Reading, Running, and Learning to Knit: an Update from Lockdown.

So I have currently been furloughed from work for a little over a week now. I’m not sure if being stuck at home with my parents it yet taking it’s toll, but I was definitely feeling the signs of boredom and the overwhelming sensation of a depressive episode at the beginning of this week.

In order to occupy my mind these days I am forcing myself to do a reasonable amount of reading, as I mentioned in my last post. This if vaguely going well. Since the beginning of April I haven’t yet finished a book, but I have started nine?!?!?!?!!!!

But I guess that’s fine. I’m reading each of them bit by bit. Three of the books I’m currently reading are less than 200 pages, so that makes it feel a little less daunting. But not much. However I do feel that I am having to force myself to read at the moment, because it does seem to require a heck of a lot of energy just to open a book.

Also, because I am finding the sedentary nature of this lockdown to be somewhat suffocating, I have decided that I should start exercising on a regular basis. For this I have chosen to start using the app Couch to 5K. I went for my first run yesterday, and today is a very much needed rest day. My legs ache quite a lot when walking down stairs or lowering myself into a chair. But I’m sure this will all benefit me in the end (hurhurhur).

On top of that, my mum has decided that she is going to teach me to knit. My mother is quite an ample knitter, she has been knitting consistently for about thirty years now, and is always making something, sometimes several things, most of which I tend to acquire.

Therefore she has taken it upon herself to teach me a new skill. SO far I am struggling with the basics. She taught me the motions when I was a child, but I never kept it up. Now she thought that she would just be able to teach me a couple of different techniques, and I’d get on fine. Turns out I don’t remember shit from when I’m a child, and can’t even keep a consistent number of stitches between rows.

Oh well, I guess it will all come together before I’m allowed back to work. Perhaps.

In any case, I’m fine, my family is fine, everyone I know seems to be fine. I’m actually quite enjoying this whole ‘not going to work, not having to socialise or have contact with anyone outside my house, yet still being paid’ thing. It’s just my cup of tea.

Speaking of, I might just go and get myself another one. 🙂

Until next time…

Love, Bobbi. Xx.

The Life Slump.

It has come into my field of awareness that I’m going to have to work almost every day of my life for almost the rest of my life. And I’m struggling to cope with this.

This is one of those facts in life that we are all aware of deep down, but mostly try to avoid thinking about. Why is it that we as a people have created a society in which we need to do things which take up a lot of time and energy in order to earn enough money to survive?

It isn’t even that we’re doing these jobs just because they need to be done or for the satisfaction of doing them. We are working merely as a means of survival. And this concpt is making me miserable.

There has to be a better way to live our lives that doesn’t revolve around working 40+ hours per week just to earn enough money to pay for rent, bills, and groceries.

I want to do more with my life than just work. I want to have time to learn and to grow as a person. And I know I’m not the only one.

I do have a job that I enjoy. But it is also exhausting. I work in a nursery forty hours a week, taking care of babies from as young as four months. It’s tiring. Not only that, but I commute for an hour or so each way. So between the time of getting up and getting ready for work, and finally getting home, I have been on my feet for nearly fourteen hours (usually I work nine hours for four days with a one hour break, and on the fifth day I only work four hours without a break).

So naturally I am incredibly tired from a long and hectic day. It’s not as though I have a sedentary job where I get to at least physically rest if not mentally rest. I am using my body and my brain all day. I am walking or running about, I am lifting heavy objects (i.e.: babies), and I have to be very aware of everything that is going on, for the safety of the children.

The commuting is equally as exhausting as my job because I often don’t get a seat due to rush hour chaos, and I have to make at least two changes as part of my journey. Really I should have considered the complexity of the commute when choosing this job, however, with my one year anniversary of this job coming up this week, it feels redundant to bother doing anything about it now.

Maybe if I weren’t in the process of beginning a year long qualification at work then I would consider looking for a new job nearer to home. For now that will have to wait until my qualification is complete (a matter which is really out of my hands right now considering I signed all the paperwork for starting the qualification at the end of January, and more than five weeks later I have heard nothing back about it other than to request another copy of my ID because their copy wasn’t usable for some reason).

