#Thess has a commute

[thessalian]

Thess vs One Of Those Days

Well, today was a mess.

First, of course, was the early wake-up, the cramming myself onto a bus and barely getting a seat (at least on the first one; the second one was okay) and dragging my sorry self into work. I was not in good shape when I arrived. I was in worse shape after a half-hour of working, when I remembered just how shitty my ergonomic situation at the office is. Yes, corner desks are great, but when all you have is corner? It can be problematic.

And then, a half-hour in, my internet connection died. And not, like, throughout the department or the building. Just my computer and my phone, because our phones are internet phones. So I had to move to a different desk (less corner, but worse keyboard - I don’t know what the fuck Goblin does, but her screen’s a mess and her keyboard is sticky) for most of the day. This screwed with my workflow. When the IT guy eventually arrived (three hours after I logged the ticket; thanks for that), turns out that apparently some of the connections were clogged with dust and that made everything not work. Apparently the cleaning crew does sweet fuck all. So another dent in productivity as I took the lesser of two evils - at least my keyboard isn’t sticky.

Dumbest part? I was only called in because we were short on people (Goblin and our Friday part-timer were both off sick) so we’d have someone to mind the phones. Not counting the IT guy demanding I come pick him up from the elevators (Scruffman offered to go but I went specifically so that the jackass who refused to even look for the door to our office would know why maybe he should do his own legwork when someone sounds reluctant to make a trip to find him), the phone rang twice all day. I was not needed ... but I guess Scruffman wasn’t to know.

Anyway, decided that in a choice between trying to get on the 363 at Elephant and Castle with all the other commuters and taking the Overground everything from there to Peckham in the hopes of a less full bus, I’d take the latter. Didn’t help that they’re still ripping up one of the roads near the hospital (I swear, the traffic there hasn’t been normal in about six months) so the first bus trip would start slow and frustrating. The Overground ... wasn’t great. Had to wait for a seat because no one, not even the people sitting in the priority seats, would move for me. Not even the one using their seat as a bag rest. Only two stops, but not what I needed. Got out at Peckham, and ... well, Peckham’s always a little off. First there’s stairs. Then, at the bottom of the first flight, someone kicked my cane in an effort to shove past me and I nearly went flat on my face. Then another flight of stairs where people shoved past to get between me and the one handrail I can actually use, which I need to help balance me on stairs when it’s a bad pain day. So I had to make it downstairs with only the support of my cane and with the worry of having the people brushing past me get too close and knock me down the fucking stairs. Thankfully they did not, but I don’t need that anxiety, thank you.

Got out just in time to see my bus go by, so I stopped at the nearest grocery store (the only one that wouldn’t require me to cross a road, at least) to see if I could find myself a treat. I found some fruit for the dehydrator (they were having a sale), some more oat milk, and toffee poporn ice cream bars, which I am looking forward to trying. Not that lugging any of that home was any fun at all, but still.

Even when I got home, it wasn’t straight to relaxing. I could have maybe waited another day to put some of my fruit in the dehydrator, but also didn’t really want to take that chance. If it weren’t for that slicer gadget @fauxfire76 bought me awhile ago, I wouldn’t have been able to, but I managed, and now I have very thin slices of pears turning into pear chips in the dehydrator. Hopefully the painkillers will have kicked in by the time those are done so I can put in the nectarines I bought.

I have at least now had time to sit down and take the aforementioned painkillers. They haven’t quite kicked in yet, but soon, I’m sure. Then I will have dinner of leftover curry (because like fuck am I cooking right now) and then episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina when I feel less like screaming.

At least I have a week off now.

[orthodoxydaily]

St Gregory Palamas

Celebrated on Sunday, March 2, 2019

Celebration on the 2nd Sunday of Lent, St Gregory Palamas

By Archpriest Fr. Basil Rhodes

Beloved Believers!

God has given us so many gifts! And all of these gifts have one purpose, one goal: to help us see Him more clearly, love Him more dearly, and follow Him more nearly, as the song from “Godspell” has it. In other words, all of God’s gifts He gives for our salvation. One of His greatest gifts is the gift of the saints. Concerning our relationship with the saints, St John of Kronstadt says this: “We ought to have the most lively spiritual union with the heavenly inhabitants, with all the saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs, prelates, venerable and righteous ones, as they are all members of one single body, The Church of Christ, to which we sinners also belong, and the living Head of which is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. This is why we call upon them in prayer, converse with them, thank and praise them, It is urgently necessary for all Christians to be in union with them, if they desire to make Christian progress; for the saints are our friends, our guides to salvation, who pray and intercede for us.”

In today’s second epistle from Hebrews we heard the following words:

“Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.”

Today the Church wants us to pay particular attention to the things we have heard from St. Gregory Palamas. Now I realize that many of us have never read anything that St. Gregory either wrote or preached. That’s OK. As long as we grasp the essence, the heart of his teaching, we will be doing well, we will be honouring his memory, and we will save ourselves from drifting away from Christ. And what is this teaching? The truth is, St. Gregory, who lived in the 14th century, did not introduce anything new! St. Gregory simply re-presented what had always been the “good news” of Christ. And what was that? It’s what St. Paul said nearly 2,000 years ago: “to know (Christ,) to know the power of His resurrection, the communion in His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I might attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3: 10-11). This means that St. Paul desires nothing more than to be a Christian “experientially,” not academically; to know God in his heart and not in his brain. This is exactly what St. Gregory was teaching, or rather, reinforcing. A dangerous and destructive system of theology was sweeping through the Latin West. We call it “scholasticism” today. It teaches that God cannot be known other than through the intellect. Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos wrote: “Scholastic theology tried to understand the Revelation of God logically and conform to philosophical methodology. Characteristic of such an approach is the saying of Anselm: 'I believe so as to understand.’” We Orthodox do not believe in order to understand. We believe in order to acquire the Holy Spirit and be saved! St. Symeon the New Theologian says: “The aim of all those who live in God is to please our Lord Jesus Christ and become reconciled with God the Father by means of the reception of the Holy Spirit,...Every path of life which does not lead to this is without profit.” Illumination by the Holy Spirit, participation in divine glory, this should be the only goal of a Christian; not merely knowledge about God, but a real experience of God, a real relationship with God.

So, how can we begin to enter into this kind of authentic, Spirit-filled Christianity? First, by saying “no” to sin and “yes” to virtuous living. St. Symeon the New Theologian again says: “Through repentance the filth of our foul actions is washed away. After this, we participate in the Holy Spirit, not automatically, but according to the faith, humility and inner disposition of the repentance in which our soul is engaged.” These are some of the things we are trying to focus on during Great Lent. It’s not just a change of diet: no meat, no dairy, no wine, etc. It’s about changing our behaviour, our lifestyle, our thinking and our relationships. These are the things that “attract” the Holy Spirit. The opposite drives Him away and instead attracts other spirits!

Second, we must do what Abbess Makrina says in the new book Words of the Heart, “we should have our nous (focused) on God and pray unceasingly, so that the grace of God can make us radiant” (page 176). What do we sing at the Paschal Canon? “It is the Day of Resurrection, let us be radiant, O people!” That’s what it literally says, “let us be radiant!” There is no divine radiance, there is no “partaking of the divine nature” without unceasing prayer and a nous, that is a heart, that is set on God (see 2Peter 1:4). This is the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas. This is the teaching of the holy hesychasts. St Gregory was a hesychast. A hesychast is someone who practices quietness, stillness, in order to hear God and to know God. The Lord Himself says: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 45/46:10). St. Gregory wrote: “...the grace of the Spirit takes possession of the quiet soul, and gives it a taste of the unspeakable good things to come, which no passionate and negligent eye has seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of such a man (cf. I Cor. 2:9). This taste is the earnest of these good things, and the heart which accepts these pledges becomes spiritual and receives assurance of its salvation.”

