Stress, the how and why

So, as I mentioned in my earlier blog, I am a little stressed. I am going to do my best to explain why.

Grief:- This is a largely contributing factor. I lost my grandfather, just before christmas, his death was a shock to all of us, yes he was elderly, but we just didn't expect it. We were looking forward to a lovely christmas meal with both grandparents. Another extended family member died the day after, I can't begin to imagine what it is like for the people who were close to both of them. My mum is obviously grief stricken at the moment, and it is hard to see her go through that. I just wish I wasn't so busy with work, I would be spending time with her, helping her the heal the wounds. I could probably do more to help, but I just can't take that burden with all my baggage.

Work stress:- I have a good job, I just don't like it. I really can't deal with shifts, I suffer from insomnia at the best of times. I can't and won't take sleeping tablets, because I just wouldn't be able to function during the day. It's a manual job and the shifts are long. I hate hospitals anyway, and I have to deal with certain bodily fuctions that I really detest. If I had an office job, I would definitely be more in my element. I am not saying I hate my job, because I would be a liar, I do actually like my job, I love the satisfaction of helping people in their time of need, but it's an emotionally challenging job. Particularly when a patient you have been caring for dies, and you have to prepare the body for the morgue. That really brings alot of sadness. I had to grow up fast when I started doing this sort of job, I really bow down to the people who make a career of it. I know alot of people say, 'why do you work in a field you don't like?', well the answer is I ahve no choice. I need a job, this is a field that always needs workers, and the fact is I'm good at my job, else I wouldn't be in the emergency department. I am taking this sort of work as a means to an end, I am doing my degree whilst I work and I will eventually wind up in my dream job. You can never get anywhere with your backside plastered to the sofa.

Being a student:- I have a full time manual shift workers job, and I am studying for a Batchelors in Modern Foreign Languages. The Languages being French and German, and I am considering doing the beginner course in Welsh as a minor. I am also teaching myself Swedish and Finnish. It's tough going, considering I can barely speak a word of French and my year 2 course in French started on Saturday. I went to Belgium and Luxembourg as an impromptu honeymoon lat year and after a few days I started to get to grips with the langauge, but for some reason I always forget French. This year I am going to try really hard to get some half decent grades, and the fact I find French the hardest of all my languages might help me to get my self in gear. I have always been able to bluff my way through courses and exams, not anymore!

Owning my own business:- I own a business in alternative fashion, it's kind of on the back burner at the moment, but I hope to drag myself to the workdesk again soon! It's a bit difficult with my life being in cardboard boxes right now!

Living away from my husband:- As I posted earlier, my husband and I are apart, we have relocated and as I have the steady job, I am stuck here, working to pay the ruddy bills. He has a job there, but he is waiting to start. I am also living with my parents, which is fine, it's actually quite nice being in my childhood home once more, but obviously I feel like I am in the way.

Money:- This is the big one! I am always stressed about money!

Well this is all I can think of for now.

Sunday, a day of rest.

Sunday is here! I have a day off, on a Sunday! Rarity.

Feeling pretty work-hungover this morning, I worked a 13.5 Hour shift yesterday, and I have done two other 13.5 shifts, and a 8 hour shift this week. I have to get over it though, today is my only day off, and then I am in 8 hours a day for the next five days. That is relative luxury for a shift worker.

Oh, BTW I call it a work-hangover, because you feel tired, irritable, headachy, and sick. Pretty much a hangover, right? I was watching some self help and awareness videos, regarding fatigue and driving with fatitgue for shift workers. It's actually amazing to think of the mental and physical strain some of my colleagues go through for work. I find it biazarre to kill yourself for your career. Perhaps that is just me, I am not really into Healthcare, I didn't train as a doctor or nurse, and I am not planning... I am not going to be in it long term.

Having said that, it does make you appreiciate your days off a little bit more! It is rather a bitch though, trying to live a normal life, you have to plan your banking phonecalls, job interviews, appointments, everything, around your shifts. The perfect example of which, is the fact that I have an interview on Thursday, which I am not going to miss out on, but I am scheduled for a shift that afternoon. No one will swap with me and they are short staffed, so I don't know how that is going to work?! I guess I just have to take the risk, and see if I get back on time.

