Right now I'm being positive. Very positive.
1. I am alive
2. Excepting some terrible event I will be alive for some time to come
3. I have a wonderful family who love and suport me
4. I have a fantastic boyfriend who I love deeply and who loves me
5. I have wonderful friends
6. I have a new and exciting job
7. Excepting some terrible event I will have a job for some time to come
8. I have the ability to think freely and clearly
9. I have the ability to acknowledge my mistakes and learn from them
10. I can choose my own path in life
I have a lot to be grateful for, and pity those people who can only see the bad things in their lives, or who believe that only the bad things exist.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Emoto-crap
Meh. The one person I can talk to completely honestly is too far away to really do so, and right now I could do with a heart-to-heart... :(
Friday, 20 February 2009
A Bloody Brilliant Day :)
I'm aware I haven't blogged in some time - bad me. But it just hasn't seemed worth while lately; yes, there have been the usual hijinks, but nothing of real importance...until today!
1. I interviewed for a policy job (temp contract for 11 months) with the SG.
2. I was offered the policy job :D
3. I had a meeting with an MP and may have some voluntary research and policy work lined up :D
4. Went out a celebrated success with Sarah:
i) Had dinner and cocktails at Jekle and Hyde
ii) Bought cigars and chocolate cookies and wondered along Rose street smoking cigars and eating said cookies
iii) We caught a pedicab and went on a brief tour of the New Town, and got out at Charlotte Square
iv) We sat down on the door step of the official Edinburgh residence of the First Minister, Mr Salmond, and ate more cookies and giggled until a gruff security man told us to move on - it was brilliant.
v) We went window-shopping at all the most expensive George Street stores, realising that shopping is only really fun if there's no one else there!
vi) We bought huge glasses of wine in a nice pub, and then were hit on by two very ugly men who clearly thought they were the bees-knees - it was very funny!
vii) Escaped from the ugly men and called it a night at that point.
:D
So the job starts on Wednesday (!) and I'm very much looking forward to it :)
1. I interviewed for a policy job (temp contract for 11 months) with the SG.
2. I was offered the policy job :D
3. I had a meeting with an MP and may have some voluntary research and policy work lined up :D
4. Went out a celebrated success with Sarah:
i) Had dinner and cocktails at Jekle and Hyde
ii) Bought cigars and chocolate cookies and wondered along Rose street smoking cigars and eating said cookies
iii) We caught a pedicab and went on a brief tour of the New Town, and got out at Charlotte Square
iv) We sat down on the door step of the official Edinburgh residence of the First Minister, Mr Salmond, and ate more cookies and giggled until a gruff security man told us to move on - it was brilliant.
v) We went window-shopping at all the most expensive George Street stores, realising that shopping is only really fun if there's no one else there!
vi) We bought huge glasses of wine in a nice pub, and then were hit on by two very ugly men who clearly thought they were the bees-knees - it was very funny!
vii) Escaped from the ugly men and called it a night at that point.
:D
So the job starts on Wednesday (!) and I'm very much looking forward to it :)
Thursday, 18 December 2008
Up-date
Here comes Christmas again. On the one hand I'm looking forward to spending time at home with the whole family together and go walking, and to a certain extent I'm looking forward to the inevitable political debate after Christmas dinner (in a fairly limited way - Uncle Peter always gets a bit scarely emphatic!) But on the other hand I'm not looking forward to the bickering, Gran getting morbid when she's had a couple of drinks, and the over-preperation. I guess it's a matter of taking the rough with the smooth! Of course I am looking forward to doing the decorating and wrapping pressies and stuff, but I've three shifts to do before then and it's going to be extreemly quiet - virtually a waste of time, but it's money and I can't turn that down atm.
Speaking of money and jobs I'm still on the job hunt: I've had a couple of interviews since August but nothing has panned out yet. I'm not utterly down-hearted or anything, but it's increasinly difficult to maintain a positive attitude! It's not all doom and gloom: I asked for feedback on an unsucessful application for a research position with the SLD and the guy got back in touch very quickly. I wasn't asked in for an interview but I was next on the list had anyone dropped out, and the only reason I wasn't asked was because the other candidates had governmental experiance as temps. So that leads me to say that I've applied to a temping agency, and I'm just awaiting my disclosure form being returned before I can be put to work at long blooming last! And I spent today looking for jobs, and have about 11 to apply for over the next few weeks. It'll keep me busy anyway!
MSc graduation came and went: it was a nice, eventful day rounded off by a meal at La Gerrique, as last year.
The next few days should at least be eventful: tomorrow I'm back up in Edinburgh for drinks and a birthday party (and possibly a cocktail party there-after!), then on Saturday I've work and will hopefully see Doug when he gets in, Sunday is more work followed by a meal and drinks with whoever's around, Monday will be about the same, then home on Tuesday. And hopefully I'll manage to spend a bit of time with my boyfriend too :P
Right, I need to make a list of stuff I need to do over the next couple of days! I'll try and write more soon...
