Tag: work

The Llama came back
life

The Llama came back

CassieLeave a comment

Hello internet!

Apologies for the disappearing over the last 6 weeks or so. It’s been a rough time. My mental health tanked a bit in the last couple of weeks of my old job and the place I was working showed their true colours with regards to how they viewed disabled employees and accessibility.

I started my new job just over a month ago and so far so good – the learning curve is very steep, they do AP very differently to anywhere I’ve worked before. The people all seem lovely and I’m starting to get my confidence back, so that’s a good thing.

The last couple of weeks though have been very hard on my mental health. The anniversary of my dad’s death, the date that would have been his birthday AND Mother’s Day all falling pretty close together.

And because that wasn’t enough (or possibly because I was so stressed) I managed to get sick on top of it. Fun times y’all

I’ve been taking the best care of myself that I can – not pushing myself too hard, resting as much as I can – and I think I’m starting to come out the other side. My overall mood is starting to improve and my mood swings are less frequent, although I’m still exhausted.

I think my main goal for April is going to be ‘find the new morning/evening routines’, get back into the blogging routine, and ramble at length about the books I’m enjoying again – because somehow I’ve already read 23 books this year, and am close to finishing about 8 more!

Mainstream Authors That I Still Haven’t Read
top ten tuesday

Mainstream Authors That I Still Haven’t Read

Cassie4 Comments

Firstly, I want to apologise for disappearing for another couple of weeks – I went back to work at the beginning of the month after having been off for the best part of 2 months with a slipped disk and a torn tendon in my hip. That adjustment to going back to work has been exhausting – combination of reducing painkillers so I’m capable of working and having to use my brain etc etc.  But the physio is finally starting to work, I’m getting some of my mobility back, I can now walk about a quarter of mile without needing to sit down and hopefully I should be going home at the end of the month! (I’ve been at my partners since July because of these issues!)

And now we move on to the regularly scheduled posting

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s topic is Top Ten Mainstream Popular Authors that I Still Have Not Read
I don’t pay a huge amount of attention to who is or isn’t ‘mainstream’ or popular, but based on things that everyone seems to talk about, and last years Goodreads Choice Awards:

Colleen Hoover
Richard Osman
Sally Rooney
I’ve tried reading all three of these. I got about a page and a bit into one of their books, and promptly took them back to the library. Just not a writing style that worked for me

Emily Henry
Emily St John Mantel
RF Kuang
They’re on the TBR, I just haven’t quite to them yet, but I want to!

Rebecca Yarros
Brandon Sanderson
I’m just not that into fantasy and they don’t appeal to me

Travis Baldree
Tamsyn Muir
I’ve hyped Gideon The Ninth and Legends & Lattes up so much in my mind that I’m scared to start and not like them

How about you – are there mainstream/popular authors that you’re not reading?

Things Getting in the Way of Reading (and also blogging!)
top ten tuesday

Things Getting in the Way of Reading (and also blogging!)

Cassie1 Comment

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

I’m picking up a prompt from a couple of weeks ago, that seems quite timely since I’ve not blogged in like 6 weeks again. Things Getting in the Way of Reading (and also blogging!)

  1. University I am doing a part-time distance-learning Classical Studies degree, I have just finished my 4th module (out of 7 – I started with an access module or foundation year). I study about 25 hours a week and my final assignment of the year was submitted a couple of weeks ago. I am actually taking the next academic year off for mental health reasons/to avoid burnout

  2. Work They insist on taking up 40 hours of my time every single week, which honestly is incredibly rude of them. But then they do give me the money every month which lets me pay rent, buy food and acquire all the books so I suppose it’s a good transaction. Shame they don’t pay me to read books! 

  3. Video Games I have a couple of games I play daily on my phone – Bermuda Adventures, Star Trek: Timelines and some solitaire games – but also absolutely adore cozy games on my Switch. I love Animal Crossing, Cozy Grove, Harvest Moon, Spiritfarer, Stardew Valley, Story Of Seasons… it eats up a decent amount of time and there’s no complaints, to be honest! 

