The Trouble with Sleep

As you can see I didn't end up keeping to what I said about blogging. I mean thing is I'm still having problems with sleep so I can attribute it to that I guess. Actually slept okay last night ... so here a post.

So for about a week I've been having terrible sleep, or attempts at sleep, ending up sleeping at random times during the day. What's different from the past? Oh right yeah sleep apnea. Had that for years, probably years before I found out I had it. Many years of Peter's infamous snoring probably was from sleep apnea. Also the days of sleeping during classes and such ... I mention a bit in my MIA post but I might post more about it another time just so I can get this post out.

But no I was trying to use the CPAP machine so it wasn't that. It's more likely because studies are coming up again. I've been deferring it awhile now because of health and family circumstances. Now it come round again and I'm worrying. Years of terrible studying, some due to circumstances and some due to my incompetence, has made me a bit squirmish when it comes of studying. So why don't I just not study? Well I don't have anything worth anything to get a career and I already have a hard time looking for any work I can possibly get so I'll need something more. I don't want to just study and fail again. I want to break that cycle. So what I guess is keeping me up is trying to figure out how to break that cycle. In the past I had a hard time asking for help but I think I'm a bit better at it now. I'm up for any help I can get. 

Now I am a bit better at asking for help now it's more of who do I ask for help from?

Updating about updating

Once again I've pretty much been leaving this dry. I keep convincing myself I will write, repeating over and over in my mind what I want to write but then when it comes to writing I'm like, I'll do it later. Procrastinating much? It was one of the reasons why I wanted to write this blog. Also I plan in my mind over and over so because of that I tend to think that I have to have it planned out before writing. The last few posts were very much like this, becoming very long posts and I still miss stuff. When I used to write I would just sort of write what I thought and try to edit it as little as possible whereas now I'd just back and forth editing it. I mean it's not a bad thing but then I don't post it until very late after I've gone over it time and time again.

To help me along I'm going to tell you what I intend to post so you can bug me about it. I haven't been sleeping well so I'm going to post on that and an update about volunteer work. I mean it's somewhat an accountability thing ... let's just see if it works. I should have time tomorrow (today) so should least post about one or the other ... think it should be sleep because that was mostly over the weekend.

Today ...

Volunteer, volunteer

Was gonna post about the work for the dole after working a few days but because of being sick here and there I haven't really racked up that many days. To this day it has been 4 weeks since I started but after the first day I was sick that week and the week after. Went in the following Tuesday but they sent me home because was getting a running nose. Then this Tuesday I had to see the doctor for my old elbow injury. Finally managed a full day today. So up to date I have done 3 full days and an half day over 4 weeks ... but I've done a lot apparently ...

For those who don't know they've placed me in an opt shop in Kew so not too hard to get to. The hours ain't bad either because I usually need to start at 9 other places they've sent me but here it's 9:30 and I still end at 5. They're pretty free with the timing (not that I turn up late or anything) but instead of having lunch I leave half hour early. However most people there were half dayers so I meet different people during the day. Everyone I've met there are women but I've heard some men volunteer on some days. They make fun of that fact but I'm used to it working in childcare. I do need to wear an apron for this place though (no I don't usually wear that hat). First day I trammed in. Tram line pretty much goes straight down. Takes half an hour because it's peak hour traffic. Found out we have a car park area for opt shop so I've driven there since. Takes half an hour from my house so lose less time and I don't need to walk. Also good because I can load stuff from the opt shop in my car ... I'll get on that later. So not too bad location wise.

Yeah that hat ... and that face ...

So the work there ... very subjective I say. What I mean is is there's work but it's like you choose what you pick up sort of thing. Nothing is very clear cut. Pricing things is pretty vague. We have to price it so we make money for the charity but we don't want to price it so hardly anyone will consider buying it. And thing is the donations range in conditions from brand new to unsellable. I'm kind of terrible without some sort of structure. At times you'll see me standing around not knowing what to do. I mozzy around looking for something I might have a clue what to do with. But apparently I'm a great help when it comes to tasks I'm allocated because I get them done quick.

Childcare Centre

Opt Shop

Organizing wall peg things ... looks pretty

 Okay quick list of some of these set tasks I've done. First one is ... shredding ... Somehow this job always come to me. Had to do this at the childcare centre I was working in last year ... I'll post photos side by side. They had these sitting around since November last year. Second, counting puzzle pieces ... okay I only did a few of these because I was given this task when I was sick. However I heard the last guy quit because he had to count pieces for one puzzle ... well I didn't quit. okay so the real second is bag sorting. They have these big bags which they fill with stuff to store like summer stuff which we don't put out in the winter. Well they were all shoved in a big bag and some of the big bags were way to big to fill and carry so had to throw out. Seeing the state of the bags just shoved together I thought I'd divide the bags into their various sizes. Was much appreciated. And the third most recently finished task was measuring fabrics. They get like a tonne of fabrics. They had a wall high draw system overflowing with fabrics. Told them I didn't know how much fabric was worth but they just said I needed to measure and sort through them because no one was doing it. Took me one and a half days to get it all measured and sorted. Some of the fabric weighed heaps and some were 6 metres long!?! and I had like minimal work space so I had to fold it many times just to measure it ... Some were both heavy and long. Eventually it was all done. By the way the picture is one of 4 boxed I sorted through not including fabric which had to be thrown out because of stains or cuts. But finally the wall was reduced to 4 well organized draw of measured fabric. Hope I don't have to do that again any time soon. The boss says I've been a big help doing the stuff no one does ... Yeah great. Don't know what I'm going to do next.

