Christmas Eve, 2010.

I think my coworkers count for this, particularly the accounts lady, Pam, that was sacked. Immediately before Xmas.

Hmm, if my work Xmas party counts, anyway.

Yes, I somehow managed this. Not to say I didn’t eat pavlova and lemon meringue pie after midnight… but…

Jamberoo. Need I say more? Unfortunately, that wraps it up. There is a lot more to do, and quite a few of these last remaining ones are looking like they won’t happen at all. I’ll need to reassess those.

…better.

In July, Allyson and I drove to Canberra and back. It was a small road trip, but we did do it. It was originally going to be a lot longer, but we decided to drive all the way south some other time. We just didn’t have enough time to do it, really.

I did this yonks ago but apparently never made it official.

Good old borax insecticide + winter.

It’ll be ready in a few more weeks!

I now know that even if I’m unemployed, I can keep my head above water.

It was truly sickening.

In fact, my sister works there now.

No hallucinations.

Phew! It’s the hard things remaining now.

• They’re in Albion Park Rail! This means I can drive there in 25 minutes. BIG DEAL, since my last job had me catching a train for 90-100 minutes, then hiking to Glebe from Central station.
• They sell tangible products! Not NLP which I find highly dubious.
• I get to be part of a team, instead of having everything IT resting on my shoulders so I feel like I’m constantly under massive amounts of pressure.
• I’m treated with respect. That’s a key thing that seemed to be lacking before.
• I’m making about the same as before, only I don’t have to spend $57 a week on a train ticket. It’s closer to $25 a week in petrol. Oh and I get more perks because I’m an employee instead of a contractor… and they’re already deducting tax, so I won’t have a nasty surprise at the end of this financial year!

OK, so what else do I have to report? Well, what don’t I?

God knows how many goals I’ve achieved. I’ll have to do a full rundown in another post as this one will get too long.

I’ve done tons of drawing with my Wacom Cintiq (have I blogged about that yet??). It’s made it SO EASY to make cool looking drawings. I love it to bits. Look in the sidebar on the right to see a few links to images I’ve created with it.

A couple of days ago I registered the domain www.atherandearth.com. This is where my comic will live. I am still working on it, but I’m confident I’ll be able to start getting things done with it once NaNoWriMo this year is over.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I will be participating again in one month’s time. It will be AWESOME. I already have a fully developed plot!

Site Flight Web Design is over. I just never could get the hang of running a business. Don’t worry though, I’m not sad about it. It’s just me, I’m not cut out to be self-employed. Not enough motivation for things like that. It’s a problem I’ve had since I was about 10. Started out as a distaste for homework. Now it’s a distaste for doing things for other people while I’m at home. It feels like my personal space is being crushed, I guess. I’m happy to work while at a workplace, but I just can’t take that work home with me. Hence why I couldn’t handle working from home.

So it’s been a funny old ride, this year. It started out with me as enormously cashed up, buying cameras and expensive graphics tablets, leaving my Woolworths job, moving house, working in Sydney, ending each day feeling more drained of my sanity than the day before… then, I was unemployed, enjoying all the sudden free time but feeling lazy and sluggish and kind of doing that thing that George Costanza in Seinfeld did during the “Summer of George” – spending all my time “decompressing” by sitting idly. It got to the point where my sister tried making me do things by giving me lists because she was so upset that I seemed to be doing nothing. But I found my way.

I applied for a fateful job in late August, I got an interview, and the following Wednesday I was offered the job. I was nervous on my first day, and a bit spooked by the whole ordeal in the first few hours, where I had a whole lot of tasks bounced off me, and I was left worried about what I’d got myself into. But now that I’ve settled in, I’ve learnt that these things are doable and it seems like I’m appreciated in that workplace.

Because of my unemployment coinciding with my car needing a bunch done to it, I’m still in a bit of debt, but my job will take care of that within this month, and that’ll be a big weight off my shoulders.

Thanks to working close by, I will be able to not only join the gym next to my workplace and work out every day, but also work on my comic AND do NaNoWriMo without any problems.

This is it! This is the point in my life where everything works for me!