Along with quiet and stillness comes the requirement of unceasing prayer. Gerontissa Makrina mentioned it, remember? St. Paul commands it in the Bible: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). And St Gregory himself says: “Let not one think, my fellow Christian, that only priests and monastics need to pray without ceasing and not laymen No, no; every Christian, without exception, ought to dwell always in prayer.” So, how are we to accomplish this? How are we, who live in the world, have jobs, have families, how are we to pray without ceasing? Well, nobody was busier than St. Paul! So busy-ness is not an excuse. Unceasing prayer does not mean the formal prayers from the Prayer Book or the liturgical services. It means the practice of the Prayer of the Heart, or the Jesus Prayer. This short, easy-to-remember prayer is based on the prayer uttered in humility by the publican in the Lord’s parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” The Prayer of the Heart is addressed to Christ, along with a confession of Who Christ is. Remember what St. John wrote in his first Epistle: “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15).

So the Jesus Prayer, or Prayer of the Heart is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!” In the Russian tradition the words “a sinner” is often added to the end but is not essential. We should memorize this short prayer and incorporate it into our daily routine. Say it slowly, and quietly. Say it after your morning prayers for a few minutes. Say it during your commute. Say it quietly or mentally at work. Say it when times get stressful. Say it at night before you go to sleep. The point is to say it, to use it.

I’d like to share some words of my late Geronta, Archimandrite George (Kapsanis) Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Grigoriou, Mount Athos:

“Through the continuous invocation of the most sweet and holy name of Christ, (believers) will feel Christ in their heart, they will avoid sin, they will cultivate feelings of love for God and their fellow human beings, they will themselves become peaceful and in turn provide peace to those in their surrounding environment. Allow me, if I may, to provide a brotherly piece of advice from the spiritual tradition of Mount Athos: the more times a day we say, with desire, the prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,’ the closer to God we’ll be and the more Grace and strength we’ll receive so as to be able to deal with the various difficulties and temptations of life.”

For us, this is the legacy of the holy hesychasts. For us, this is the tradition of St. Gregory Palamas. Amen.

[unloading1963]

DEVELOPING PATIENCE August 23, 2021 Colossians 3:12-17 On any given day, we may encounter frustrating people and situations, such as a mischievous child, uncooperative coworker, or slow commute. We might feel like lashing out, but God wants us to stay calm and be patient with everyone (1 Thess. 5:14). Scripture has a number of things to say about believers developing this important attribute. First, it is our calling. God urges us to be tolerant, kind, and bear each other’s burdens (Eph. 4:1-3). Second, the Lord has set an example for us: He demonstrated patience toward Peter’s actions, the crowd’s demands, and the leaders’ false accusations. We should aspire to such composure. And third, we should recognize how damaging impatience is. It can hurt others and close off dialogue. Responding calmly gives people room to confess wrongdoing, explain their attitude, and make changes. Patience is part of the spiritual fruit that increasingly develops as we’re conformed to Christ’s image (Gal. 5:22-23). When we rely on the Holy Spirit, He empowers us to wade through moments of waiting and provocation—without becoming agitated. A calm demeanor in times of delay or adversity can be a powerful witness to the transforming work of God. Bible in One Year: Jeremiah 49-50 https://www.instagram.com/p/CS6ajRNLp6IV-KbIJZP-kkA0j-59LnGdbEp5xY0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[wwwnewunificationchurchcom]

(via Bernie Sanders and the Realpolitik of the Kingdom of God, Part II: Trumps Military Takeover ~ Elevating the Psychopathic War Criminal "Seal" Eddie Gallagher .... How Trump intends use Gallagher to Turn the Enlisted Men Against their Superiors| ∞ (~*~)

===========================================

For Those Who Get the Point Know the Score:

===================================================

"...Trump clearly wants to set enlisted men against their commanders. He wants them loyal not to the Constitution but to himself personally....." ===================================================

The Day Dawns Black Over the Prophets

∞"For yourselves know perfectly that the Day of the Lord so cometh as a Thief in the Night.

.............And when they say, "Peace and Safety"; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. ( I Thess. 5:3)..............................

The Hour of Temptation and the Fall of Babylon: the Trump Attempt to Takeover the Military

Salon

- Commentary

"Trump clearly wants to set enlisted men against their commanders.

He wants them loyal not to the Constitution but to himself personally...."

The Goal

For Trump, the degradation and dishonoring may be but a means to an even more unsavory end — a purge of top-level military brass. The current U.S. Commander in Chief has been systematically dishonoring the American uniform and flag.  

He sent soldiers to the southern border to fight unarmed, frightened refugees and little kids, barring access to safety to truly desperate human beings. 

He betrayed the Syrian Kurds, their comrades in arms who had fought shoulder to shoulder with the Americans.  

He let them be ethnically cleansed while insulting them with shameless lies that they have a great relationship with Turkey’s Erdogan. 

In negotiations with South Korea and soon with Japan, both strong allies, Trump is demanding that they pay protection money for their defense, turning American soldiers from heroes into mercenaries or thugs.

......................Why is he doing it?

The Tactics

Trump is not a brave man. 

He avoided service in Vietnam with a spurious bone spurs injury and the only danger he has ever put himself in was philandering around Manhattan at the time of AIDS, claiming that he should have received the Congressional Medal of Honor. 

Perhaps being a coward is why he likes to talk tough and is attracted to tough men, be it dictators like Vladimir Putin or “my war fighters” like Gallagher. His latest pardons and commutations for soldiers convicted of war crimes give us another key insight into his thinking. 

The top military commanders have been opposed to such actions as vociferously as their position allows. Richard V. Spencer, the former Navy Secretary, said after he was fired that it is the rule of law that gives Americans moral authority and distinguishes them from their adversaries. 

It confirms to soldiers in the field that they are on the side of good. But enlisted personnel, especially men, are more likely to side with their fellow soldiers who were found guilty. 

And they are, by and large, still very loyal to Trump. Recent surveys showed that 60% of veterans at least are still squarely in Trump’s camp, whereas support for him among higher ranks has slipped. 

After being absolved by Trump, Gallagher appeared on Fox News and dumped liberally on his superiors. 

"...Trump clearly wants to set enlisted men against their commanders. He wants them loyal not to the Constitution but to himself personally....."

[thessalian]

Thess vs An Aggravating Day

I don’t know what the hell is wrong with the equipment the techs are using to dictate their reports, but fucking hell they need to either replace it or learn to use it properly because I swear, every single day I have to send an email to at least two people going, “Sorry, your dictation cut off somewhere; please advise”. Some don’t end up having any dictation at all - well, not reports, anyway. They dictate all the stuff I can type from the request form, and the pot label, and then ... nothing else. I think they’re in too much of a hurry to take any kind of care, because when it’s not that, it’s forgetting some presumably important bits of reporting. I can hear the difference between “dictation cut off” and “I just forgot to give a measurement or the inking protocol used”. Either way, it’s a daily thing - I will have to email various people and find the politest ways possible of saying, “You fucked up”.