I will see my Husband briefly, on Wednesday night, because I am driving home, and staying there the night, so that I can be nice and refreshed for the interview on Thursday. I will be back there on the 10th (next Sunday) I have that off too, woohoo! I am hitching a ride with the in-laws when they go to inspect our new living arrangements. I still need to go to their house and gather up the rest of our toot.

Doctors appointment tomorrow, as my blood test results came back normal, so I am going to ask if my symptoms are caused by stress. I have an enlarged thyroid, with scattered nodules, and they have done loads of blood tests and what not to ascertain whether or not I have thyroid disease. I don't, according to the results, but I still feel pretty shit, and the sisters at work have told me to see my GP for stress.  I am not surprised if it is stress, I have had a pretty crap time of it all recently, I will go into more detail about that later.

As far as things going in the right direction, I am looking forward to my interview on the 7th, that will hopefully enable me to be with my husband again. The good old NHS normally get back to you that day if you got the job. I have also started to look at my French course this week, we officially started yesterday, but I had given myself a few days to prepare. I am a little daunted though, my French is terrible, and I have suddenly realised I can't bluff my way through this course. It means I actually have to work hard this year, and I really really need to practice, alot!

Bye for now, I am sure I will be back again soon.

Trollbyt

~Living apart

So I am copying and pasting this, I originally posted it on Friday evening in a tired haze. I realised today that I created a new blog which served the same purpose as this one here.

Friday 01 Feb 2013.

It's a week tomorrow since my husband and I moved out of his parents house. Sadly the move came at a rather awkward time for us, but you have to take chances. We have moved 100 miles away, and he has a job in the new town. I don't, and as a result, I am stuck back in essex working away the hours.

I am staying with my parents whilst I still have a job in essex, it's still an hour drive to work though. Hooray. I luckily have an interview in the new town this week, it's going to be tough to fit it around my shifts, but like I said you have to take chances. The first week hasn't been too bad, but we have spoken on the phone nearly everyday, ironing out the creases of the new home. I actually have appreciated being really busy, as it has helped to keep my mind off of the distance.

I have work again tomorrow, then one day off, and then five in. I miss the housewarming, I also miss the cleaning up which is good at least. I hope to be in the new house by the end of March, but we will see how it goes.

In addition I started my 2nd year French course this week, only this year and next until I have my degree. :)

I will keep updating this, for myself, as I doubt anyone else is interested in my rather boring life.

Who gives them the right? Things I love about my life.

This weekend my kind nature was subjected to a major overhaul. I had a pretty harrowing experience, where I was working to help out someone I was treated like absolute rubbish. Yes, I didn't really know what I was doing but I worked damn hard, and I did my best! I overheard people being rude about me behind my back, and I just thought who gives them the right to judge me? Give me half a chance!

It has however prompted me to think about the better things I have in my life.

I have my first decent job, and I am starting to enjoy it. I am looking to move out and live in my own place for the first time. Yippeee! I am still young, and I am happily married. I have amazing friends and family. So I really couldn't give a crap what people think of me.

I think I have done pretty well considering some things which have occurred in my life, I am the better person, and I am orking towards a degree that will land me my dream job.

I am going to move on up, and keep busting down the barriers that others put in my way, I am going to keep on moving up and I am going to have my perfect life.

What would I change about me? Not alot. I like who I am. I am kind, I am hardworking, I strive to help others, but I would wish that I could be as bold on the outside and have the same bravado as my inside-head voice has. I guess it just comes from meeting insincere people, and being better than them.