That is one of the many reasons I decided to leave that job. My last day is Wednesday, and BOY am I excited. This company really is crumbling, and even though I quit 7 weeks ago, after only a few other people quit, now I’m one of the only ones left after everyone else quit in the meantime. I wish I hadn’t agreed to stick around this long (the boss realised how badly she needed me and asked me to stay). Every day it gets harder and harder to get out of bed and face this place. Back on the day I quit, Boss Lady decided I was to blame for all her problems. I’d had a really terrible and stressful two weeks before that, having a lot of pressure put on me while the other web designer was away, so I just snapped when she began to tear into me. Normally at times like that I would retreat, but by then I was just fed up. I stuck up for myself, and showed a side of myself I haven’t let out in a long time. I don’t regret it, but I wouldn’t be hasty in doing it again.

So I have a holiday coming up in July. Much needed. But also needed is a source of income, so it’s straight to Centrelink for me. That’s okay.

So anyway, many things have happened these past months, the most obvious of which for those that see me would be my tragically rapid weight gain. Good god, I need to get this sorted. Office work is really taking its toll. Not to mention the weekly pizza they feed us here, and the many places to buy junk food on the way to the train station. This job is poison in my life. I thought it would be great. There aren’t any food places really close to here except for a liquor shop, I was going to walk to and from Central every day, which is a 25-30 minute walk each way. I was going to be active on the weekend. I was going to keep my life in order with a set routine that included Wii Fit and the Biggest Loser Wii game.

What happened to all that?

Let’s analyse.

• The liquor shop nearby has soft drinks, and it has chocolate bars. When I’m really hungry, they seem like a great idea.
• The weather got colder, it started to rain more, so I started catching trams and buses from Central. Especially since the MyMulti travel passes came in, I’ve been getting buses.
• I’ve been so tired constantly of late that the thought of playing a physically active video game is one of the least appealing things when I’m at home.
• I’m a comfort eater, and work in general (the volume of work combined with having to travel 5 hours a day) has been stressful. Stressful to the point where I have had a recurring apthous ulcer in my mouth since April. I have never had an apthous ulcer (aka canker sore) before.
• Since I get home so late, I either buy my dinner or just eat the most convenient thing at home, which is often something bad for me.

So, as you can see, I don’t have a lot going my way in terms of weight loss. So I hope to turn things around when my holiday starts, at least in terms of activity and physical exertion.

So, hopefully I will get the chance to update you on the goals I’ve achieved since my last post, but I can’t right now, so see you later.

Enjpoy ur stay ;D D

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little April Fools prank

Have a good Easter weekend!

Now, tonight I will be shaving my head for the World’s Greatest Shave. It would be awesome to get a few more donations than just me and my sister… If anyone is interested? The Leukaemia Foundation needs our support! Click here to donate

BTW in doing this I’ll be able to tick another item off my list: radically changing my hairstyle!

So be a sport and support, so I can be brave and shave!

I’ll be blogging about this a little later on. It deserves its own post.

Allyson’s friend Natasha (whose face you might have seen at Woolworths, as the face of Unit Pricing – or maybe you saw her as a cheerleader for the St George Dragons) was the first non-family guest to our new abode, and she complimented us. There’s not really a story in it though, unfortunately.

I took Mum and Dad to Murphy’s Bar and Grill in Figtree for dinner a couple of weeks ago. It has delicious food, but it’s EXPENSIVE. Like, cheapest meal being $23 expensive. Cheapest dessert was $9.50, cheapest starter was two slices of garlic bread for $3.50. Not worth it. Don’t bother going there. Go to Hog’s Breath Cafe instead. They’re like $8 less per meal and they have basically the same food. In other news…. I bought something today maybe I shouldn’t have. *cough*wacomcintiq*cough*

So I decided to get a new one. Because I have to keep the same number – it’s on my business cards – I figured I had better get one through Primus again, so I could keep the same SIM card but not have to pay huge sums to get the phone.

Looking at the sparse range of handsets they had to offer, I had little choice in the matter, so I picked one of the few smartphones available, a Nokia E71. I am currently using that phone’s miniature QWERTY keyboard to type this blog post, and I’ve made surprisingly few typos.

Unfortunately, Google phones don’t really exist in Australia at this stage. If I want one I’ll need to wait a while.