  4. Housework Admittedly, I’m not the best at keeping on top of keeping my flat in order. Between work, school and ADHD I blink and there’s suddenly a ridiculous amount of laundry and dishes to do and all my floors need vacuuming and ARGH! 

  5. Spending time with Li We’re in a long-distance relationship, I probably only see her for about 10 days every couple of months so when we are together, we like to do things together. Although, there is also a lot of parallel play taking place so there are definitely times when I’m reading! 

  6. Watching TV One of my biggest hobbies, other than reading, is watching TV. I watch a ridiculous amount of shows, will try the 1×01 of pretty much anything. And as a result, am never up-to-date on anything. Well, I used to be until the pandemic but then all my shows had COVID-19 storylines and my escape stopped being safe. Right now, I’m mostly watching old old old episodes of ER – I’m most of the way through S4

  7. Blogging I haven’t had as much time as I would like for blogging and for bookstagram, but I do throughly enjoy doing it. I love talking about books about as much as I enjoy reading them. My plan for over the summer is to pick it up more again.  

  8. Cooking I love to cook, and on an average week I will cook from scratch probably 5 nights. It’s mostly pasta and rice dishes, and I keep forgetting that I have a slow cooker so that’s something I want to remember to utilise more often. I have a lil pile of cookbooks, plus there’s the whole internet and I tend to steal recipes from HelloFresh! 

  9. Spoons I live with chronic pain, along with having anxiety and depression, so there are some days when I am fatigued, stressed, having a bad mental health day and don’t have the energy to do anything, even sitting and reading can be too much on days when I’ve used all my spoons on just getting through the day
    If you don’t know about the Spoon Theory, click here to learn more

  10. My TBR Honestly, there are days when the sheer number of books on my TBR, books that I want to read… even the number books that I’ve started and haven’t finished/still have in progress, just becomes overwhelming and I have a little panic. 

Book Blogger Hop Catch-up
book blogger hop

Book Blogger Hop Catch-up

Cassie1 Comment

And next, we catch up on The Book Blogger Hop which was originally created by Jennifer from Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. With Jennifer’s permission, Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer relaunched the meme on February 15, 2013. Check out the hop here!

Each week the hop will start on a Friday and end on Thursday. There will be a weekly prompt featuring a book-related question. The hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to their own blogs.

Are books a must-have in your home? and ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY. I cannot imagine living without books. It’s pretty much the only reason I haven’t already moved in with Li, is because there’s no room in her flat for my books.

My bookshelves take up half the wall space in my living room, 5 of them. I have another one in my bedroom. And a good 3 or 4 piles of books that don’t fit on the shelves – I do keep meaning to get another two for my bedroom, I just never seem to quite get round to it!

I’d always intended on making my spare bedroom a library/study room but that never happened and since Li and I are planning on moving in together in the next 18ish months, I’m not really sure if it’s worth doing.

What apps/websites do you use to make your social media posts? My blog runs on WordPress, and it automatically crossposts to Twitter. I used to use Twitter a lot but all the changes lately are just about making it about as difficult to use as Facebook. What the hell is wrong with a ‘show me all the posts from all the people I follow – and nothing else – in chronological order? This is why I still use Dreamwidth because it can do that!

I have a instagram as well but I’m still trying to figure out how I want to use it, the types of posts I’m making etc. And again, there’s the frustrations of how the algorithim decides what it wants to show me.

As I’m writing this, I wonder if there are chrome add-ons that can do these for both Twitter and Instagram so that’s going on my list!

Do you spend your lunchtime reading? At home, I don’t actually. It would be far too easy for me to lose track of time, get sucked into the book and forget to actually go back to the working portion of the afternoon. And yes, that’s even with an alarm set because if I’m reading, I might not actually hear it.

When I’m at the office though, I generally do. I’m not as able to hyperfocus on reading because there’s constant movement of people, so I’m still more aware of my surroundings and can actually go back to the working bit of the afternoon

What is your go-to website to check out book reviews? Honestly, I pay very little attention to book reviews on places like Goodreads or Amazon. I pay a little bit of attention on storygraph to things like mood, pacing and characters but it pretty much boils down to not caring what people I don’t know thing of a book.

