Making time for time ⌚

It’s been nearly a whole year since my last update (11 months ago) and reflecting back, a lot has changed. Quite a few people wanted me to update my blog, and can’t help thinking they want a few answers to questions they are too afraid to ask. Which is absolutely fine and understandable.

In terms of mental health, I am better now. I’m not quite sure if that’s the right way to put it as I still suffer from panic and anxiety episodes, and depressive episodes every now and then. But I’ve been going through counselling for about 9 months now. My team at work have been supportive so couldn’t ask for more. I meant to blog about this sooner so there’s a whole post in a draft that will be posted at some point.

Work feels a lot more engineeringy. Which is always a good thing. The thing I like about engineering is that often it’s not always the same problem in a different place so always keeps you constantly thinking. I went through a bout of feeling unsatisfied at work with low workloads and some mundane tasks until recently, where I finally found where my skills fit with certain tasks. So all is good in the hood, as the kids say.

More health stuff! During counselling I realised some of the skills I lack in is due to not having such an ‘ordinary’ upbringing. I didn’t have anyone to take me swimming or ride a bicycle. So in the last few months, I moved back home (more on that topic another time) and since I was unable to realistically go to the gym in the mornings – and I know I definitely will not go in the evenings with the exception of the odd class – I decided to take swimming lessons and learn how to cycle.

When you haven’t done something like cycling before, I tell you, it is really bloody difficult! The trouble also is knowing that you are more than capable and that you are not dumb as a mule. Which makes it especially frustrating when you can’t seem to get the hang of it, and start to analyse every time it goes wrong. Which, by the way, don’t do that! Anyway, after about 4 lessons (which are 2 hours long each), I finally grasped it and was able to cycle! Except I am still using what my instructor calls ‘the death grip’ on my handles. I am the most tense person on a bike ever! So plenty of room for improvement. Well, my cycling lessons are not over yet anyway.

Back at school, I was the one that really dreaded P.E. Not for me, thanks. I thought I was just incapable of being fit, but really it just didn’t interest me. I didn’t want to be competitive. I’m not really one for team sports either. It’s only after school and more recently I’ve been more interested into fitness. Which is funny as I discussed with my cycling instructor that it is usually the ones that are more fit at school that do not carry it on after school. Interesting as I never thought I would enjoy any physical activities.

Let’s talk games now. Everyone has been on this Pokemon Go hype, including me. I got to lvl 18 and it’s just bollocks now. It is the typical microtransactions game engine where it’s pretty easy to begin with and you level really quickly, to get to grips with the game, leaving you hooked. Then they start to introduce things to make it more challenging. To the point where you can’t easily carry on without giving them some money for items. Grand. So I’ve reached that point now, I’m feeling a lot less enthused. However, what this has done is peaked my interest back into the Nintendo franchise. They got me, dammit! So just purchased a 2DS.

Typically at the same time, I’ve been getting into playing Starbound since v1.0 has finally released. I was pretty hooked on Stardew Valley for a number of weeks. A few friends recommended it to me so I checked it out at PC Gamer Weekender (which actually we only checked out for the Vive demos… god, that needs another post too!!). After waiting a while for this socially starved guy to stop talking to the person who was assisting those playing Stardew (there was only one terminal for it), I had a go at it and thought it was cute and nice. Not much of a big deal. I did purchase it later on and realised it is much much more than ‘just a farming game’. I like dungeons. I like mini games. I like crafting things. And finding stupidly rare fishes that fly outta nowhere. Oh yeah, and actually making a living being a farmer…

So as you can see, a lot of my free time is taken up by the fitness activities I bestowed upon myself, bloody video games and I haven’t started on some of the other things like TV shows, comic books and normal reading books too… All whilst planning a big backpacking trip in October! More about those things another time.

The flaw with Generation Y

This post was pretty difficult to write about so excuse the scrambled thoughts that probably don’t flow right.

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I was a pretty lonely child, but I took this solitude to online. I was only allowed on it on weekends, but that was enough time to spend talking to “random strangers”. These “random strangers” became my friends – a few of them are still my friends today! This was the only way I knew how to make friends, and helped me develop myself – who I was, what my interests and hobbies were, because no matter what happened in everyday life, there’s always some kind of social acceptance somewhere in the world wide web.