Anyway, I just feel really lost and stuck right now. I don’t feel that I have much control over my life at the minute. I do love my job, I really do. But it is such an inconvenience to my right now. Maybe if I just didn’t have to spend so much time commuting then it wouldn’t feel so bad, but it’s tiring me the fuck out. And even if I had a more relaxing journey to work then I could maybe do something which feels productive, but the most I can do these days is read a book, and as I said in my previous post, I don’t really feel like doing that at the moment.

I just want a job that doesn’t take up too much of my time, that’s easy to get to, and allows me enough free time to actually do things, because currently my only free time is at weekends, and I spend much of that time catching up on sleep because, despite going to bed early on work nights, I still feel completely exhausted by the end of the week.

Clearly this is not a situation that I will maintain for a particularly long time. In reality, as soon as I’m qualified I’m going to get a job that I can walk to, then I’ll be able to wake up early out of choice rather than necessity, then I will be able to use my time to achieve things which will make me happy.

I also feel like having a rant about not earning enough money to live alone, but perhaps I should save that for another time. Lol.

Love, Bobbi. Xx.

The Reading Slump.

I have been in a reading slump for the past week or so. A reading slump, you may know, is when someone who typically enjoys reading a lot experiences a period of no interest or attention span for reading.

Right now I’m sitting on the train on my way to work, I have a book in my bag which I started reading last night before bed (The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern). I must have read about fifteen pages last night. The previous book I was reading (Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb) I was finding quite slow and not holding my attention. But currently I have no interest in reading anything.

And the weird thing is, when I lose interest in reading, I begin to lose my sense of self. For someone who identifies as a reader, not reading has a big impact on my identity. But still I can’t bring myself to pick up my book.

I hate feeling like this. Especially when I’m on a train and see so many people around me reading books.

Right now I’m struggling to have the energy to have any interest in anything. I just hope this doesn’t spiral into a pit of depression.

I don’t know what to do.

Love Bobbi. Xx.

The End of a Stressful Week.

This week at work has been super stressful for me. I work in the baby room of a nursery, and there are three of us who work in that room. But this week the other two were both on annual leave. There is a policy that says only one person from a room is allowed annual leave at a time. And now I completely understand why.

Even though I had plenty of help in my room from other staff, it was super stressful for me because I was the only one who knew the children’s individual routines, like who needed morning naps, who needs bottles at what times, or any dietary requirements. So a lot of the basic running of the room and care of the children was dependent on me.

It was also stressful because my room leader had asked me to do a couple of tasks and activities with the children by the end of the week. She wanted me to do some valentine’s craft activities with all of the children so that they could take them home on Friday. But I felt like I didn’t have enough time, especially as the room was basically in chaos because the colleagues who were helping in the room didn’t know the routines and things.

So I’m a bit annoyed that she didn’t try to start these craft activities earlier so that they were completely done before she went away. But for the most part the activity got done, although it wasn’t ready to go home on Friday. I don’t think it’s a big deal. They can just be handed out on Monday I guess.

Now I’m very much grateful that it’s the weekend. It is also the first weekend I’ve had for about a month where I didn’t have any commitments. So I’m really pleased about that. I can’t believe it’s already Sunday, but at least the coming week will be more relaxed with both my colleagues back in the room.

Anyway, I know this was a bit of a ranting post, but I kind of needed to get that feeling off my chest. Hopefully my next post will be a bit more cheerful. Lol.

Love Bobbi. Xx.

Life Update… And Becoming a Student Again.

I can’t believe I missed out on writing a blog post for the last two weeks. Admittedly it has been a busy couple of weeks, and I’ve had other things to do. But now I’m back, and quite a lot has happened since I was last on this blog.

So work is starting to get busy again. I work in a nursery, and we’re getting quite a few new children starting at the moment. One of them is only four months old, and they are so cute!!! But having new children start is always kind of stressful because they miss their parents, so they’re quite upset. Screaming children creates a lot of tension in the classroom.

Then last weekend I didn’t get much rest because I went to my friend’s hen-do (AKA bachelorette party). The wedding is net weekend, so I’m not going to have much free time next weekend either, but it will e totally worth it.

But possibly more important than any of that (for me personally at least) is that on Friday I finally signed my application for my childcare level three course!!! I’m so excited!! I haven’t done study in about five years, and I don’t think I was ever a particularly studious student (the depression didn’t help with that). I just want to prove to myself that I am actually capable of studying really hard and doing well. I just want to be proud of myself for doing well.