Speaking of money and jobs I'm still on the job hunt: I've had a couple of interviews since August but nothing has panned out yet. I'm not utterly down-hearted or anything, but it's increasinly difficult to maintain a positive attitude! It's not all doom and gloom: I asked for feedback on an unsucessful application for a research position with the SLD and the guy got back in touch very quickly. I wasn't asked in for an interview but I was next on the list had anyone dropped out, and the only reason I wasn't asked was because the other candidates had governmental experiance as temps. So that leads me to say that I've applied to a temping agency, and I'm just awaiting my disclosure form being returned before I can be put to work at long blooming last! And I spent today looking for jobs, and have about 11 to apply for over the next few weeks. It'll keep me busy anyway!
MSc graduation came and went: it was a nice, eventful day rounded off by a meal at La Gerrique, as last year.
The next few days should at least be eventful: tomorrow I'm back up in Edinburgh for drinks and a birthday party (and possibly a cocktail party there-after!), then on Saturday I've work and will hopefully see Doug when he gets in, Sunday is more work followed by a meal and drinks with whoever's around, Monday will be about the same, then home on Tuesday. And hopefully I'll manage to spend a bit of time with my boyfriend too :P
Right, I need to make a list of stuff I need to do over the next couple of days! I'll try and write more soon...
Saturday, 1 November 2008
A self-ingulent whine.
This evening should have been a lot of fun. Should have been. As you might have guessed, it wasn't. So now I'm sitting in bed drinking neat tequila and blogging about why it was shit: this should give you some idea of quite how bad it was!
A bunch of us went out to see the Blues Brothers show at the Festival Theatre - the show itself was fantastic: can't fault that. But I spent quite a lot of the evening feeling like I had no point being there: everyone else in that particular social group either lives with another person in that group or is dating one of them. Everyone except me. I felt very isolated. I don't feel that I have the connections in that group that everyone else does: I wasn't in the same uni class, I don't live with another member of the group, I'm not dating another member of the group. I am essentially rootless. During dinner especially I felt the desire to get up and just leave, and I doubt anyone there would have followed me or asked if I was ok. It's not that I think that they don't give a damn about me, but there's just not the same imperative for any of them as there would be if it were someone they were connected to. I feel very issolated because a lot of the people I'm closest to are very far away, and I feel like I'm loosing my relevance here and with these people who I count as friends. I feel it especially because I've been edged out by someone who's trying to carve a place for themselves, and because of how other members of the group feel towards this person it's making my gradual fading-out that much swifter. I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn't just have left in March when I had the oppertunity and the reason, then I wouldn't be in this position. So in other words I spent the evening feeling like a spare wheel, unwell, hormonal and upset and very unloved. Most of the time I get the impression that people expect me to be fine and able to deal with stuff because I'm relativly mature and tend to be there when everyone else needs a hug and a chat. Is it too much to ask that when I'm looking upset and down that someone just gives me a hug and tells me that everything will be ok? Most of this has been reinforced by people making plans and forgetting to invite me (or plain just not bothering) or talking about plans they're making as a group to which I'm clearly not welcome. I just wish they could be a little more sensetive to the fact that I don't have that connection. I feel so alone here now. I feel like I don't belong to any group and am therefore very easily disregarded. The fact that someone who is relatively new to the group has just slide into place as a flatmate and a partner to other people means that they get invited to stuff that I won't because I don't have those links. I'm on the periphery and already getting further and further away.
This builds on the insecurities which are the basis of my depression, so it's triggering a lot of stuff in that direction. In high school someone who had been a friend deliberately tried to break me out of my circle of friends, for a reason which to this day I cannot define. She did everything except tell everyone else not to talk to me. This was during my sixth year, so I spent the greater part of that year feeling unwelcome in my own group because someone didn't want me there for reasons not shared by the rest, and when I left for uni that was the experiance which followed me. I'm almost continually paranoid that people I believe to be friends will turn around and hurt me for no reason. Much of what I have said so far is the hormones talking, but they're just allowing me to say what has been at the back of my mind for quite some time.