I manage, but one day I just want to turn around to them and yell. To tell them to please check that things are on before they begin to speak. To tell me that there are tissue fragments in the main body of the text, and not just cram that information into the block key, because I have to backtrack to add that shit to the body of the report and it’s driving me up the fucking wall. To please read out digits if dealing with numbers that are phonetically similar to other numbers, particularly when spoken too fast and/or in certain accents (mostly the teens, since “thirteen” can sound like “thirty” if rushed, for example). And to for fuck’s sake stop reading the lab number for every single pot. I know it’s written on there somewhere, but no one else does it and no one has called me out on not typing it so all it does is slow everything down.

I swear, if I could find a way of providing the techs a “Admin’s Guide To Better Dictation” booklet that wouldn’t make me look like a problematic employee? I’d do it.

Also apparently I have to go into the office tomorrow because we’ve got a lot of absences due to illness. There’s just one problem - I agreed to this without checking the bus strike schedule. And yeah, bus strike in my area. Now, my normal bus is running, but unfortunately it shares a route with several buses that aren’t. This means that the people who can’t take those buses will be on mine, which will mean significantly overcrowded buses. Getting to work is going to be bad. Getting home is going to be worse. It’ll probably have to be the Overground--

Hang on.

*checks a thing*

Oh fuck; there’s also a rail strike tomorrow. I don’t know what it’s going to look like tomorrow but I know it’s going to be painful for me. Like, excruciatingly. The Overground, which was my primary option at least for getting home, is going to take a lot of the run-off from the rail network. I was and still am debating emailing Scruffman and at least giving him the heads-up that I might have some issues getting in, but I know he wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t seriously needed. I guess I’ll see how it goes, but ... look, I may seem like I’m catastrophising this, but I actually did a test run on my regular bus out of my neighbourhood over the holidays while the other buses were on strike. On an actual holiday, when there’s generally plenty of space on the bus, it was not only standing room only but the feeling of being a sardine in a tin.

Today was an aggravating day. Tomorrow is going to be a horror show.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Treats

It has been a hideous day.

New Girl and The Other Part-Timer really went whole hog on pulling every single short report out of the queue, leaving me with all the Annoyances and the Monstrosities. (I differentiate because all Monstrosities are Annoyances, but not all Annoyances are Monstrosities, y'see.) I actually left a couple of the Monstrosities behind even in my two more hours of overtime because like hell am I going to take every single one of the Monstrosities just because Other Part-Timer and New Girl can't be arsed to do anything but the little simple ones, particularly when I should be getting the lion's share of those because they hurt me less.

Today was made especially fun when the cold landed me with a pinched nerve in my right shoulder in the mid-afternoon. Numb pain all the way down my arm, and it was effort not to scream when I moved. I had to take some of the mallet meds, which I almost never do during the day, because I legitimately could not cope otherwise. That dulled it some, and it's a little better now even with the mallet meds worn off thanks to a hot bath, but it still hurts. It doesn't help that these things are painful at the best of times, but one of fibromyalgia's main horrors is how it amplifies pain. Anyway, I had so many Monstrosities - mostly the ones who are learning the art of the cut-up and have a tendency to start dictating before they've done key parts of the cut-up, so they trip over new information and throw it in any old where, including the block key, which is only supposed to carry information about where the sample came from, nothing diagnostic. Also Annoyances - there's a half-dozen of them that read out the lab number on every single pot label even though we don't actually type those, and that generally adds time to a report that none of us enjoy taking, plus one of them either constantly gets a really shitty foot pedal or doesn't step on hers hard enough because I had to email her three times today because breaks in the dictation cut out key information from the report. Not what you want to do when your entire right arm is screaming.

And the numbers. Seriously. New Girl and Other Part-Timer managed about 40 reports apiece - the short, easy ones. I did 130 or so. And of course, none of them are working overtime. I get that it's easier for me to work overtime because I don't have to commute, but for fuck's sake, they could at least make my life easier in one aspect, since I'm giving up my evenings and probably my fucking Saturday to keep us from going under entirely. So if they're going to do so few anyway, why can't they take the Annoyances and Monstrosities? At least sometimes? Why can't they at least take things chronologically?

(Because they're lazy as fuck, that's why.)

So anyway, I ate a thing, and now I am settling in for the evening, and I will probably require more mallet meds soon, and ... okay, I'm not entirely grumbling but I am a little. See, when I did the whole Next Fest Demo thing, I budgeted for a couple that were coming out a bit before payday. I hadn't anticipated deciding, "Fuck it; I am going to see how Veilguard really is before I talk myself out of it again". Ah well. Payday in a week. I can live without Luma Island for a week, and it'll still be on sale then, so it's fine. Besides, I have a Rook to get through the end of the world and the death of the gods and everything. Not entirely sure that's a thing I have the spoons for right now, though. Which sucks because I'm at the climax of Lucanis' and Bellara's companion questlines, but ... you know, right arm, ow. I'll see how I feel after I finish my hot chocolate and let my mallet meds kick in.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Trust Issues

I have got to the point where I just don't trust Temp anymore, and I am truly saddened by that. I mean, fine, mostly because it makes my life miserable, but there you go.

Look, it could just be Scruffman not being overly good at communication, but when I've been at work for like an hour and I get an email from him going, "Just got a call from [Temp] and she's going to be out for the rest of the week", I have to wonder what the everloving fuck is going on, since the quality of her work has been in decline for quite some time now. I want to believe that it's just because she's having health issues or family issues or something - not because I wish her ill, but because at least then I could be sympathetic, if overworked and frustrated. But at this point, when she appears to be starting late, leaving early, generally avoiding anything she might consider difficult, and then vanishes for days on end with a call that late in the day? I cannot help but feel that there's an issue here that needs addressing. Either way, it means I get more work dumped on me, and generally more than my fair share of the Annoyances, because gods forbid New Girl ever touch them...

The fact is that we are understaffed for this. I was having pain spasms for most of the afternoon, and yet I knew that there was no way I could call in, because for fuck's sake, we have at least two more new doctors (more Annoyances, by the way - one apparently had no idea how her fucking foot pedal worked and is another one that will record dead air while measuring or thinking or whatever), and I can imagine I'd get, "But at least you don't have to commute home or anything; is it really that bad?" Hell, I recall a time I was having pain spasms and just emailed Scruffman to ask if it was okay if I stuck to shorter reports and take it easy throughout the day, and his return email gave this vibe of, "I'm confused and also slightly disappointed in you - we let you work from home to get rid of this issue". And that was when we had everyone in the office, were more or less on top of the typing, and all I was asking for was to leave the long reports for someone else because I struggle with those long ones on bad days. If I said, "I can barely move and need to be in bed", I'd probably get, "Well, do what you can as you can", likely knowing that I'd work myself too hard because decades of temping mean that oversized typing queues give me anxiety.

(Also, one of the Minor Annoyances apparently doesn't know how to mark a report as urgent, so we had a few liver and kidney biopsies that were desperately urgent because the patients' bodies might be rejecting their newly transplanted liver and kidneys that might have waited for two days if I hadn't interceded. This because New Girl sat on them all afternoon, partly because they didn't look important and they were dictated by a Minor Annoyance.)