If a friend who knows what I enjoy, or a person in the book community who has similar tastes/approaches to me, recommends something then I care what they think. But generic book reviews on the interest are of absolutely no consequence to me.

Weekly Wednesday Blogging Catchup & What I’m Reading Wednesday… On A Thursday
weekly wednesday blogging challenge · www wednesday

Weekly Wednesday Blogging Catchup & What I’m Reading Wednesday… On A Thursday

Cassie3 Comments

Between work and health and school and just… life in general, I am a stressed and struggling llama right now. I have been hiding in books this last few weeks, lots of reading but no spoons to do any writing about the reading. Hell, over the last two weeks, typing has hurt because my hands have been so swollen and I’ve had to get two extensions on my Julius Caesar assignment. Co-codamol, naproxen and CBD have been my BFFs

Today, I actually feel like I have a little space in my brain and the pain levels are dropping off so I thought I’d catch up on some Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge questions that I’ve missed over the last few weeks – not all of them or I’ll be here all day but definitely a good handful of them.

My favourite food is a stuffed crust pepperoni pizza
Don’t get me wrong, I love cooking. And you can’t go wrong with some savoury mine and cheesy mash, or a good spaghetti bolognese, or a macaroni cheese, or a Full English.  But there’s something about a pepperoni pizza hits home in a different way. 

My favourite subject in school will probably come as no surprise to many people becuase it was history. From learning about the Romans and Vikings, to Medieval and Tudor times, to GCSE history and the history of medicine. I’d always planned on doing history at university – there was a history of science, medicine and technology degree that I really wanted to do – but it wasn’t to be, continued to love the subject and read all the non-history books about the times that I loved. And now I’m doing my Classical Studies degree and it’s amazing!

And, in a related question, My Favourite historical personage to read about isn’t generally a single person, but it’s all things related to the Plantagenets, the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors. Pretty much the whole British monarch from Henry II through to Elizabeth I. 
I have a book out the library right now on St George,  because I saw it on the shelf and realised I didn’t know much about the legends, or if there was an actual person they were based on. 

And then, even though it’s a Thursday, we have WWW Wednesday which asks:
What are you currently reading?
Mary Beard – The Roman Triumph
Andrea Penrose – Murder on Black Swan Lane
Chris Smith – The Naked Scientist
AF Steadman – Skandar and the Unicorn Thief

What did you recently finish reading?
Sarah J Maas – A Court of Mist and Fury
Mira Grant – Chimera
VE Schwab – Gallant
Jeremy Clarkson – Diddy Squat: A Year On The Farm
Talia Hibbert – Damaged Goods

What do you think you’ll read next?
Holly Black – The Wicked King
Talia Hibbert – Untouchable
Ransom Riggs – Library of Souls
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Ruby Wax – A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled

The Sunday Post: No spoons or fucks to be found
sunday post

The Sunday Post: No spoons or fucks to be found

Cassie5 Comments

It has been a week y’all and I am completely done. I’m not planning on doing anything more strenuous today than walking between the kitchen and living room to get food/drinks etc.

So.

Monday at work I was dealing with the fallout of people not processing my Key Engineering Supplier invoices while I was doing Big Project Work. And it was one of those days where I processed… a LOT of invoices. One of the reasons I work slow and steady 90% of the time is that when the shit hits the fan like this, I have the oomph to post like 60 invoices in a day.

I also had a therapy appointment, we’re almost at the end of our sessions and we’re starting to work now on my Staying Well Plan. It’s not as scary as I thought it would to be coming to the end and not having Jeanett’s support which obviously is the entire POINT of therapy.

Tuesday I had a day off work because of a dentist appointment. I knew I had to have a filling and I knew I’d be no use to anyone after it was done. Except… it wasn’t just a filling. It was two fillings AND taking the first mould. I was not expecting that. I was very very glad the diazepam had kicked in before she took the mould because that was overwhelming and horrible. And my dentist was doing a new thing which REALLY helped. She’d be like ‘I need to do [XYZ] and it’s going to take me to the count of 10’, and then she would count out loud to 10. So there was this fixed end point to the current torture and then I could take a break. AND she lets me get up out of the chair and stim which is amazing!