They call people like me Generation Y; a group of people who originally did not grow up with the internet but developed this as part of their later childhood and adolescence.

I probably spent a number of years feeling very much alone, but I brushed it off, until I barely felt anything. Everyday I felt numb, no feeling, no enjoyment, no motivation, and found it really difficult to get out of bed. I would be in bed til it physically hurt, and then stay in bed some more.

But it was probably 15 years later I realised then I had depression, and now, it’s not so bad. Instead (?), I suffer from anxiety – actually, I didn’t find this out ’til probably a couple of days or weeks ago, to be honest. It had never occurred to me as the only kind I knew was social anxiety which I believed I 100% didn’t have. But the depression still affects me – that one I realised a couple of months ago.

My symptoms have worsen lately, though I’m unsure whether it is because I have diagnosed it or whether it’s just taken its toll.

A week ago I saw a GP about this (though was partially convinced that a lack of hormonal contraceptives had made it worse – not that I wanted any; they came with far more worse side effects when I was on them). It was my first time of telling anyone that wasn’t a really good friend, or my sister, or my other half. Why? There’s a few reasons. My biggest reason was that I was afraid of getting medically diagnosed. And that they wouldn’t believe me. The second was that I don’t suffer with it as much as some other people do so it doesn’t matter.

The first reason I stated stems from when I was a teenager; I opened one of my mum’s letters (we did this a lot because she can’t read) and it said she was diagnosed with depression. This was back when I guess I didn’t know what it was at all and didn’t know people got this. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I put it back where it was and never spoke of it again. Still haven’t. I didn’t want to get such a letter in my life.

So anyway, the GP recommended a few things, including this IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) programme, ran by the NHS in a lot of local communities, to provide group and 1 to 1 therapy sessions, which is probably the most effective form of treatment. I registered myself and was waiting a while (a week feels like a while!) to get a phone call to then tell me a telephone screening interview will take place. So I got my screening interview call tomorrow.

Everyone I’ve told (not many people, I must confess…) has said I’ve gotten through the worst bit by going to my GP. It was oddly not that bad really. But I feel like this screening interview is going to be the worst bit as sometimes I do feel numb as hell, and what if I don’t state just how awful I feel at times? And again, I still think, I don’t suffer as badly as some. But it’s getting so bad that I just need this, I need the help. I don’t want any meds, I just need this. I get afraid they just won’t believe me and that will be the end of my journey.

Also, to a lot of people that asked how I am recently – I’m sorry I lied to you. I didn’t want to be that much of a burden when all you wanted was to talk casually! But hopefully I’ll get better soon.

Consultancy work is complicated (!!)

My secondment to the Dartford project I talked about on a previous blog post is now over. It was going to be extended until end of December, with the expectation that it was going to be extended until the end of the financial year (March 2016) but it was met with complications.

So the project was going pretty well, they (eventually) made it clear the deadlines were pretty tight and the data would be used by pretty senior staff. I was doing the work, capturing my spin on it too. I was mostly going off myself liaising with stakeholders myself, managing this little project, and fairly often it would be senior members of staff that have been involved with Dartford for many years (it has been going on since 2009).

This work was really for my clients’ client so mostly, whatever they say goes. But this is where it does get political as I should only be doing work tasked by my clients themselves and no one above that, and also they already have some feuds within each other that I was unaware of.

Anyway, so I kept producing the work and we would have weekly meetings. I would get the data somewhere towards the end of the week – which can’t be helped. To the point where I would be overworking the day before the meeting so I would have something for them. The general jist of the stakeholders were that they were pretty happy with it, but no particular feedback on what they wanted really. Which didn’t help things. But the clients’ clients wanted to keep changing the data source literally week by week which was difficult to deal with (but I did) and eventually they realised that because a lot of analysis can be produced by the data, they needed to define different levels of analysis (i.e. high level, mid level etc).

It was frustrating that one my stakeholders (from the clients’ clients side) came in later on in the project, and you could tell from her body language she was more negative about the work but didn’t provide any comments or constructive criticism about what she wanted or expected and just avoided talking about it really. I like to think that I’m not a person that really minds criticism but what I mind more is the trying to push an issue away by ignoring it.