There's some other entertainment-related trust issues as well, mostly involving Bioware. I haven't been watching the various gameplay trailers etc, mostly because they aren't showing me the things I really need to know (they still aren't being particularly forthcoming about accessibility options and it's really starting to worry me), but ... apparently there's some issues with the facial animations? Because of course there is - because they use fucking Frostbite, and EA hasn't invested in the tools to make Frostbite work halfway decently with anything but environments because it was primarily designed for FPS games. Someone made the comparison with Andromeda - gorgeous environments, somewhat frenetic gameplay, The Usual Bioware Weird Facial Animations (which at least still aren't as bad as Bethesda, but anyway). THAT COMPARISON DOES NOT FILL ME WITH CONFIDENCE, BY THE WAY. So yeah, I'm getting less and less interested in Veilguard at this point. A part of me wants to get it just because of how big a part the Dragon Age series has played in my life, but none of the announcements are really doing anything for me but putting me off. Granted, that's mostly because I cannot play ARPGs without pain most of the time, and they're still sitting on the accessibility options so all I have is guesses and hopes, but that's enough to just ... make me really sad, honestly.

Ugh. I hurt. A lot. I need to take it so, so easy tonight. I don't know how I'm going to get through the rest of this week. Even the bits that Temp does are something, and we're without that for three whole fucking days? We can't compensate for this, especially with New Girl doubling down on taking a bunch of typing, sitting on any dictations she doesn't feel like doing for literal hours, and then dumping them back into the queue on her way out the door.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Self-Reflection

I'm not sure if it's really good or really bad that I do this much self-reflection. Thing is, everything interests me and I like to poke at the logic of things in general. I guess starting with myself is as good a way as any to go about it. After all, the mysteries of Me are close to hand.

See, yesterday I had to go out to the Sainsbury's for some ingredients for the upcoming Baking Extravaganza - sour cream for the banana bread, eggs and sugar for ... like, everything ... stuff like that. And I had just literally missed a bus that only comes along every 10-15 minutes because the bus driver did not notice (or just plain ignored) the person with the cane desperately hobbling in the direction of the bus stop as they meandered past. No, seriously, that bus cannot go very fast in this area because it uses a two-lane road that has cars parked on it on both sides, effectively turning it into a one-lane road and everyone has to kind of do some funky swervy Red Rover shit to get anywhere if someone's driving in the opposite direction. So they had time to see me if they were checking their mirrors but just ... nope. Ambled on past.

So since there wasn't really time to go back home and sit for awhile, and also because I wasn't going to go up the hill from the bus stop to my house more times than I had to, I popped to the corner shop briefly for a chocolate bar and then still had a five-minute wait for the bus, more or less. And I'm standing there with my reusable shopping bag and my chocolate bar and my aches and pains from two trips to the communal skips (dumpsters, whatever) with loads of trash and recycling (because I can't take too much at one time, what with the cane and all), on top of the aches and pains of just existing with fibromyalgia ... and I sat there and wondered, "Why the fuck do I do this to myself? Why can't I just buy snacks like normal people? Spend fewer spoons, y'know?"

It was as good a way as any to kill time waiting for the bus, thinking about that.

There are a few answers, I guess. A goodly part of it is spite, I think, and it comes in two parts, both aimed at "My body has betrayed me but I am not giving it the satisfaction of winning". Which is honestly stupid if you think about it too long, but it also makes sense in a way. Like, I developed a gluten intolerance and suddenly there was all this stuff I simply cannot eat unless I want to be really sick, and capitalism is such that most of the gluten-free options on offer are also vegan, and those two things don't go well together just because of the nature of gluten-free flour. So I could give up all semblance of having a baked treat now and then ... or I could say "Fuck you; if capitalism and my own body won't let me have tasty treats, I'll make them myself". That's the easy part.

The harder part of that is ... well, I'm going to hurt anyway. That's my life now. I could sit doing nothing and I would still hurt. Maybe not quite as much, but it depends on the day and the weather and all manner of other shit. And obviously I'm not going to court pain too much, or for things I can more or less avoid, or things that don't matter so much. I won't court pain for video games (or ... well, not many video games). I won't court pain for my job unless I really have to, and even then there are limits (specifically "DO NOT MAKE ME COMMUTE AN HOUR AND A HALF EACH WAY, ESPECIALLY IF I'M DOING ILL-ADVISED OVERTIME BECAUSE OF 'UNEXPECTED ABSENCES' AND UNDERSTAFFING").

...I won't court pain unless it's worth it, I think is what I'm trying to say. MCM Comic Con 2023? That was worth it. It was excruciating, but it was worth it. So the question becomes, is treating myself well worth the pain? Is making sure that I have food that I enjoy, the occasional treat, and the sheer joy I get out of creating something nice, worth it? The answer is yes. The answer has to be yes. Otherwise, what's the point?

I've been at a "what's the point?" stage before. I have more actual reason for one now. If I can have random spasms and unbelievable fatigue and occasional brain-fog moments and unreasonable bowel upset and constant pain, I can see how easy it would be to start thinking, "What's the point if the rest of my entire life is this? And probably getting worse as time goes on because the body deteriorates anyway..." So I have to make it worth it. I have to do whatever I can to keep from absolutely despairing about what I can't do anymore. I have to do things that I can be proud of, and that I can turn to and say, "I am worth the effort and the pain involved in doing this for myself".

Do I sometimes still despair that the rest of my life is going to be spent in pain? Yes. I can't pretend I don't. I'm still grieving a halfway normal life, and I probably always will be. But ... well, fuck fibromyalgia; I can still make banana bread. And I deserve banana bread. As long as I can think that way most of the time, I'll be okay.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Avoidant Behaviour

There are no words for the frustration right now. I feel so “out of sight, out of mind”. Not that I’d go back to that hellish commute for anything, and not that it’d even help if I were back at the office, but it’s still how it feels.

Look. Temp and Violet had a bargain. Violet does the long typing; Temp does the short ones. I do ... whatever, I guess. I was not consulted about this, because if I had been, the first question out of my mouth would have been, “So what happens when Violet isn’t typing?” Because she’s often not. Even if she’s actually in, she often has other things to do. But Temp keeps acting like the deal read “Temp does the short ones and only the short ones, forever and ever".

Side note: I wonder what the fuck she does when I’m on annual leave, or off sick. I may have to ask, because we’re at the point where I might end up having to take health leave because of her.

Today was a bad day, okay? Today was “stabbing pains in my back and hips, making sitting upright painful”. Today was, “I had to get up and move around or just lie down for a few minutes, just to maintain some semblance of equilibrium”. Today also quickly became “vertigo”. So obviously this was a day to at least try to take it easy, which was aided and abetted by the fact that we’re not actually doing too badly insofar as the queue goes - we’re in the low double-digits, which hasn’t happened in awhile.

But noooooo. I mean, I did what I could to minimise the workload, but ... you type for a specific group of people for awhile, you start to know what to expect. You see names and you hook them to how their dictation usually goes. You know the guy who’s in training and whose work is always checked over by a consultant, and who therefore ends up going, “Oh, can you go back to that bit in the middle and add...?” because he is still moderately clueless and a consultnat saved his ass. You know the guy whose dictation is only as short as it is because he has not got to grips with the footpedal after this long and tends to miss out important stuff - like, for instance, the description of a tumour - and thus obliges you to email him and go, “Um, we’re missing a bit”. You know the woman who talks way too fast. The three or four women who insist on not flagging up that there are fragments in the sample until the block key, when that has to be in the fucking body text as well. The woman with the vocal quirk of having her voice lilt up a half-octave at the end of every sentence, at just the right pitch to trigger a migraine in my case. The two trainee guys who ignore the templates altogether, obliging a lot of typing when we could just be filling out a form. The three or four people who always dictate placentas, which require copy-typing a handwritten form every fucking time. The ones who have no grasp of sentence structure, and who don’t know how to pluralise (through no real fault of their own; English is not their first language so I’m not shitting on them for that; it’s just frustrating).

