the front bedroom, but idk right now).

# Wyrdwood season 2 starts on Friday! I am very excite!! I won't get to watch it till at least Sunday evening, but I am excite all the same!

I am so. fucking. knackered.

Besides working five days/long shifts across last weekend into this week, I have had four migraines in the space of a week (some of which while I was at work!), and as a result, I feel like an abandoned lump of plasticine. And my wrist hurts, my right shoulder hurts, and I am so tired, y'all.

I'm just going to chill with the cat today, as it is seven years since she came to live with me! \o/ and I'm going to draw wonky hex maps by tracing a quilting template. I was going to fiddle around photocopying them to make the hexes smaller, but I don't know if I have the energy for that. So I won't.

I'm also going to eat Easter eggs, as it is appropriate, and I somehow have three (a very good problem to have), but I only bought one myself. (One of the others was from the store manager, the remaining one from my line manager).

Also also: I started using Finch on my phone, as my friend Chris has been using it for the past year and has found it useful for self-care. So I thought I'd try it out. Which is a long-winded way of saying if anyone wants to be friends on there, hit me up and I'll send you my friend code :D (also if you want to add me on Pikmin Bloom, let me know, as I am still playing that somehow).

(and my earplugs did turn up on the day of my previous post - not that long after I'd hit post, as it happens, so that was nice. They are taking some getting used to, but at least they're staying in my ears).

I have had a cold for the last...week? I felt really grim when I finished work last Saturday, but it had also been a really bad shift - it was busy and we were a person down, so yeah.

Now I'm at the sneezy/snotty stage, which eugh. I think I may actually spend the day in bed, if I can think of something to do whilst being there. (This is the downside of all my creative stuff being mostly downstairs now, heh).

And my hands have been hurting to varying degrees during this time. Which could mean this is a stress response (and I think sometimes it is), but also it could be my immune system being all "HEY! LISTEN!" Which I also suspect it might be. IDK. I am not a doctor, and apparently it's still not arthritis, so who t f knows??

I'm looking at my hands right now as I type this, and I can see that my right hand is swollen. My left hand feels it, but doesn't look as bad. I wish I knew what was going on here.

Anyway, that aside, I sorted through some more of my mum's/gran's yarn stash - the stuff I don't want is going to charity shops or the local college - and found a whole load more crocheted squares, including what looks like the start of a blanket like my childhood one. Which confirms to me that my gran made these, since I know she made my blanket.

So I have unjoined all the squares I'd put together so far, so that I can put them around this rectangle instead, but also so I can make a more coherent big blanket. I'm honestly glad I didn't do anything more than slip stitch them together, as it made taking them apart really easy.

But part of the reason I decided to go through the yarns was because I was looking for 100% (or high percentage) wool to felt. Because after almost a year of feeling like I didn't want to do felting/didn't know what I was doing, I am sort of back on that! Partly because thinking about art dolls got me thinking of ways to make them, and 3D felting is one way I can do (some of) that. I didn't think I wanted to learn 3D felting, but I appear to have changed my mind about that!

But also partly because I sorted some yarn that I found in the cupboard under the stairs a few months ago, and then proceeded to knit three scarves from the blue shades (as it is my favourite colour). I washed them, as the yarn had been under the stairs for more than forty years, in all likelihood, and some of them felted. I don't mind, since the scarves were just for me. But then I was like, "I could make my own felt from some of these yarns!" by knitting them up and chucking them in the wash. I don't know that it will work for all of them, but I think I have a fairly good grasp of what a wool yarn feels like? And assuming they were mostly my gran's, she seems to have used high percentage wool a lot. So I shall experiment. Although not right now, given how my hands feel.

I impulse bought some more felting stuff - it should have been delivered on Thursday, but I knew I would not be home when the postman brought it, so I had to rearrange it to come this coming Tuesday. Which turned out to be the only day where I am home as I am working/doing other stuff the rest of the week. So. Yeah. Although I haven't regretted the purchase in the time since I bought it, so yay?

I feel like this post should have a more coherent end to it, but it isn't going to. I'm stopping it here.

I almost have a clear side in the front bedroom! \o/

I just need to sort and store some more stuff, and do a run to the tip and then it's more or less sorted! I also need to do a charity shop run, but there's less stuff needs to go there than the tip, so it's that that is the priority.