So yeah, it has ended because they’re under such high pressure because they ultimately need to produce the analysis in-house than subcontract it out, and the original scope has changed too much. For a project that started off very positive and challenging, it is a shame it has gotten to the point where it seemed negative, demotivating and constantly changing as many things were not considered.

The closure of a project is something new to me actually – I have to write a log about what happened in the project and actions I have taken, and then this time will be invoiced.

Initially I was pretty upset at the closure of this project because I did take it personally – I am used to projects being won and getting on with the work. I am not at all used to the clients changing their minds on how to proceed. My manager and a senior member of my team ensured that it was not something to take personally and it’s not a reflection of my work or skills, but more that clients can change what they want a lot when a project is being delved into.

In hindsight, I’m quite glad it is over. I was on the verge of struggling to juggle all of my work as this was taking up a lot of my time but I also wanted to take on new projects, that my time was being utilised somewhere between 120% and 160% (!!). I also wanted a lot more technical and design skills on traffic signals (which would help a lot with obtaining my chartership status in the future).

So ready to dive into a mattress though! We did an onsite review of 3 sites in 2 days. 1 day of onsite reviews typically takes up to 12 hours constantly on your feet (!) which can be quite grueling.

Leisure time!

Now for a post that is not revolved around work/engineering or gym!

I have been binge watching a few shows in the last few months. There are a couple I have to refrain from watching by myself on weekdays because I promise to watch some with Steve on the weekends (we try and watch new shows together) like Sense8, VICE (though not necessarily something to watch from the beginning) and Better Call Saul. I needed something on the weekdays as sometimes I’m a bit too tired out to play games.

One of those I binge watched was Orange is the New Black season 3. I wasn’t overly keen on seasons 1 & 2 as the pace was unrealistic and didn’t go the direction I was expecting. But I rather enjoyed season 3. I guess it seemed more real. In a odd way.

A big series I started myself as recommended to me by a friend was Grimm. A little daunting at 4 seasons (currently) at 22 episodes each (45 min long each too) but I thought I’d give it a go for 1 season. It’s about a guy (Nick Burkahdt) who is starting to see strange things in people, as if they are turning into monsters. Then he finds out he is a Grimm, which is hereditary, which means his ancestors (including his Aunt) have traditionally killed off these ‘monsters’, which live day-to-day as normal humans. Nick isn’t so keen on killing them, and his day job is being a detective cop. So it’s like a fantasy CSI.

I didn’t enjoy it very much to begin with, it took me quite a few episodes to get it. But oh boy, I’m hooked. The character developments and the dry humour are just great. You will have to get by season 2 also which is not the greatest. But I’m looking forward to seeing more. It’s not my favourite series ever. But definitely enjoyable.

I wanted to start a short / new series with the hope that it continues to be a big upcoming series. It’s kind of annoying when people tell you a series is great and it’s got 7 seasons you have to watch. Why couldn’t I have been there from the beginning?! So I looked at recent additions on Showbox, and this came up.

This series is a lot different with a more serious underlying tone of government and military conspiracy. She finds that an American organisation’s bank transactions to a terrorist organisation during her work to take out a lead terrorist but things aren’t as simple, and basically has to go on a run for her life as everyone seems to want her head. It’s fairly interesting, lots of different stories of different people who are affected by this, and they almost kind of come together in the end. The ending is so intense and really emotional (many tears were held back) that it is a satisfying ending but with a huge potential to go on.

It has been axed by NBC which is a real shame. Not sure why, I do wonder if it’s because it’s a series based on government conspiracy and there’s enough of that! I hope someone will bring it back but unlikely as it hasn’t been hugely popular. Worth a go at 13 episodes though.

I am done for shows at present. Going to go back to my American comics and manga phase and binge on those instead! That’s the plan anyway.

The art of knowing when enough is enough

By next month, I will have completed my first year at A*****. Doesn’t mean too much in the grand scheme of things, but I am still getting to grips to the consultancy world.