A bunch of us went out to see the Blues Brothers show at the Festival Theatre - the show itself was fantastic: can't fault that. But I spent quite a lot of the evening feeling like I had no point being there: everyone else in that particular social group either lives with another person in that group or is dating one of them. Everyone except me. I felt very isolated. I don't feel that I have the connections in that group that everyone else does: I wasn't in the same uni class, I don't live with another member of the group, I'm not dating another member of the group. I am essentially rootless. During dinner especially I felt the desire to get up and just leave, and I doubt anyone there would have followed me or asked if I was ok. It's not that I think that they don't give a damn about me, but there's just not the same imperative for any of them as there would be if it were someone they were connected to. I feel very issolated because a lot of the people I'm closest to are very far away, and I feel like I'm loosing my relevance here and with these people who I count as friends. I feel it especially because I've been edged out by someone who's trying to carve a place for themselves, and because of how other members of the group feel towards this person it's making my gradual fading-out that much swifter. I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn't just have left in March when I had the oppertunity and the reason, then I wouldn't be in this position. So in other words I spent the evening feeling like a spare wheel, unwell, hormonal and upset and very unloved. Most of the time I get the impression that people expect me to be fine and able to deal with stuff because I'm relativly mature and tend to be there when everyone else needs a hug and a chat. Is it too much to ask that when I'm looking upset and down that someone just gives me a hug and tells me that everything will be ok? Most of this has been reinforced by people making plans and forgetting to invite me (or plain just not bothering) or talking about plans they're making as a group to which I'm clearly not welcome. I just wish they could be a little more sensetive to the fact that I don't have that connection. I feel so alone here now. I feel like I don't belong to any group and am therefore very easily disregarded. The fact that someone who is relatively new to the group has just slide into place as a flatmate and a partner to other people means that they get invited to stuff that I won't because I don't have those links. I'm on the periphery and already getting further and further away.
This builds on the insecurities which are the basis of my depression, so it's triggering a lot of stuff in that direction. In high school someone who had been a friend deliberately tried to break me out of my circle of friends, for a reason which to this day I cannot define. She did everything except tell everyone else not to talk to me. This was during my sixth year, so I spent the greater part of that year feeling unwelcome in my own group because someone didn't want me there for reasons not shared by the rest, and when I left for uni that was the experiance which followed me. I'm almost continually paranoid that people I believe to be friends will turn around and hurt me for no reason. Much of what I have said so far is the hormones talking, but they're just allowing me to say what has been at the back of my mind for quite some time.
Monday, 29 September 2008
Slinking back to the blog at last...
Yup, I haven't written anything in quite some time. I have a lot I could say right not, but alas I cannot be bothered :P Ok, ok - I'll try and keep a more regular blog. As much as anything else it'll ensure that I keep writing and that it doesn't just fall by the way-side while I hunt for employment.
So, first off I have now completed the MSc and know for certain that I have passed :D I just don't know the mark and probably won't until Wednesday evening when I go home to visit the family for my birthday.
Secondly, I just got my rota from MHM and it confirms my belief that they might just be entirely incompetant. I asked for 2/3 shifts a week this month, with the exception of the first week where I could only work one. I had asked for the 2nd and 3rd of October to be reserved as days I couldn't work because the plan was to spend a few days with the family while I have a bit of free time. So what did they do? They gave me shifts on both those days. Not only that, but I got the rota so close to the 1st that there isn't really any practical way of changing the shifts. Gits. So I'll go home on Wednesday evening, and come back on Thursday morning. Apart from that, I have also discovered that I am now doing roughly 50% of the work for the Edinburgh team. Another thing is that they have only given me one of the better-paid weekend shifts, and the one that they did give me is out at the Dean Gallery to which there is no public transport on a Sunday. I say again, gits. And finally, Tim and I had planned to go away for a few days this month, but because of the way the rota has panned out this might not be possible. Once more with feeling, gits. In conclusion, there is a distinct possibility that I will quit at the end of this month. But on the plus side at least we don't have to do surveys at the museums any more...
Went and saw MacBeth on Friday with Charlotte: superb production, and certainly one of the best productions in terms of emotive interpritation. The woman playing Lady MacBeth was exceptional. I also met Charlotte's boyfriend that evening - a pleasant, if slightly overly-intense, young man who is lecturing in Economics at Herriot-Watt. The evening was something of a cultural body-blow in some respects. It made me realise just how often I apologise for things that I don't have to apologise for. It showed me that a lot of the time I apologise just for having an opinion, or for not having an opinion. Charlotte and Philip are both from mainland Europe, and although I like both of them very much I don't feel comfortable around them: this in and of itself is not a bad thing because challanging aquaintances provide interesting perspectives, but I did find myself suffering from something of a cultural inferiority-complex. Their sense of humour is very differant, and their priorities and attitudes. There are a lot of people who think that main-land Europeans, especially the French, are arrogant: I would not dispute this in some cases, and Philip himself openly admitted it, but I think that a lot of our adversion to arrogance is born of being told not to be arrogant. We have willfully surrendered our collective self-confidence in favour of being overly polite. So I found it really very difficult to converse with Philip (Charlotte not so much) because he was dismissive of quite a lot of what I had (when I dared venture) said, and quite merrily talked away as if his opinion could only be right. On the one hand, I found him rude and arrogant, but on the other hand I was trying to reconsile this to the fact that it wasn't terribly rude in his culture, just in mine. I also acknowledge that in many respects he had the advantage over me in terms of age and educational advancement and world-experiance, as does Charlotte. Ignoring the BS I've managed to create around the situation, and stripping it back to bare-bones, I spent the better part of an hour feeling like a complete ignoramus. But I bet Philip didn't guess that I understood everything he said when he talked to Charlotte in French...
