The Hidden Place

Having a very bad day.

Shhh

I'm hiding. No one knows I'm still here.

Traitors, traitors, spider traitors...

Single

So, having recently become single, I'm going to be terribly light-hearted about things and discuss pretty much anything but.

I'm getting obsessed with play-by-post stuff. It's such fun. There are aspects of it that work better than in tabletop and aspects where I really wish we could do the talking face to face, but it's certainly an experience. As I'm still staying with the wonderful Marie and Al (who probably would be slightly worried that I'm using their VIP names not their real names but hey, this is the blog of paranoia) we often spend our evenings in the bedroom, all on separate laptops shouting 'post!' at each other occasionally.

See, it's a social activity too. ;)

Tomorrow I'm going to the bank, and to shout at my ex-landlord down the phone for not getting back to me about my deposit yet. While I have very kind and generous friends who have helped to feed me and such, I'm still a little unhappy about being completely dependent on them and not even being able to contribute.

Overdraft time it is.

I've been getting up at about 7am every day since I came here. It's great - I'm really enjoying seeing the morning and making something of the entire day. It helps that I know I can go downstairs at 7 and chat with Al for like an hour while he potters around getting ready for work. It's always fun and a giggle.

I've gone from sleeping nearly constantly and being practically nocturnal to quite a normal schedule. This place is good for me in many ways. I'm often getting 5-7 hours of sleep, but I much prefer being tired from not enough sleep than tired from too much.

These are wonderful people.

Hungry and Lazy

I'm hungry. But I'm also feeling lazy, and there are some caramel shortcake bites behind me. I should really go get a sandwich or something, but that's so far away.

It's a dilemma.

Lately

I'd like to say that from now on I'm going to be really good about updating, but sadly it's probably not true. At this stage I guess I've had to reassess some of my priorities a little.

It's been a hectic term, and one that saw me going to doctors who won't listen and my first experience in counselling. Still undecided as to whether or not it helps at all.

But I'm still alive, and stuff. Christmas is looking to be equally busy.

I'll give this a better go lately. It's a start, at least.

Sheepish Glances

Well, my blog lived again for a day. That was a month ago.

I currently have tea. Tea is wonderful. This is green jasmine tea 'cause I had it at my birthday meal and it was yummy. It's in a huge green mug that I have stolen from John while he is away at the event.

Work has been a little on and off. For those who don't currently know, I'm working at a nightclub. Mostly it's behind the bar stuff, with some occasional promotional work thrown in.
It's not great pay, especially as the hours are limited. On weeks where I work only Saturday night I do five hours and get maybe £20 after tax. Now we've started opening on Thursdays as well, so I'm getting more hours in, and this weekend I did Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday. Maybe I'll get £40... I need it, as I've got a phone bill coming out and I'm expected to go to someone's leaving do where there will be drinking. I'd be fine if it was just the phone bill...

I've also discovered that I don't suit well to short shifts. I mean, going to work essentially steals the latter part of my evening and also means that I can't drink (not that this is often a problem lol) and when it's for two and half hours on minimum wage it just doesn't seem worth it.
Not to mention that all the promotional work during the day is going to the 'popular' bunch at the moment. I keep hearing one of the girls at work complaining about having to get up and I feel like saying, "I'll do it! I'll get up! I want the freaking money!".
But I'm not sure how I feel about her. Sometimes I feel like she deliberately excludes me when she's over-friendly with everyone else. Just little things, and she talks over me in conversations a lot. But it might just be that she's moody, and I'm paranoid, so I'm making an effort to be friendly with her and seeing if it changes anything.

Other than that, the staff are lovely and I get on well with everyone. If I could put a few more hours in, it'd be fine. With any luck once term starts I'll keep the Saturday shift and maybe one during the week as well.

In other news, John and I are due a Long Serious Discussion. What a joy to look forward to.

Life, It Lives

So, I meant to update here about a week ago, but the whole 'Google blogger' changing of sign-in stuff messed with my head and I couldn't seem to get a username and password combination that worked. Now I've realised it's because I used my alternative hotmail address, which ends in .co.uk not .com. If you don't have it, by the way, just poke me and I'll give it to you. I don't use it for ANYTHING other than signing up to random sites, but hey. You never know.