I don't pretend to be who I am not. I have half my head shaved because I had a mad moment, I don't always do my housework, I don't wear matching underwear, I am a 'goth', I am a nerd, I play video games, I don't identify myself as being girly, I love sci-fi, I love nature, I am a bit of a hippy, yet I listen to black metal, I don't like people, but I will always try to be kind, I cry for days if I acidentally step on a slug, I apologize to inanimate objects, I hate vegetables, my favorite food is tuna, I'm not that keen on children but they are ok :P I am scared of needles I work in a hospital, I am tokophobic as well as having a phobia of clowns, I love animals, but I don't really like cats, I like to complain sometimes, I have bad driving days, I listen to cheesy pop music, I run in circles to relex, I am insomniac, I am probably really insecure, I hate people walking behind me incase my skirt is up, I am neurotic, I hate dripping taps, I am paranoid, I hate nightclubs, I don't care if people drink or take drugs, I am a listener, I also need to be listened to, I get angry when I get  spoken over, I ask too many questions, I get muddled, i love it.

I AM ME

Runescape - Evolution of combat beta. REVIEW

I have been playing Runescape since 2004 - 2005 (A rather long time), and I am still faithful to the game. I love it. One of my favourite things about Runescape was the relative simplicity of the combat system.  The company that runs Runescape (JaGex) have been issuing a number of major updates in recent years, and when they introduced the news of the  'Evolution of combat' to the Runescape community, I was really quite excited. I was also doubtful and a little worried that the evolution would mean I pack up my weapons and never darken the doors of combat again. I am not the best player when it comes to Runescape, nor am I very good at the combat side of things. I am the player that quests, and gathered and processes raw materials. In fact I only really ever pick up a weapon when it is quest necessary. I had a quest cape in 2007, but due to real-life commitments my time dedicated to game play, significantly decreased and I succumbed to the multitude of new quests released. I am currently 6 quests away from regaining the cape, and I am hoping to do so before the proposed combat changes come into play.

I have always remained a Runescapian, even though I did begin playing WoW a few years ago and gave up after falling off a cliff. (LOL) I started upon a friend's recommendation, but obviously I didn't get on too well, and I was already well established in Runescape. Anyway, I have drifted from the point of this paragmaflop. I started playing WoW again in the January of last year, because all my friends were playing it. I actually endured it a bit longer this time and only really gave up after 11 months ish of playing? I think?! I did LIKE WoW bit it wasn't a scratch on Runescape, and was not worth double the subscription.Quests were repetitive, RPers were frustrating beyond belief and I didn't really like the combat system. I tried a few dungeons, the players were insufferable, I didn't have a clue and it was obvious, so they yelled at me rather than kindly pointing me in the correct direction. In fact I can really truly say that the only things that WoW has over Runescape are the dance moves (my blood elf had smooth dance moves), and the fact that you can choose factions and race.

The Runescape community is much more understanding of newbie players, and each player has a definite sense of individuality. I must say however that I changed the sex of my player from my real life gender (Female) to a male character, purely because I was fed up of the f2p hounding of players for a "sweet gf pl0x". That leads me to another great thing about Runescape, there are two fully interactive versions of the game; F2p (free to play), and a subscription based membership p2p version (Pay to play). It has gone up in recent years but it is still much better than the cost of WoW.  Many people slate the graphics in Runescape but I personally think they are fine and I sometimes prefer to play on the lowest graphics settings. I also personally think that the graphics in WoW were pretty crappy.

The comparisons aside, let us talk about the Beta. It was a sign up based register, I signed up but I didn't get full access to the beta. The qualifications were basically having been a member for a full 12 months prior to the start date of the beta, or to be in the lucky 50,000 other players that were selected. Unfortunately, I had a few months break at the end of last year, (booo).

JaGex have been fair however and have permitted all other members to access the beta at weekends. Which is exactly what I have done. (Woweee I am writing a blog on the date I did something, a first for everything?!).

So prior to the Beta, (and still  in regular Runescape) I had 820LP (Level 82 Constitution), and a combat level of 100. In the Beta, I have something like 5100LP and I am combat level 168. Well luckily for me I happened to be training up my ranged at the Fire Giants' lair under the waterfall north of Ardougne. HAHAHA. I died straight away, because I take no food, (being able to stand out of the way and all.) I didn't really, think that 820LP would be low in the new beta combat system. It also turns out that the Fire Giants have a new magical ranged attack. I died before I knew what the hell was going on. Thanks JaGex. However, that has been the only major annoyance for me from the beta, so far.