Temp. Avoids. ALL OF THEM.

There are maybe one or two who dictate well - concise, well laid-out, short, simple, to the point. She takes all of those and maybe some of the less ideal ones if they’re short enough, and I get everything that could even remotely be even a tiny bit inconvenient for her. She hasn’t done a dictation that was longer than a minute long in two days.

So here’s me having a particularly bad pain day, having to get up every fifteen minutes so my back and hips can stop screaming at me, feeling unbelievably dizzy, and I get to struggle through all of the long, inconvenient, frustrating bullshit while she does all the nice simple stuff. And Violet’s not there to pick up the slack even a little bit - out of the office or otherwise engaged, I don’t know or care. I mean, okay, I care - I hope she’s okay. But the reasons she’s not doing the long typing have no bearing on the fact that she isn’t, and Temp is just fobbing them all off on me.

Scruffman seems to think that the situation is solved because Violet and Temp have an arrangement. However, no one considered that I am involved in this arrangement because I share the workload, and Temp is obviously deliberately misconstruing that arrangement to mean, “Do whatever you want and someone else will pick up the bits you don’t like”. I get that she doesn’t like them. I DON’T LIKE THEM EITHER. Fact is, however, that being stuck with too many of them doesn’t leave her in enough pain to be near tears at the end of the day. But I’m hesitant to bring it up to Scruffman because he basically waves it off every time. It’s “I’ll talk to her” or, “Oh, Violet and Temp have an arrangement” and it’s dismissive as fuck. He’s really bad with confrontation, you see, and I get the short end of the stick because there’s little to no chance that I can get into his face about it, because I’m not in the office. And as long as the work gets done, he seems fine.

I left one seven-minute long bit of nightmare for someone else to do, but I did everything else. Because what choice did I have? Temp wasn’t going to. Violet’s not able to for some reason. And it still needs to get done. Hell, I feel guilty about leaving the seven-minute long bit of nightmare, despite it having come up at the head of the queue pretty much towards the end of the day and wouldn’t have necessarily left me with the time to do it anyway.

So we have Temp and Scruffman avoiding shit they don’t like - any typing that’s not really quick and easy, and conflict, respectively. And it all gets lumped onto me in both cases. And I am fed up beyond the telling of it. Right now I’m just trying to let things settle a little so I can manage a trip to check the post and go to the corner shop. Days like this require chocolate.

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Bank of England

So the Bank of England has now literally said, “Britons need to accept that they are poorer now”. Now, in very small fairness to them, they have stated that this means that companies should not be jacking up the prices on everything in order to maintain their profit margins. However, it’s also being used to beat the drum of, “Stop asking for wage increases”, and it’s flagged up that a lot of the main companies found that higher prices boosted their sales revenue this year and we’re looking at nearly 20% on food inflation. That’s not even counting the bullshit with the energy companies.

Keep in mind that this statement came from the Bank of England, who is run by a man who makes nearly £500k per year. Said governor, Andrew Bailey, was the first one to say that we have to stop asking for pay rises. The chief economist, Huw Pill, makes nearly £200k per year.

Median salary for people in the UK? £32,300.

So the words, “Easy for them to say” ring rather loudly.

Now, if they were explicitly saying, “Look, companies cannot stunt their staff’s wages to increase their profit margins this way because you will end up with no one being able to buy anything and everyone loses, so suck up the reduced profit margins, for fuck’s sake”, that would be one thing. But of course, that’s not how the economy works anymore. All that matters is that the numbers are higher than last year. There’s nothing backing this money ... except other people’s hard work. And companies are abusing the fact that no one really seems to understand this ... or, if they do, are called socialists or communists or worse if they call it out.

The fact is that people’s labour hasn’t been valued properly in a very long time, because corporations have been devaluing it for decades. We’re more productive than ever, and we have less and less to show for it. We deserve pay rises more than these ultra-wealthy jackasses need a new boat. And people on six-figure salaries have a fucking nerve telling people who are barely surviving (if they are indeed doing that well) that “you have to get used to being poorer now”. Those people this shithead’s talking about? They were already used to being poor. And no one should have to get used to being fucking destitute.

I own my privilege in that my mother took full advantage of every opportunity to get financially ahead in the 80s and 90s and is now reaping the benefits, and is at least understanding enough of current circumstances to help me. I’d be boned if I didn’t have that financial safety net. I mean it - I could not manage. Even with that, there’s a reason I took more hours at work, that reason being I can’t really afford not to. I want and need to manage on my own as much as possible, but it’s difficult because, you know, disabled. The extra five hours a week were a mistake. I am already feeling how much of a mistake that was. But I haven’t really got a choice, so I’m just going to have to spend some of that lovely extra money on painkillers and carry on. Because it’s only going to get worse from here.

So ... yeah. Here’s me, with my fibromyalgia and my dietary restrictions and all of it making life difficult financially. If I had to pay rent, I’d ... I just wouldn’t be able to. If I can barely manage a six-hour workday when I don’t even have to commute, I can’t imagine a standard workday. (I’d say 9-5, but I don’t know if that’s even standard anymore; somehow it feels overly generous for the world today.) Add a commute into the equation on top of that? I remember how it was before I went on long-term sick leave to pursue a diagnosis on all this; how I ended up spending almost half my day near or in tears from the pain. And I think how lucky I am, because without support, I’d still be doing that, and I wouldn’t be living in half as nice a place. And even with that, I’m still pushing myself harder than I should to manage all the stuff that isn’t rent.

And these jackasses with their six-figure salaries are telling people like me - and more to the point, those who are worse off than I am - that they have to get used to being even poorer?

Part of this is being hangry, I admit. Dinner’s in the oven, and tomorrow’s online grocery shopping day, and I am going to arrange my purchases so I have the fixings for quick lunches that I can eat at the “employment” side of my desk. And then I will get in the habit of actually bringing those to my desk first thing so I don’t forget while in The Zone. Anyway, part of this is hangry, but most of it is just ... there’s not even a word for what it feels like to live in this country anymore. There’s anger and there’s sadness and there’s blind panic and creeping terror and this miserable resignation and ... it’s all bad, put it that way.

At least I will feel better after I’ve eaten. I’m just tired of having to feel this fortunate to be eating at all. It’s more than a lot of the people who’ve been told to “just accept that you’re poorer and stop asking for a raise” can do today.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Backlogs and IT Issues

Well, if this is the setting for the next two weeks, I'm in deep shit.

Scruffman, our office manager, is on leave for the next two weeks. I had a feeling that things were going to get a little ... problematic. Goblin has a "when the cat's away, the mice will play" mentality and has a habit of chatting in her usual "I Hate Everything" way whenever she gets the change - read: "when Scruffman isn't at his desk". This monopolises the time and attention of everyone in the office, so less work gets done. That's not even counting the whole thing where Temp will dodge all the longer work - with Violet on long-term medical leave, that still leaves me to do the lion's share of it, because Milady tends to take over Scruffman's duties when she's away and so she's busier than usual for the next two weeks (when not sucked into Goblin's Grumble Vortex)

In addition to this, we had some changes to our transcription software recently and it has not been particularly well implemented. Having to tag our typing with our initials is bad enough, but the window on which we have to do so is slow to come up at the best of times, so that's a fair chunk of time wasted. Again, that's under the best of circumstances right now.