So about loading my car ... it's just a few things. I mean I always liked opt shopping but being in the back you find things that don't find their way to the front for different reasons. I got myself some goodies that I've been happily using. You find all sort of things you wouldn't think would be at an opt shop. 

Really should control myself, I already have a lot of gadgets and stuff in my rooms ... 

Awww sitting in the back all by himself

Pretty but no I didn't get it

Curiouser and curiouser

So the night continued. We lost the late comers because they had dinner plans and another joined us. The plan was escape room. Many people assume that I have done escape room before because I'm quite into puzzles and the like. However this was actually my first time. I had expectations but also knew that I could easily go bust as this was the point of many of these escape rooms. To no spoil anything I won't go into specifics if you had ever planned on going to the same escape room.

The blindfolding was interesting. But once the blindfolds came off I didn't see why they needed to give us blindfolds. Probably a immersion thing. As we started working out clues I had no idea where to start. I've been known as an overthinker and it didn't help here. Any extra information just made me confused what it was for. Let's just say I found myself pretty useless and didn't manage to help at all to get us out of the first room. However even after didn't work out from the person who got us through how they did it ... apparently guessed their way through ... The second room started no better. I managed to find some clues but were unable to use them. To help with rooms they left QR codes which could be scanned to get extra clues. Got to the point where we used one to find out how to proceed. This was when I was better. The clue didn't give us the answer but it did narrow down what we needed to do. So I was some help here. So onto the third room. As the room numbers increased, so did the number of clues needed. My overthinking helped from this point on. I had information from all the previous rooms but didn't know where they went but because now there was more places to use these clues and some had already been used, we were able to breeze through the last part.

The room had a time limit of 45 minutes. Using clues penalized 5 minutes. Even though we used a clue we kept under the 45 minutes so were pretty happy with the results. Hope to be able to more escape rooms in the future. Maybe not organize them.

Just to end the day here's a picture of me shamelessly promoting to get a free soft serve.

 

Rolling Over

I did post about some board gaming stuff but then I realized how much of it was just on how game were and not about life, which it blog should be on, as life is hard. So I made it harder by starting a game exclusive blog. I guess I could have gone back to my old blog When I'm not playing games, however then I'd have to clean it up because it has my old stuff on it. You're welcome to go and read the stuff that's there. The new blog is called Play it Interesting. I will put board game stuff on it, and possibly video game stuff depending on what I feel like. Now I need to manage more stuff ... great.

I wanna, but I don't

I really want to post and I've got lot of random things I want to post about, but when I sit down to do it I don't. When it come down to it it is because I can't always get what I'm thing about down on paper ... or virtual paper ...

Just like how I usually try to explain things, I go in a really weird order that most people don't understand. It's the way I process things. However when I put it down and I read it then I can see there's better way to order it. So sometimes when I sit down I keep thinking about the best way to start of the post. However that most often requires me think of the entirety of what I want to post. When I can't I don't even start the post. Talk about procrastinating. Guess that's the same as how I do assessments ... One of the reasons why I'm practicing writing by blogging.

I'll try to get some more stuff up. Try being the operative word. 

Difficulty Setting

Been playing B-Sieged which looks quite difficult/daunting with the hordes of enemies moving ever so close to siege the citadel. Lost the first two game miserably so didn't have much hope for the third. However with a bit of luck rolling we managed to beat the game. 

That night we had Koinonia. Talked about the difficulties serving those we work with. The mentality of the work place is often to put yourself first. So to serve others in the workplace is pretty counter productive right? Well it really depends on the goal of why we do things. As Christians we are serving to show God's love. 

The reason I put these two different subjects together is that they both talk about difficulties. Difficulty is a subjective idea because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Was just thinking of the things that I found difficult or not difficult. I mean looking at some games I play, some people wold say how hard it is and tell me how I make it look easy or such, even though to me it is neither hard or easy. Then there are things others do that I find extremely difficult/impossible but they seem to do it with such ease. Now breaking that down there are aspects of things we do that I find easy but others that I find hard. Like I don't find it hard working, doing menial tasks but I find it hard to get a job. So would it be said that I find work in general hard because I can't even get work? 

I find interacting with children relatively easy to what others have said but I find it hard to study to be able to work in the business even though I have the skills. But this comes down to how the world works. You need a piece of paper to say what you can do, and you need the skills to be able to put that proof on paper. Reading and writing isn't my thing as you can probably find reading my blogging but these are required skills for general education. Practical skills are great but doesn't exactly transfer to paper to hand in to my teacher. I know there are Cert and Diploma level stuff that grade more on practical skills but to teach you need a Bachelor. Even the guy I talked to study a Diploma said it was a waste and that I should study Bachelor if I wanted to teach. Does that mean I should just give up on teaching?

Practical skills also don't transfer to job interviews. All they can see is what is written down and possibly what they hear from referees. I don't have any interview skills so that's mostly what they see. Apparently I didn't know what was appropriate to wear to interviews (no I didn't wear anything dodgy) and that I need to practice interview answers which shows the little I know about interviews ... 

In the end it looks like I have the wrong skills to enter into what I want to. I think what I need to do is get some help. Some professional help ...

Ran-ting

It looks like I just decided I'm going to rant on this blog now. I did name this blog life is hard, sigh, so I don't see why I can't talk about the difficulties in my life. I've been thinking what a blog is suppose to include, or from the other side what is it not suppose to include. I guess it depends who reads the blog. I've kept it public but removed it from search (however someone in USA already found my blog before setting that up) so probably only the people I've shared the link to can read this. You can always not read my rants. I'll label my rants when I realize I'm ranting. If you want to read them then enjoy.