 Combat tab, new look.

So after I did the whole running-back-to-gravestone thing I decided to play a game of Castle Wars (One of our many minigames within Runescape), mainly because this is one of the four week-endly requirements to receive a full steampunk- mad scientist outfit. I want that outfit so badly! I rarely play mini-games but Castle Wars is one of my favourite, it was the first of four events so I gave it a go. We lost but I still qualified for part 1 of 4 pieces of outfit. I only had to play through an entire 20 minute game.

Castle Wars is a capture the flag style game, situated in a special arena with 2 castles, one for the Evil God Zamorak (the God my character normally identifies with) whose players play in red, or a castle for the 'good' God Saradomin, whose players fight in blue. I went through the balance god's portal (Guthix) and was placed on Saradomin's team (boo). I decided to carry on as a ranged player for the game, even though my character is predominantly melee based.

 Here is a screen shot of me standing in the Castle Wars lobby, next to the bank chest.

As a ranger, I ran straight into the tunnels to defend and died, several times. Haha. I did enjoy it though, and I apparently got 7 kills. I am terrible, but I do manage to kill the heck out of Quest bosses. So nerrr. I am not used to all the abilities yet, but I do like the WoW style utility bar, which you can hotkey different abilities.

 So this is my bar that I set up for ranged, with a few melee and mage abilities just in case.

There are 5 lines of these utility bars. Which I think is adequate at the moment. Players select the abilities that go into these bars from the spellbook tab. 

I think I am going to end up spamming this when using mage, it's going to be a big change to get used to.

I haven't tried anything else to do with the beta out yet, but I did have a browse of the official Runescape forums. Alot of people seem to be calling this a 'WoW bandwagon trip', but I really quite like it. After all, Runescape has always been an ever-evolving game and sure people have quit over updates, but I think I could get used to it, there are probably changes that I would make to the beta as it currently stands. I have a few friends that 'may' play Runescape once the combat update is complete, so that is a plus for me! 

JaGex have stated all along that everything in the combat beta is not final and is subject to the scrutiny of the players, after all it is US that need to be happy with the game. I think JaGex have been very fair and have trod very carefully with such a major and a hotly debated update. 

Of course all images I have included in this blog are of my player Soul_failure, I also have a lower level f2p character Herra_Lisko, however all these images are of course copyrighted by JaGex Ltd. You can check out the game, and all related Hiscores, Forums and new articles at www.runescape.com. I use a community website which you can visit here www.tip.it/runescape it has loads of extra information about the game including calculators and other technically whatnots. I am in no way a brilliant player, infact I hate PVP unless it is in the fairer and hilariously fun minigames. I am still a fan of only killing scary boss monster. Nerrrgh! 

So that is my humble and honest first review of the new beta. 

Trollbyt

Goodbye little car, I just can't afford to keep you.

Today, is a sad day. I have had to wave goodbye to my little car Pelle.

I have only had him since last October, but this faithful little car has been in my family for quite a few years. I would have kept the car running, because there were no known engine problems, but the increasing costs of fuel, and the sky high taxes, are two of the reasons that I can not continue to keep him going. At the end of this month my road tax is due to expire, and I received the letter requesting another tax payment earlier this month, I can tell you, my eyes nearly fell out of my head. £120 for 6 months, and £230 For a full year. Add insurance on to that (£600+), and then fuel at around £40 every two weeks. That's an estimated £1,900 every year, for a 15 year old car. My car was actually an automatic transmission, so drank a little more fuel than a manual transmission.

Lets compare the costs, Martin's car a Hyundai i20, has a road tax label of £30 pounds per year, and the fuel costs are around £60 every two weeks (with a heck of a lot more mileage), and insurance is around £800 for both of us. That adds up to an estimated £2,130. Which is more but if you think that this car is used much more, then the costs are actually much less. I would get 200 miles from a £40 tank of fuel, whereas Martin's car gets 200 miles out of a £20 half tank of fuel. So if we worked that out it would be approximately £1,350, or £1,150 for me, with my lower insurance because I am a girl. Which is also unfair in my opinion.