I recently discovered that rejection on the internet can be nearly as painful as rejection in real life. One of the forums that I frequent had a group in which I thought I'd made many friends. Turned out I'd rubbed a few people the wrong way as well, and it ended with me leaving. I blame PMS and exam stress for the fact that this made me cry - finding out in between the two exams was probably a bad thing.
I've since taken a very enlightened viewpoint on the whole thing. Some of the people there who have become my friends sent lovely emails, and I'm using a different part of the same site, and taking it as a learning experience. Go me, and all that.

The biggest problem the 2/3 who didn't get on with me had was that I tended to go off track in threads, when they wanted it to stay strictly on topic. I always tried to keep it relevant and return to the original topic, but I like my discussions to be fluid and dynamic. I like to travel on new pathways and see where thoughts take us. I find it's the best way of exploring things. Unfortunately, that's not what they felt the group was about, and they'd been there far longer than me. Initially it upset me because I'd had a lot of respect for them and was mortified that I'd been acting in a way that upset/annoyed people, but now I've got past that.
Sometimes people do things in different ways. They saw it as me being unfocused and having a short attention span. I saw it as me exploring things and allowing the discussion to evolve. Neither of us are right, or wrong, we just didn't quite fit together.

Internet drama aside, I guess I should put a few thoughts about why I don't update this blog much anymore.

It's partly because I have quite a spread of blogs now - across four sites, all of which fulfil slightly different purposes. On LJ I keep up with those in my area, mostly in the roleplaying society. One of them no one knows about and I tend to use for private ranting, when I have things to say that need to be out there, but should never really be exposed to public. Sort of an alternative to using Word, really, with the odd public post. The final blog is on the above site, which is a site based around a theme, and so most of my posts are theme-centralised.
So, basically, I've got two blogs that I update when I feel like it, mostly for my own thoughts, and two that I use to update my friends. So why does this one get so neglected in comparison to my LJ one?

The thing is, most of what's going on in my life is related to people or practises within the roleplaying society, and I'm not sure if people here want to hear about it. For instance, as a member of the exec, I feel like we're possibly being treated unfairly in certain things. Members have been having a go at us for not doing things right that the previous exec didn't even TRY to do, but because we're trying, we get yelled at. Maybe all new execs feel this way. I don't know.
It really irritates me when people take the attitude that 'the exec is the enemy'. No, we're not. We're here to try and help you and make this a better society for everyone. We're necessary, we organise everything and without us, you wouldn't really have a society at all.
But it's all society politics. Is this stuff really interesting? Regardless, it'll probably dominate all my subsequent updates, so maybe you'll have to put up with it. =P

Other silly thing is that I'm always watching what I say in this post. Names particularly. I've come to accept that on LJ, people will know where I'm stationed. It's all very well me writing 'Town X' and referring to myself as 'Lentil' when my comments say, 'Hey ::RealName::, are you going to be down the ::PubName:: tonight?". When you then click on their journal, they talk about where they live.
Their journals, their choice. Most people now respect my desire to keep my real name secret, but to hide my location is pretty impossible. Not only is it impossible, but most of the group think me quaintly paranoid for worrying about it, in the same way they find my sunburn phobia amusing. We're students, we're laid-back, it's all cool, right? If anyone stalks me, I'll set John on them.
Yeah, I'm still paranoid by nature.

It's 2:50pm and I'm sat at my computer in my dressing gown. I really am a student.
Had a fire alarm yesterday, which was sort of fun and annoying at once. John and I were playing an online game and just about to fight the final boss. LMAO. My priorities are slightly off. The kitchen below us overcooked their burgers, and we saw nice firemen. Once we knew it wasn't a real fire we had people going in and out of the building quite a bit. I nipped back in to put my ice cream in the freezer. Quite ridiculous.
I'd never have done that sort of thing before, but it was strangely liberating to break the rules. In that safe, nothing bad's gonna happen I'm just not TECHNICALLY meant to do this way.

Blinky the rebel. You know it.