Logged in today and the queue was at 375 and climbing. We were backlogged as far back as Saturday (because of course the various doctors and techs are still coming in on the weekends), and all the ones left from Saturday were - you guessed it - the long and complicated bullshit that Temp doesn't want to touch. But yesterday's typing was effectively untouched when I logged in.

The queue when I logged out for the day was approaching 400. Barely anything got typed unless I typed it (except for seeing Milady take one fifteen minute long monstrosity, for which I am very grateful because I got something like three 10+ minute bits of dictation on top of the ones that don't take long to speak but do take long to type because of having to deal with the formatting - it's a thing). Most of the urgent cases got done - but not all; the longer ones of those were left behind as well when I logged out. I just hadn't noticed because I was busy with all the long dictation and the stuff from the more difficult doctors and techs. I barely saw anything taken out of the queue, and when I did, it was in bits and snatches of shorter pieces of work between the longer, complicated stuff. And like I said - not that much of that got done either.

Of course, some of this might have something to do with the transcription software, which was at its worst today. It crashed seven times, and hung for at least five minutes a dozen more times over the course of the day, at least for me. It's possible that people got slowed down because they were having the same problem, but I don't know because no one keeps me updated when Scruffman's not around. I'd bet good money that they didn't try to talk to IT about it and just used it as an excuse to relax and futz about all day, but at least it's sort of an excuse. Ish. Kind of. I mean, I was slowed up, but I wasn't slowed up that much...

If we're still in this mess when I log in tomorrow (and I honestly expect it to be much worse tomorrow), I may actually have to pull some overtime. I have spoken to Scruffman about doing so if it becomes necessary, because at least I don't have to commute, but I'm honestly not sure I have the spoons for that kind of thing. Thing is, we need to at least get partway caught up. This reflects badly on all of us, but the others don't seem to fucking care. Scruffman's away, so they can do what they want, apparently. And it's leaving us massively behind.

So tomorrow is going to be a day. If our transcription software is still a mess of hiccups and crashes, I'll be emailing IT and asking what the hell is going on. If the queue is still obscenely long (and I would wager, knowing the doctors' work patterns as I do, that it'll be approaching 500 cases when I log in, if my colleagues in the office keep on the way they're going), I'm going to have to log some overtime to at least get us so that we're only one day behind and not two. I'll obviously keep a record and email Scruffman about it, but I can't just let this stay like this. And I can't make Goblin and Temp get a fucking move on - hell, I couldn't do that even if I was in the office.

Fuck. Just ... fuck. Two whole weeks of this bullshit? Are you kidding me?!? Scruffman is obviously entitled to use his annual leave, but we're already massively understaffed because no one hired a replacement for Sunshine and Sid, so if Goblin and Temp refused to pull their respective fingers out, we're going to end up so deep in backlog that we'll end up with calls from clients asking what the fuck is going on. Most of this stuff is fairly urgent. It's histology. It's people being investigated for potential cancer in a lot of cases! I don't necessarily expect miracles, but I expect at least the kind of work ethic that doesn't involve turning the office into a chat-and-coffee corner the minute the managers' backs are turned. If I have to keep the whole place afloat for two weeks, I WANT A FUCKING RAISE. Or at the very least overtime pay.

Thankfully my own week's holiday comes pretty much as soon as Scruffman comes back from his fortnight. I'm going to need it. Especially if I have to pull overtime.

*flashes back to typing queue when I logged out before*

...When. Especially when I have to pull overtime. UGH.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Understaffing

Well, this is going to be a fun next few weeks...

Email from Scruffman just before he left for the day (he leaves at 4pm). Apparently Violet has done herself an injury and will be away for something like 7-8 weeks. All sympathy for Violet, seriously. However, it does leave us in a bit of a quandary. Particularly since Goblin’s also away (though her only for a week). Scruffman and Milady both have stuff to do that isn’t the typing, and we’ve been running understaffed ever since Sunshine left for her other job, like, eight months ago, and Sid walked out just before that. We’ve been told that they’re going to fill those positions, but given it’s been quite some time and not even a whisper of news about that, the question is, “Bitch, when?”

I’m assuming that in this current economic situation, the answer to that question is “Never; get used to being overworked because we’d rather dump more work on your underpaid asses than shell out for a new employee”. Which ... well. I mean, hell, the other part-timer actually wants to go full-time hours but has been rebuffed time and time again. Which ... I mean, come on. The techs start doing dictation at 7am, don’t stop until 6pm, and there are a lot of them. We need more than two dedicated typists and a few people who clear occasional bits when they’re not too busy with something else.

Anyway, point is that now that Violet’s away long-term, Scruffman has apparently talked to Temp about, “Look, your deal’s null and void; you have to take the long ones now”.

Her response to that was to take a second longer dictation out of the queue while Scruffman was in, let it sit in her queue until he’d left, and then dump it back in the main queue for someone else to handle. However, she did wind up doing the 11-minute monstrosity from 11am or so, though she left it until the last minute and I figure she looked at the time and went, “Fuck; [Thess] will have logged off for the day by now so I guess I’m stuck with it”. I guess I should count myself lucky she didn’t dump the 11-minute one back into the queue and only do the 7-minute one she took briefly to appease Scruffman. Still, the scoreboard for “Number of 5+ Minute Reports Typed” for today is as follows:

Temp: 1

Me: 10

So I was sort of right about the sneakery but she was at least obliged to do more than the 0 bits of long typing she normally does. And the next couple of months are going to look ... well, exactly like today, except she’ll probably bet more clever about it on days I work until half-five. This is going to be a hard few weeks.

It was so much better when we had the office somewhat overstaffed. Not much, just enough to cover things when it went to hell like this and to earn us the occasional random day off. Now we’re understaffed and fall apart when this level of ludicrous hits. I remember thinking at the time that this was one workplace that got it right. Now, though? They’re just as abusively penny-pinching as any other company and we’re all feeling it and there might have to be commuting and/or overtime because of this. Ugh.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Resentment

Okay, my incredulity about unironically playing Rick Astley aside: today. Was. HELL.

I woke up already feeling the hurt - the bone-and-muscle deep ache that speaks of a really, really bad day. I knew it was coming. Of course I fucking did. I've been overdoing it for weeks. It was always going to catch up. I just hoped it'd remain at a lower level for just a couple of more days.

But nope. Nope, today was the first day of what promises to be quite some while of excruciating pain. Yaaaaaaaaay.

But still, work needs doing. Thankfully, I did not get a panicked phone call begging me to come into the office. I did wake up earlier than I wanted to because of a text message, but it turns out that was the announcement that my new digibox arrives tomorrow (BT is apparently sending out a new digibox for its TV customers and I have zero idea why because mine works just fine, and this means I'm going to have to enter my bloody Netflix password into the thing again the next time I want to watch something and I haaaaaaaate having to use the fucking remote to enter a password). So at least I didn't have to commute.

That was basically the only good thing about today.