Okay, so for someone like me a Hyundai i20, would be a much more affordable option. Fantastic! I have chosen a car!!! Lets just throw a spanner in the works here, and look at the buying costs. My car cost me £200 to buy, Martin's was.... £7,500. So, really it's fair to say that the average young person in the UK can not afford to buy a nice shiny new, or young car. So we are forced to buy a cheaper, older car, with higher taxes and fuel consumption.

Insurance is through the roof, as young people are apparently terrible drivers, who all rocket around at over 100/mph. Yeah right, ok. Most of the accidents that I have ever witnessed, have been caused by an older driver and many caused by elderly drivers. This is because the elderly have slower reactions, and they can have poor eyesight. This being said, I do know of many, very good elderly drivers. The older drivers (from 30 - 70 years) can be awful drivers too, taking chances, and bullying younger drivers, causing more, dangerous situations than all of the young drivers that I know. This may be taken as biased, but I am merely writing the facts of my observations. It may well be a fact that younger drivers are involved in more accidents, but younger drivers are inexperienced and may not know how to react to being cut up, pulled out in front of, sudden braking, pedestrians, etc... In fact I very nearly had someone pull out into the side of me at a roundabout yesterday, and she was a 30 something!

My main aggravation. is that I feel that young people are being priced out of driving, we can't afford the greener cars, so have to suffer the higher taxes, we get driven into by bespectacled grannies, so have higher insurance. It is a vicious cycle.

I am not that angry about the higher taxes, when I think that the taxes are higher for more polluting cars, because I am a very eco-concious person. I would love to walk everywhere, but the fact is that I live in a small sub-urban village, which only has a handful of highly priced shops and only one bank. The closest towns are Rayleigh (2 miles) and Rochford (2 miles), both of which I could walk to, and will, but I couldn't go to the nearest supermarket (4 miles).  For me a car is quite essential, especially for work, because there is nothing in this tiny little village! We have two buses that come once an hour (If we are lucky). A train station, but the train is over priced and doesn't go where I want to go. That is all we have. Not great.

Really, I think that the government should stop pricing young people out of driving, and if they really wanted us to drive greener cars then they should give us heavy subsidiaries and incentives to do so.  I actually read somewhere the other day that around half of modern cars do not pass their first MOT. Food for thought? Insurance companies should not price young people and their parents out of driving as I truly believe that it is the extortionate costs of the compulsory insurance, actually makes people drives illegally without insurance. We are in a monetary crisis, no one can afford to do anything, I can't even afford to get a job. If I was weaker of mind, then I would certainly have checked out of life by now.

Troll

Download Festival and British Weather

Well it has been quite while since I last blogged! Here is my experiences of my first Download Festival.

Okay I normally go to Sonisphere, which i had tickets to, but is sadly cancelled this year. Well This year we were going to go to three festivals as our alternative honeymoon. We used the refund from Sonisphere to go to Belgium and Luxembourg, which incidentally  was the last thing I blogged about. I think.

So Download. We chose download because of Soundgarden's presence, and we were quite looking forward to the festival.