I'll probably come back to this cause there's a few things I want to talk about in relation to culture and cinematic appreciation, but I think I've waffled enough for one post.
Other news - er, not a lot.
My flatmate and her boyfriend have decided they want to buy a house together: I'll admit that I was shocked in that although they've known each other for years, they haven't been going out for very long at all. They reckon it'll probably be about a year before they finally get a place.
Still job hunting, although I'm finding it hard to work up the motivation.
Tim and I have started going to swing dance classes, and it's good fun :)
So, first off I have now completed the MSc and know for certain that I have passed :D I just don't know the mark and probably won't until Wednesday evening when I go home to visit the family for my birthday.
Secondly, I just got my rota from MHM and it confirms my belief that they might just be entirely incompetant. I asked for 2/3 shifts a week this month, with the exception of the first week where I could only work one. I had asked for the 2nd and 3rd of October to be reserved as days I couldn't work because the plan was to spend a few days with the family while I have a bit of free time. So what did they do? They gave me shifts on both those days. Not only that, but I got the rota so close to the 1st that there isn't really any practical way of changing the shifts. Gits. So I'll go home on Wednesday evening, and come back on Thursday morning. Apart from that, I have also discovered that I am now doing roughly 50% of the work for the Edinburgh team. Another thing is that they have only given me one of the better-paid weekend shifts, and the one that they did give me is out at the Dean Gallery to which there is no public transport on a Sunday. I say again, gits. And finally, Tim and I had planned to go away for a few days this month, but because of the way the rota has panned out this might not be possible. Once more with feeling, gits. In conclusion, there is a distinct possibility that I will quit at the end of this month. But on the plus side at least we don't have to do surveys at the museums any more...
Went and saw MacBeth on Friday with Charlotte: superb production, and certainly one of the best productions in terms of emotive interpritation. The woman playing Lady MacBeth was exceptional. I also met Charlotte's boyfriend that evening - a pleasant, if slightly overly-intense, young man who is lecturing in Economics at Herriot-Watt. The evening was something of a cultural body-blow in some respects. It made me realise just how often I apologise for things that I don't have to apologise for. It showed me that a lot of the time I apologise just for having an opinion, or for not having an opinion. Charlotte and Philip are both from mainland Europe, and although I like both of them very much I don't feel comfortable around them: this in and of itself is not a bad thing because challanging aquaintances provide interesting perspectives, but I did find myself suffering from something of a cultural inferiority-complex. Their sense of humour is very differant, and their priorities and attitudes. There are a lot of people who think that main-land Europeans, especially the French, are arrogant: I would not dispute this in some cases, and Philip himself openly admitted it, but I think that a lot of our adversion to arrogance is born of being told not to be arrogant. We have willfully surrendered our collective self-confidence in favour of being overly polite. So I found it really very difficult to converse with Philip (Charlotte not so much) because he was dismissive of quite a lot of what I had (when I dared venture) said, and quite merrily talked away as if his opinion could only be right. On the one hand, I found him rude and arrogant, but on the other hand I was trying to reconsile this to the fact that it wasn't terribly rude in his culture, just in mine. I also acknowledge that in many respects he had the advantage over me in terms of age and educational advancement and world-experiance, as does Charlotte. Ignoring the BS I've managed to create around the situation, and stripping it back to bare-bones, I spent the better part of an hour feeling like a complete ignoramus. But I bet Philip didn't guess that I understood everything he said when he talked to Charlotte in French...
I'll probably come back to this cause there's a few things I want to talk about in relation to culture and cinematic appreciation, but I think I've waffled enough for one post.
Other news - er, not a lot.
My flatmate and her boyfriend have decided they want to buy a house together: I'll admit that I was shocked in that although they've known each other for years, they haven't been going out for very long at all. They reckon it'll probably be about a year before they finally get a place.
Still job hunting, although I'm finding it hard to work up the motivation.
Tim and I have started going to swing dance classes, and it's good fun :)
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
- Yet someone is clearly doing their job horribly wrong...
This:
http://xkcd.com/463/
is also true of this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7583805.stm
Procrastination? Moi?
http://xkcd.com/463/
is also true of this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7583805.stm
Procrastination? Moi?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