Someone else was typing a bit, today. I don't know who was typing a bit, but someone was. I know because the queue kept shrinking by ten or so reports every so often. The problem was that, once again, the ones that disappeared were those under a minute in length and dictated by someone with a fully comprehensible accent and no tendency to shift around the place or generally fuck up. No, I got all those. The fucking placentas (two of which the person dictating them started two days ago and finished early this afternoon, which dumped them right into the top of the typing queue because it goes by date created, not date completed). The prostate biopsies that are always six blocks or more, always with someone who refuses to state that there are fragments in with the cores until the block key, despite needing that information to exist in the fucking body of the report. The hysterectomies, one by a dude who seems to exist to make a typist bounce around the report, to the point of putting the number of specimens per block at the end of the block key instead of after each block where they belong. And a twelve-minute monstrosity by the guy I am always left to type for because his accent is a pain and he always does reports around the ten-minute mark and ... there's too much about this guy to hate. Well, insofar as his dictation goes - he's a lovely guy with a frustrating way of working, is all.

So yeah, apparently it's now actually policy to leave me all the difficult, frustrating, and just plain egregious bits of dictation. Scruffman knows how bad this is for me. Apparently we just don't care anymore. Fuck.

So now I hurt worse. Anything I might want to do except become duvet burrito is going to hinder my ability to even half-recover in time for tomorrow. I mean, everyone but Violet is supposed to be back tomorrow but that has never helped before and I cannot imagine it's going to help now, at least not in the "Give [Thess] the long and annoying stuff" department. Thing is, if I'm denied some kind of enjoyable activity, I'm just going to be grumpy and resentful. Well. More so than I already am. Because I am resentful. I am resentful of being lumbered with the shit no one else wants to do (because I don't want to do it either; I just do it because it's my job and I wouldn't be so pissed off if everyone did their share). I am resentful of having been obliged to manage more or less on my own for three weeks beyond people grabbing a few of the simpler and easier reports (the ones I enjoy and tend to use to decompress). Basically it feels like everything is dumping on me right now and I am just fed right the fuck up.

And I still have one more day of this shit before I can have some time off. Which will more or less be blown trying to recover from the bullshit of the last few weeks. And if I don't manage to get some kind of recovery done between now and Saturday night, I might have to cancel my Saturday D&D game again, which I really don't want to do but if Friday continues like the last few weeks...

I'm just really, really fed up. Frustrated and resentful and tired and in a lot of pain and clearly I need this time off so, so badly. It wouldn't be anywhere near this bad if I didn't get saddled with everything.

I wish I had the energy and lack of pain to just punch something.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Gaming While Disabled

Pretty sure Goblin gave me her cold. Also still in exceptional pain from two consecutive days’ commute. Cold-achy plus fibromyalgia-achy is ... not fun at all and I didn’t sleep overly well because I kept having stabs and spasms.

On one hand, I kind of want to give Code Vein a proper try. Bestie got it for me as a part of a replacement birthday present when the Trinket slippers didn’t work out.

(Note to prospective buyers of the Trinket slippers on the Critical Role store - CHECK THE SIZES. They say One Size Fits Most, and there is zero wiggle room in their size range because my big-ass feet are a half-size or so larger than the upper limit on the slippers and they just will not fit on my feet. Also I kind of feel bad for any guys that want the Trinket slippers because my feet are large for ‘women’s sizes’ but about average in ‘men’s sizes’ so ... yeah.)

(Further note: the Trinket slippers are getting a good home with my friend in France as soon as I can figure out how best to seal and label an appropriate box, and I have Code Vein, and also a pre-ordered copy of B Dylan Hollis’ Baking Yesteryear, so nobody loses out on this; Bestie gets to make two people happy, friend in France gets slippers, I get cookbook and ARG. Speaking of; back to ARG talk.)

I mean, seriously, I do want to try this game. I’ve basically discovered that my predominant issue with ARGs is keybinds. As in, it feels like they’re usually designed for console and expect someone to be able to plug a controller in and appropriately use it. Fuck that; I could barely hold up my phone last night, and my phone’s way lighter than today’s controllers. Thing is, people more comfortable with a keyboard can apparently eat shit because people dealing with the keyboard controls appear to have gone about assigning keybinds the way I used to play Pin The Tail On The Donkey as a kid. I’m pretty sure the “git gud” crowd would probably say I’m overreacting about this and I just need to figure it out ... except for one thing.

To paraphrase Keanu Reeves as Neo: “I know Google-Fu”.

It’s easy to believe that whatever condition or problem you’re having, you’re the only one having it. Especially when the loudest and most annoying voices involved are the people who belittle and bitch at you about not being able to do exactly what they can, and how you should either cope with how it is or accept that it’s not “for you” and howl like they’re having their human rights violated when you ask politely for accessibility options that they don’t even have to use. I think the best lesson I ever learned - from therapy, from my friends, from Tumblr, which feels like a stupid place to learn a valuable life lesson but Tumblr Be Like That - is that there is always someone who has been where you are, who has gone through what you’re experiencing, and who might be able to help make it easier for you to go through it. All you have to do most of the time is find the right search terms, and advice will be there.

So I Googled “Code Vein Keybinds”. And what do you know? A whole, if short, Reddit thread where people are basically going, “The keybinds on Code Vein are dogshit; any advice for how to set them better?” The only reason the thread is so short is that a couple of people had what appears from the reactions to be an ideal set-up that I’m actually entirely keen to try.

The problem is the OW. Lotta OW. So much OW. I’m not sure I could manage that amount of frenetic activity in the state I’m currently in. I need something that’ll let me hyperfocus past the pain, yes, but adding a learning curve is probably not it. I suppose the thing to do is to go through the character creation thing (because seriously, it has the most fun character creation menu I’ve ever seen; almost makes up for the fact that there’s an awful lot of Big-Tittied Anime Girl With Minimal Clothing right in your face as soon as you get out of the tutorial), see if the new keybinds get me through the tutorial section any easier, get through the opening cutscene, and then stop there and do something a little less ... intensive. Not that my current thing isn’t kind of intensive in its way - I’m trying to finish my Meep!Herald’s run through Inquisition and am in the middle of Jaws of Hakkon, and still noticing that its response to the complaints of “too much running around through too much empty scenery” was “throw in respawning monsters too high level to simply blow through easily”, which is not the point but never mind. Just the controls are somewhat simpler; just a lot of pressing R interspersed with number keys. That’s a lot easier to manage than “parry”, “block”, “dodge”, “drain attack”, “variety of Gift keys”, etc.

I’m probably never going to be good at ARGs, but I dislike there being a whole kind of video game I can’t play because disability. I already have the whole thing where I can’t play most first person perspective games because I get migraines; if the ARG route is also blocked to me ... well. There are fewer and fewer games that don’t fall into those two categories, and I’m starting to feel shut out of the entire hobby. I mean, there are the indies - thank the gods for the indies - but still.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Resentment

Bed soon, but first, quick commentary.

I think I mentioned that I had to be commuting into work on Tuesday and Wednesday, because Scruffman was on annual leave. I said I’d email him to check in today. I technically didn’t have to because he’d sent me like three separate emails asking for reports that he’d apparently been sitting on since my annual leave last week, so like fuck does he ever ask anyone else to do those (he insisted that he asked others to send out reports when I was unavailable but one of those emails was dated 6th February so fuck that). But I did anyway, in a separate email, after I was done sending the reports and shouting “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?” at the walls. The nice thing was that his reply was thanking me for making the effort to come in and underlining our “You only have to come in if we really need a warm body in the office” agreement. Which is nice because I don’t like the commuting. It hurts. And I swear to whatever fucking god you like that if I have to do it two days in a row? I’m going to quietly murder someone.

