Friday 4 May 2012

Still alive

Long time no update. I guess everything is different now. I'm in a different town, different job, different lifestyle.

I suppose I'll start with my new digs. This town is much much quieter than where I was before. Smaller too. My flat is much better though, it's like night and day. I can hardly believe that I spent about 4 years at my old place. It's one of those things that you don't appreciate until you've experienced it, but having a better flat has immediately improved my quality of life in so many ways. I used to hate going back to my old flat, it was more like a prison, it just depressed me. Not that this place is a palace, but it is much bigger, cleaner, better decorated and everything works. It's a two bedroom place with lots of storage so I'm no longer surrounded by clutter, which makes everything more pleasant. It has a more modern boiler and heating with working timers, so I get instant hot water when I need it. This means I can get out of bed in the morning and right into a hot shower, so I'm showering every morning. I'm also having something to eat every morning too. These little things all make a difference. The main bedroom has a TV in it which I find helps me unwind before I go to sleep. I used to stay up til 2 or 3am before going to bed to be bored, lying awake. Now I can go to bed just whenever knowing that I can watch TV for a while before trying to go to sleep.

Being a smaller, quieter town everything is closer, including my new gym. Two hours at the gym now takes up 2 hours and 10 minutes of my time, not the 3 hours it used to, so I'm finding I have more spare time in general and my evenings are less hurried. I have my cafes and my takeaway places sorted. I can now spend the weekend not saying a word; every place I go to asks "usual?" as I enter. The downsides are that there is much less going on. The place is very quiet at the weekend. There is a place that has regular bands but they're always cover bands, though it's better than nothing. There is a comedy club too, and I'm going to the cinema more. I'm mainly doing the cinema and comedy club more simply because everything is quiet and nothing is busy :)

The thing I was most worried about was the aspects of running a company, but now that I'm in my stride it's actually fairly easy, nothing like the nightmare I thought it would be. The company I am working with right now isn't very good, the work isn't very good, but it's not forever. The bad news is that my stint there is being cut short. It was supposed to be for a year initially, but it's now down to about 7 or 8 months, basically I have a few weeks left.

I'm not too thrilled about that, as I moved on the promise that I'd have a least a year to settle in and save up a chunk of money. I doubt I'll get another job close by, so I might have to start commuting which will make my quality of life even lower than before. I'll be up earlier, back later, plus driving lots. If I get a job very far I might have to rent a room through the week and come back at the weekend, but what about the gym? I'm just going to have to cross that bridge when I come to it...which will be very soon indeed.

The move here and getting all set up was harder than I thought it would be. Getting settled and getting into a routine was harder. All the "things" I had to do like cancelling things, moving addresses etc was all harder. For weeks on end it seemed like I was just constantly doing things, phoning people, sending off forms. I was also spending my weekends driving back and forward, packing things and moving things so I had no down time...constant high anxiety.

I'm worried that the up-coming break in job is going to push me into a bad place again. I've never been unemployed or without a job to do in my entire life, but I'll be just that in a few weeks time until I can get something else sorted out. I'm not worried about money, that I have, I just fear how I'll spend my days and that I'll go back to drinking too much and being too anxious all the time. We'll see.