I am also thinking about getting rid of the one chest of drawers and the bedside cabinet, as there is entirely too much furniture in that room (one of its many problems). I don't have a use for the cabinet, and the chest of drawers got water damaged, so it's not really useable any more.

There is some shelving as well that mum wanted rid of, but it needs the contents going through first. Some of it can and will be stored, since I now have room for that, and the rest can be dealt with accordingly.

There's also a sideboard, and I keep swinging between keeping it or not. I sense probably not, eventually, as I have no use for it, and I don't think it even got properly used as a sideboard ever. But I know it was made in the furniture factory where my dad used to work, so I am sort of sentimental about it, even though I think y'all know how I feel about my dad at this point. But I've got time to think about it, as I need to tackle other stuff around it first.

(I feel like I should have been tagging these posts, so I can look through them all at a later date, but I don't know what to name them, sigh).

But yeah, I'm definitely feeling really positive about this now, even though I've been grossly unhappy with the circumstances that forced it to happen. I may explain about that at some point in the future, or I may not, I don't know (and you probably don't want to hear it anyway).

~

In other news, I have been playing with some paint markers I impulse bought a couple of months ago!

About a year ago, I made a small sketchbook from kraft card after being influenced by an artist I'd discovered who drew in toned sketchbooks. I used it, like, twice, and then forgot about it.

Then it was Back to School sales in late August, and I impulse bought some Sharpie paint pens (Creative Markers; bullet tips), because I was curious about them, and I knew I would be less precious about them than Poscas, even though they cost nearly as much as a set of Poscas. ANYWAY.

I thought they'd look good on the kraft card, and I was right! So I've just been messing about making patterns and stuff, and really enjoying it! Which is nice. It feels like I haven't done a whole lot of drawing this year, and I've missed it. I think, currently, I prefer paint pens over actual paint, but maybe I'll get back into painting once I have more space in which to do it. Or maybe I won't! WHO KNOWS.

Anyway, I have been drawing and feeling good about it, and I am probably going to do some more drawing, and then I might finally upload stuff to my sketchblog after best part of a year. Again, WHO KNOWS? IT MYSTERY.

I have had a really bad depressive phase over the last couple of weeks, and I hope it is finally coming to an end. I haven't felt this bad since last summer and, honestly, it was fucking awful. I know it always passes, and it doesn't always make sense why it happens, but that doesn't help when I'm in the midst of it.

Anyway, I feel all right at the moment. I'm very tired because I've not been sleeping as well/doing extra shifts at work, but that will pass/ease off, and then hopefully I will feel much better!

~

I talked to one of the ladies I work with about the person who harassed me. She is in her early sixties, and I said I was going to tell him I never wanted to speak to him ever again, and she was all, "Is that worth throwing a friendship away for?" and I said, "Yes."

She said she wouldn't do that. But I don't know that I can't trust him to not do this or something worse next time. I said it was an abuse of my trust, but I don't remember how she responded to that (I mean, given what I know about her attitudes on some other stuff, she probably thought I was being over-sensitive about the whole thing).

I've broken friendships for less than this, and sexual advances without my consent count as pretty high up on the list of things do that for.

Also: two of the younger lasses I work with (and one who's a few years older than me) were like, "YEET HIM INTO THE FUCKING SUN!" and one of them said she'd give him what for if he came into work. I haven't seen him since it happened, and I'm glad about that, because honestly I've been fucking incandescent about it.

~

My cheapo bluetooth headphones have broken! One of the side pieces has split in two. I haven't even had them a year! (I got them in January)

So I have impulse bought some Sony ones, which were very expensive (for me), even with £5 off. But I know I like Sony stuff, and the last wired pair I had were theirs, and they still work just fine, even if I can't use them because some asshats decided phones don't need 3.5mm jacks any more. I did set up my PS4 controller so I can use them with that, except it turns out I don't like not being able to hear noises in my house, and I was playing FFXII at the time, and it also turns out Gideon Emery grunting directly in my ears is, uh, extremely distracting, let's say.