So that is going to take up a lot of my time for the next year. I’m beginning to get anxious that I’m not going to have enough time to study around working 40 hours a week, and commuting about 2 hours each day. I’m just going to end up with no free time. Although I have decided that I’m going to give myself one day each week where I don’t do any studying, otherwise I will feel like I don’t get any free time at all, and that will make me miserable.

But despite all that, I really am looking forward to studying and finally getting my childcare qualification. This time next year I’ll have my level three, I’ll be able to look for better paying jobs that are nearer to where I live. I honestly can’t wait for the day when I get to walk to work. Haha.

I can’t wait to get started on my studying. This is going to be so good, and so worthwhile. Bring it on!!

Love Bobbi. Xx.

Big Life Change.

So…

Saturday morning I officially handed in my resignation at the shop!

I still can’t quite believe it. I’m finally leaving. And what’s better is that I’m leaving to do a full time job which will include training, and that will set me on the path to an actual career!.

Haha. I feel so grown up saying that I’m starting a career.

I will be taking up the role of Nursery Assistant in a nursery and pre-school in west London.

I’m so thrilled. I know that the commuting will probably be utter poop, and the job itself will be exhausting. But I think it’s also going to be rewarding as heck, and it’s going to involve so much training that will just help me to build up skills.

It is just going to do so much good for me career-wise that I can over-look how tired I’m going to be from early mornings and long hours. Not to mention five days a weeks chasing children all over the place.

I don’t yet know if I’m going to be stationed with a particular age group, or if I’ll be drifting between them. That’s something that I’m going to just have to wait and see. I’m happy to work with any age group there.

Even though I’ve had a trial morning and been told quite a lot about the place, I’m still not particularly sure what to expect.

I think that the worst thing about the job will be changing nappies, but I’m sure that will just be some insignificant thing that I do every day. Once I’ve done it a few times I’m sure I won’t even think twice about what I’m doing.

The thing that I think I’m most concerned about is if any of the parents have a problem with me. I don’t expect that they will… but what if they do? I’m sure my new colleagues will help me out. They’ll train me well, and they’ll talk to the parents about how I’m just training. As long as I make sure the children are safe there can’t be too much harm done. 🙂

Now I’m just rambling because I have so many thoughts running through my head at the moment. Maybe I’ll write a more coherent post once I’ve experienced a few days at my new job. Haha. I start next Monday, and I’m so excited (part of me still forgets that I’ve still got to work at the shop for this week).

Until next time…

Love Bobbi. Xx.

The Power of Overwhelm.

Earlier this evening I was watching a video on YouTube in which a girl was talking about how she had decided to change your university course, and this made me remember when I was her age and in a similar position. I had applied for one course, and then decided I was no longer interested in it, and chose something completely different.

It’s kind of irrelevant what happened, but from what I can remember the January to August of that year went way too fast. At one moment I was failing my mock exams, the next I was failing my summer exams… Then it was all over, I had rushed through applying to university without really knowing what I wanted to do purely because I had been told that university is the only way to go, and there was no other way to get a decent job without a degree, but was given little to no advice on how to choose my degree course.

In any case, this evening I was watching this video, and I became overwhelmed by the fact that my university application experience felt wrong. I felt like I didn’t consider all my options for further education, and I didn’t get any assistance from my teachers on what to do when choosing courses.

This led me to wonder if maybe I need to get a degree in something else. Maybe I need to put some effort into choosing something properly like I should have done years ago. And now I just feel incredibly overwhelmed by life and the universe, and just everyone’s expectations, and my own limits.

I never feel good enough in any case, but now I’m just thinking about how I haven’t taken the right path with my life, and I don’t know what I want to do. I’ve been stuck in the same crappy retail job for two and a half years, which is making me feel like I’m not progressing efficiently in my life. I feel like I ought to be doing something with more hours, that earns more money…

I feel like working in retail can be done by people with no work experience, and I think I’m more qualified and experienced and could be doing something else with my life if only I’d put in the effort to applying for it.

I just don’t know…

This has been a really ranty post, and I don’t find any meaning from it, I just wanted to get my thoughts out of my mind so that maybe I can move on from the trapped feeling that I’ve had for almost an hour now.

I can’t concentrate on anything, and I don’t feel like doing anything. I just feel that I need to be doing something right now, I just don’t know what.

I just want more direction in my life…

Until next time…

Love Bobbi. Xx.