I have been a little under the weather and decided to decorate the inside of the car the evening before we drove to Derby for Download Festival. So I was banished to my bed for the rest of the evening and I had to leave the packing to Martin and John, which I wasn't happy about because I normally pack with German skill and efficiency. Lucky, my greatest fears were soon gone as I discovered that nothing had been forgotten, phew! (Last year John forgot his sleeping bag.) Download festival is a five day long music festival, well the bands only play for 3 days. The weather man threatened rain, but it was fairly dry most of the 3 hour drive, I slept through most of it as I was still nauseous. (I forgot to mention that the only air freshener for the car that the boys could find was a horribly sickly sweet vanilla scent. Yuck.) That didn't really help me feel better. We got to the makeshift car park/field and the heavens opened, so we forgot to check the location of our car. We decided to take the most important equipment first and return for the other items once we had pitched our tent. The walk to the camp site was a 2 mile trek, with copious amounts of baggage and gravel paths, and a flipping road bridge with steep stairs. We got to the camp site managed to find just enough room for us to pitch our tent near some friendly geordies. I was still feeling pretty ill and didn't want to sit about so John and I walked the 2 miles back to the car. Except we must have walked lots more as we spend 2 hours wandering around the car park as we had lost our bright red hyundai. The heavens decided that this wasn't enough and opened again. As you can imagine, the first and last days of festivals are where relationships amongst friends and loved ones are really tested and emotions run high. The physical stress of carrying a lot of equipment and being herded like cattle is not fun. We had our bucket barbie confiscated, even though they were supposedly permitted on the camp site. I got a bit annoyed at the steward, because we had loads of sausages and burgers that we now could not cook, what a jobsworth he was! By the end of the first day we were wet, cold and hungry and the mud had already been trampled on by thousands of people and everyone was a bit cheesed off.

What that steward didn't know is that we had got 5KG of coal through the barrier and  a wok, so I cooked our food in a makeshift wok, coal cooker thing. I did feel like taking the wok to the back of the steward"s head, if I am honest!

Sleeping was okay, but it is always hard to adjust to the level of noise at festivals from thousands of people drunkenly gibbering away. We were camped right underneath the take-off and landing paths of East Midlands Airport. The planes landing were not a problem, but the take-offs made you wake up feeling as if you were under siege!  

Day two was just sitting about in our tent waiting for the rain to pass, this wasn't just rain as we brits know it, it was serious torrential down pour. Due to the rain and cold temperatures our clothes didn't dry out at all! Luckily the boys had packed a sensible amount of changes, and we were putting the wet clothes on in the porch before going outside. 

Day 3 was the first day of music so it was a bit better, but I think everyone was quite fed up. The stages opened 2 hours late, you know everything in Britain stops for *bad weather*. I think this was some serious bad planning on the organiser's part. The first few bands couldn't get into things with half the stage area closed. John went to see Slash who put on a fantastic show, and we went to see The Prodigy, which were equally as good, but I couldn't really get into them, as I was cemented into the mud!

Day four Martin picked up some norovirus and was unpleasantly unwell, so we had to trudge through the mud with a very pale and unhappy Martin to the welfare tent. They couldn't really help and just asked for a sample from Martin which as he couldn't wash his hands due to being in a field, he didn't bother with! I can't say I blame him. John and I were thankfully okay, and the portable toilets were not too bad, I have seen worse. we all made sure we had seperate drinking bottles, and took great advantage of the on site drinking water taps. We decided then to pack up our tents the next morning and leave on Sunday night after the last band, as we had just had enough and really didn't want to stay an extra night. Metallica headlined and were excellent as usual. The played the Black album in it's entirety, the only bad point of that show, was the drugged up loopy miss dancing in front of me the whole show.

Day 5 was quite nice and the mud which was up to our knees had started to dry out, which was slightly harder to wade through. I don't have any pictures but you can imagine. I am surprised that we all managed to keep our feet dry as I can guess that a few people probably contracted trench foot. The way back to the car which we had now found visual reference points for was quite hard and we did it in two trips again. All that walking! It was 16 miles over five days to and from the car (we went two trips twice) and the stages were a good 3 miles from the camp site, so that was 6 miles for the last three days, through thick mud. I think we walked about 34 miles! We drove through the night after Black Sabbath's show (which was very, very good) and it took us an hour to leave the car park, because some muppet decided to have a crash just outside. (How inconsiderate). It took us 3 hours, which the two of us switching to avoid falling asleep at the wheel and we finally got in at 4 am and just in time for sunrise! I can't say it was an overly bad experience, but it would have been an awful camping holiday without the bands. 

I am not the biggest fan of camping. Although I do love the outdoors. Peculiar.