Anyway, today wasn’t a great day because Temp was on her bullshit again. I mean, seriously on her bullshit. Once I’d finally sent like twenty reports to people, I looked at the typing queue and what do you know? A whole bunch of long-ass bits of typing from the most annoying people to type for, and a list of timestamps making it very obvious that Temp picked and chose the shorter things to type while leaving me with the long complicated bullshit. But of course I took them because they were basically right there, all at the head of the queue, and just loaded up my personal queue with those and a whole bunch of other mid-length or short ones that followed the long bullshit chronologically. And when I finally finished up with that and went to pick some more stuff out of the queue? Same thing - four bits of typing in the 6-7 minute range, a couple of 3 minute ones, and a 14 minute long monstrosity from the really aggravating guy I’d already typed two long and bullshitty documents for that day. (He’s a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. Just he has this thing about jumping around in the dictation doing the short dictations first which is fine for him but ends up with me having to switch spots on the document and it throws off my rhythm, plus he makes things longer than they need to be just in general.) So I took the first six and left the 14 minute monstrosity behind - I was doing enough long ones and I was not eating the rest of the afternoon with that just because Temp couldn’t be bothered. Thankfully it was gone by the time I went back to pick up more typing, so that was a bonus. Thing is, when I went to pick up a last couple of bits of typing about fifteen minutes before close of play? She’d done it again. Thankfully no more 14 minute monstrosities, but by this point, given that she’d been doing it all damn day? I was done. I took one longish one and the outstanding urgent reports and left her with the rest of it, citing “I don’t have time for your bullshit right now”. I mean, come on. I’m still in significant pain from the whole deal of having to commute to work two days in a row when my buses have been crammed with uni students and tourists (yeah, both of them; I have no idea). I do my share of the long shit, but I resent the fuck out of having to do hers as well.

I just resent the fuck out of this. She takes advantage of the fact that I will do exactly what I was asked to do - take things in chronological order unless there’s a really good reason, like “This is an urgent bit of typing”, or “It’s not marked as urgent but I’m being told they want it right the fuck now”, or even “I’m leaving in fifteen minutes and the longer ones always take longer than the actual time stamp says”. She’s been talked to about this at least twice; all I ever get is “Don’t stress about it”. Easy for her to say; it’s to her benefit if I don’t. And Scruffman doesn’t have time to keep track of that. It’s a nightmare and I’m fed up. I should not be in a war of attrition with my co-worker because she’s a lazy mare. She should just stop being a lazy mare! But that isn’t going to happen so I don’t even at this point.

Anyway, I was basically productive today, but when carrying an armload of laundry across the house to stick it in the washing machine hurts, you know it’s a bad day. But laundry’s done and folded and put away. I put the new sheets and duvet cover I got for my birthday on the bed, which is great because now I can wait a day or so before I next do laundry. I should probably do a load that includes my towels tomorrow, so that can be that. Of course, I do have to survive tomorrow, which means praying that Temp doesn’t pull her bullshit again. But the good thing about working from home is that I can actually do stuff like keep a metaphorical eye on the laundry, and switch the washer to dryer mode when it’s done washing, so I’ll have clean towels for bath without having to wait on said bath. ...It’s the little things.

Also I put an actually recipe post on the Cooking With Spoons blog, and tomorrow I’m thinking, if I have a spoon available, I might put the recipe for my tuna broccoli lemon pasta. It’s a good one for when the spoons are just lacking. And they seriously are - the only reason I’m not in bed is a need to vent and the whole thing where I had a two hour nap earlier in the evening so that should bring me to a “good night’s sleep” equilibrium.

[thessalian]

Thess vs PTO Guilt

I did everything possible to avoid as much PTO guilt as possible, you know. Even though I needed a break Right This Second Now when I booked it, I checked the website we have for such things to see when no one else would be out. We've been swamped the last little while, y'see, and I didn't want to go away and dread coming back to an absolute fucking nightmare of a backlog. Because a) the PTO guilt would eat my head, and b) by the time we got it cleared, I'd need yet more time off. This week coming was the first week when nobody was on leave, so I thought it'd be a great time to take the break I so desperately need.

And then fucking Goblin came along.

I only found out about this because Scruffman's having this whole thing where he's being prodded about regular staff meetings. Bitch, we are too busy for staff meetings. We just want to get on with it and do our damn jobs, especially the two of us who work from home (that would be me and Goblin). It's a little bit of an issue for Scruffman, though, because this means he has to effectively have two staff meetings - one in person for the staff who work in the office, and a Teams call for me and Goblin. Oh, he tried to get us to come into the office for the sake of a staff meeting, but he opened himself up to getting that shut down by "idly wondering" how convenient it would be for us to come in for a day for a meeting. Goblin shut him down hard. Which is one thing I salute her for. We're both in more or less the same position - health issues, live a long way from the office, and no earthly way either of us wants to have to commute all that way for the sake of a meeting that a) is fine for us on Team call anyway and b) honestly could have been an email half the time, if the first staff meeting we got roped into was any indication.

Anyway, that's beside the point. The point is that he was talking about when would be good to schedule the meeting, and told us that it would be the week after next because we were both away for most of, or all of, next week.

I know damn well that Goblin didn't have annual leave booked for next week when I booked it. Which means that Goblin either a) didn't check to see how we were looking staff-wise when she booked it or b) didn't care. I mean, also potentially c) there was something she really needed to do, but for "most of" a week? Honestly, given what I know of Goblin, I'm voting for some combination of a) and b) - didn't care enough to check. Which, I mean, that's her prerogative, but...

I'm just grumpy as shit. I was hoping it wouldn't be that bad when I got back from leave, the backlog. But since we two dedicated typists are both away for at least the lion's share of next week, that hope just got flushed down the bog, thanks. So I'm going to stress about that all fucking week. (Don't tell me that it's not my problem; my colleagues are very good at making it my problem, and we're getting robbed of at least an hour the week after next for a fucking staff meeting, so that's even more dumped on us.)

That on top of the stressing about the election on Thursday. That's going to be stressful no matter what, honestly. The Tories are on track to get slaughtered, which I guess is good for a bit of schadenfreude, but given that Labour is at this point just a carbon copy of what we're kicking out of office, with its sole good point being that it's not going to send refugees to Rwanda like Garfield shipping Nermal to Abu Dhabi...

I mean it, seriously. At least three parties are running around screaming "Trans women are men, trans men are women, non-binary doesn't exist!" and it fucking hurts. Starmer's on record as saying that we shouldn't be telling kids in schools that trans people even exist, like some gods-awful Margaret Thatcher cover band playing a cover of Section 28. Speaking of, the Shadow Chancellor has made some noises praising Thatcher's economic policies in recent memory. This is a Labour government echoing the scariest damn Tory we've ever had in office - yeah, Truss and Johnson were terrifying in their own way, but Thatcher was smart about her evil fucking bullshit. And fucking Labour is parroting Thatcher's economic policy?!? The one that made the slogan of the 80s "Three Million Unemployed"?!?

So while some people will be spending Thursday night watching Bell's Hells do ... whatever the hell it is they're doing at the moment (I haven't been keeping track), I am going to be watching election news. I haven't decided whether it's to be "curl up on the sofa in front of BBC News with a huggy-punch pillow, an obscene amount of comfort food, and a box of tissues" or "slump at my desk in front of whatever live feed the Guardian runs so I can be comforted by my friends". Because really, all I'm going to learn from it in the end is which colour tie the Prime Minister who would quite happily erase me from the world will be wearing. Doesn't matter if it's because of the disability or because of the non-binary; this just reminds me how much they seem to see hating my fucking guts as a vote-winner.