I should be able to return the broken ones, as the store I got them from has a policy of being able to return electricals up to a year after buying as long as you have proof of purchase. If I can get a refund, then that will cover two thirds of the new headphones' cost. I am going to go in one day after work to check this is actually the case before I take them back, though.

(I also impulse bought some pens and a lightbox last week, oops. Gonna try to curb myself during September - I've got two weeks off that month, and I'm not planning on going anywhere, so hopefully that should help).

~

I feel like this is very disjointed, but this is literally the most that's happened recently.

So over the past couple of days, I watched Ian from Eurogamer* play a game on his channel called Still Wakes The Deep.

It is a game set on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland. Everything is fine, until it isn't. And it's way better than that sounds, but I can't say any more without spoiling.

I recognise a bunch of actors who are in it, and it's awesome to have a game mostly full of Scottish accents, imo!**

Ian started off playing like, "Wouldn't it be cool to spend twenty four hours on an oil rig? Just looking around and stuff?" And I was all nope, nope, nope, absolutely not, because I have always been convinced that rigs are terrifying places because they're in the middle of nowhere, on the sea.

(I later found out that the reason for me thinking this was probably the Piper Alpha disaster, which happened when I was seven. I don't remember it happening with any clarity, but I dare say I have heard a lot about it in the years since).

Suffice to say, by the end of the game, Ian had changed his mind about whether he wanted to be on an oil rig or not.

But anyway, I'm glad I watched it - I was in two minds whether or not to, because I didn't know what it was about - but it proper spooked me out. I made the mistake of watching the first part before I went to bed one night, and then last night I woke up sweating (because I'm still ill), and my mind immediately started thinking about stuff that had happened in it.

I might have to watch it again, or watch someone else play it (I kind of hope Johnny will, but I don't think that's going to happen), because I think it will be interesting to watch the story unfold now I know what happens.

It's not often a game messes with my head this much - the last time I remember it happening was when Johnny streamed The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, which left me feeling much the same way, but for very different reasons.

~

*I suppose I ought to give him his own tag; I watch enough of his stuff to warrant it.

**There is also one (1) Irishman, one Yorkshireman, and one Londoner. And afaik, those are their actual accents - the Yorkshireman's definitely is.

I rewatched The Matrix: Resurrections the other day, while under the influence of a two day migraine, and I am happy to report that I still fucking love it!

I'd kept putting off rewatching it in case, for some reason, I didn't like it as much (sometimes that happens). But I am happy to report that I cackled at the funny stuff almost as much as the first time, and I did actually catch John Gaeta's cameo this time, as I was deliberately looking out for him - it's literally blink and you miss him, which is evidently what happened originally.

I spent a lot of time sympathising with how frikken anxious Neo is before the plot kicks in (I probably did last time, but also last time I was all !!! about it all). AND I got all the emotions, and cried at (almost) the end a bit, but that may have been a migraine/low mood combo getting to me.

I didn't want this film to exist, but I am glad that it does, and I can watch it as many times as I like, and still be delighted by it.

Over the last eight days, I have been in work for seven of them, with one day off, which was Easter Sunday. Thus I am very tired and last night when I left, I actually felt like crying because I just wanted to be at home by that point. I had to wait for a bus, however, so I walked partway, and that probably didn't help; also didn't know if the bus was actually going to show because the app the company uses is next to useless. Luckily, it did, and I was home by the time I thought I would be, but it would have been nice to have known that for sure, given the way I was feeling.

Oh yeah, and the clocks went forward last Sunday, so that won't have helped either!

It also didn't help that my mood, in general, over the past month has been fucking fantastic. Like, I genuinely do not remember the last time that I felt this baseline happy, rather than sad/tired and angry/annoyed. There's a couple of reasons for this, I think, neither of which I'm going into because one's personal, and the other one's daft (and also a bit personal).

But I know the crappy mood won't last, though, and I just need some rest. I have a few days off work, so hopefully I can just mooch around when I'm not doing Things That Need to be Done (eye test; smart electric meter getting put in). I need to just mooch around and remember that it's okay to do that.

(Oh, it is an incoming migraine. That explains a lot).

~

I've been playing Inscryption instead of Mass Effect 2! I don't have a lot to say, except for the below.

( spoilers! )

~

That's all I've got for now. Time to go and curl up in bed until my head feels better.