Wednesday I continued plowing through invoices, but also had my introductory phonecall with my new tutor. She seems nice enough, specialises in Roman literature and we had a good chat about how she can support me with my ‘additional needs’, how best for her to communicate with me etc so that was really good.

And then yesterday I had my seasonal COVID booster jab. I was very very anxious about that. It’s at the local football ground and last year was… not good. The parking was very confusing, there was way too many people and I had a complete panic attack/meltdown which neither they or I knew how to handle.

This year I decided to walk – it was just over a mile – because that would ease the parking panic. Plus I sometimes find that walking, the repetitive motion of it, as long as my knees are behaving, is quite calming. So, headphones on and down the road I went. And there was no-one there. One person in front of me, two old people who were glaring at me behind me, and I was in and out in like 10 minutes.
I was actually really glad I walked in the end, I had so much adrenalin built up, and then it was almost anticlimatic so walking home again was a good use for that. Then I crashed, napped, and ordered myself a naughty KFC.

I get to do it all over again next week with my flu jab, so that’s going to be fun

Woke up this morning to the news that I won £89 on the Lottery last night. Treated myself to The Novel Companion which restocked in the week but I didn’t have the budget for. Very excited
I’d initially wanted next years Always Fully Booked planner but when I looked closer at the weekly planning pages, the layout wouldn’t work for the style of planning that’s currently working for me and it wasn’t worth getting just for the reading journal bits. So yes, I’m thrilled!

School also technically started again yesterday, but pretty much my only contribution to that was to tidy up my desk. It looks pretty awesome mind:


This week’s unit is mostly introductory work – information about the module, how the module is studied, links to the pronunciation guide and the study website. I’ve been chatting in the forums already and will probably spend a couple of hours on the intro stuff this afternoon.

Other than that, as long as I catch up on the dishes and read a chapter or so of A Brief History of Ancient Greece, then I’ll be happy.

Here’s to a better next week!

life

A Quick Catchup

Cassie1 Comment
Apologies for the lack of posting over the last week or so – I have been an exhausted Cassie. A huge project I’ve been involved in at work has completely imploded and I’m picking up debris left, right and centre. It’s been a month or so, and it’s going to be at least another month or so. Shit officially hit the fan and meetings are involving senior management (so I’m hoping that means some of the problems are going to be fixed but I’m not holding my breath).

School is also going fantastically. I got 81% for my English Literature assignment which was an essay on Twelfth Night and one on Jane Eyre. My feedback says ‘You have communicated your ideas, knowledge and understanding effectively using your own words. Your answer is reasonably well-structured with a good referencing and there is clear evidence of generally sound essay-writing skills.’ so as you can imagine I am beaming.
Next up is a short story of 900 words – we’re given 3 first lines to write, annoyingly all in first person so I’m thinking I’m going to write two versions: one following the first person, and one twisting it so I can write in third person. I’m not worried about that taking too long because in the free writing exercises we’ve been doing, I’ve been writing about 400 words in 15 minutes. The reflective commentary, on the other hand… ugh!

But what it does mean that by the time I’ve worked, cooked and studied, I am utterly exhausted and just flooping on the couch with a book. And, because I’m stressed, my ADHD is acting like a little bitch and I am starting a ridiculous number of books. I do seem to have started to settle on reading Bill Bryson – The Body: A Guide For Occupants and Sarah Penner

I have managed to finish a few lately though:3/5
Matt Haig – The Comfort Book – 4/5
Philip K Dick – The Impossible Planet – 4/5
Alok Vaid-Menon – Beyond The Gender Binary – 4.5/5
Edward Monkton – I Love You – 5/5
Carmen Parets Luque – A Handful Of Buttons – 3/5
Rob Jackson & Ricardo Gattas-Moras – The Rainbow Bee – 5/5
Mini-reviews to follow once I have more brain, probably next week after I’ve submitted my assignment