Recently I have been given a mini project where it is pretty much just me from my company and I have to interact with client and my client’s clients directly (as opposed to waiting for someone more senior in my team to talk to them directly). I have support from my team when I require it, which is more to do with advice on the project, its background, and high level management of it. But the bulk of the work is down to me; the interactions with stakeholders is down to me (of which many of them I have never met before) and more or less management of the project is down to me.

This project entails analysing the effects of the Dartford Charge on journey times, cost savings (personal and economical), traffic flow impacts and so on. They seem fairly happy / ok with what I’ve been doing so far (actually my stakeholders seem more grateful than anything) but so far in my project history, I haven’t completely seen the end of a project. The job of some projects have ended (mainly due to the financial year end) and I haven’t worked on a project where we finish it to its budget without issues of underspend or reaching the limit. Neither have I had even thought I could be on a project that I would mould completely myself. I’m surprised but grateful my managers have thought that I would be suitable for this.

Regardless to say, I’ve been working my ass off! I’ve been asked to extend the project work order but this is going to be a challenge in itself as I don’t want to overproject or limit myself to too few hours. Especially as I haven’t worked in this type of data analyst role before.

I guess it is strange to be doing a data analyst role in an engineering firm. However, it does still feel fairly engineering related – I am still undertaking a consultant role in all of this, in the project management sense, and also I am designing solutions to best project the data output. As well as extracting the data output to something useful too. So I don’t think I’m going far away from my goal.

My issues I’m facing with is my want to do too many things. My work and my team are great though – they’ve listened to me say I want to do loads of different things and they’ve taken action to ensure I do this. Previously I was doing a lot of project support (PM type). Although I didn’t mind that and I was fairly good at it, i wanted to get involved with the traffic signal review and design work. Dartford is taking a lot of my time at the moment and i do want to get stuck into the other work, but it’s near impossible at the moment. I have also kind of been taken off a big programme of works we are doing (I was programme support for it) which saddens me a bit, as I had a good relationship with my client (we used to work at Heathrow together). But hopefully I will get to chime in time-to-time.

(title is a bit passive aggressive for the content, oh well)

* I’ve censored my company to protect themselves and myself. I haven’t breached any details as such but I’d rather my blog be hidden.

#NWED

Today is National Women in Engineering Day – this year is the first time I had heard of it but if you keep up with Engineering or STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) news, you would’ve probably heard about it a lot over the past few months. It’s a big topic. At my company, they tried to get women to post with the #notjustforboys hashtag. Which is fine, a little cynical sounding but it gets its point across.

I went to a photocall this morning for all women engineers in London. London is hugely populated and I maybe half expected people to travel down. Unsure if they did. But over 800 people attended. I was oddly disappointed in the number, it just showed how few women engineers there are. I guess it might sound like a lot, but that is less than all the pupils from one (typical) secondary school. 6% of the UK engineering workforce is female.

The photocall itself was not super well prepared and I felt like I would rather be at work really! Which is kind of ironic, thinking about why I was there.

I’m finding it more difficult to find the time to take part in these activities, keep up with Engineering events (quite difficult when these events start at 6pm and you’re a good hour away from central London) and ultimately have time for myself. But the real question is, does enforcing females to get in the industry really ultimately matter?

For me, it’s not about whether you have XX or XY chromosomes. There is a serious and growing gap of skills shortage in the UK. My company released a report on the skills shortage and stated that if we could just increase the amount of females in the industry by x amount by 2020, we would double our workforce. Yeah ok I can’t remember exact figures, I did read it 6 months ago (give me a break).

I’m not saying feminism is not a problem but not one I would 100% focus on. I have heard stories from podcasts and experienced my own inequalities in the industry. It’s not pretty and it’s pretty damn ruthless. But honestly, it happens in a lot of industries – like retail for example.

Oh and about that Tim Hunt thing? Kind of in 2 minds about it. Mostly I think that what he was trying to say got misconstrued completely. Yet some of the stuff he said I can’t understand at all – how girls cry when criticised? I don’t know what he was trying to get to, or whether it really was just a really poor joke. Because have you ever seen how certain men react when criticised? Not exactly professional, I’ll tell you that for sure…

A post about everything and maybe nothing

Over the past few weeks, I have thought a lot about blogging again! My problem with blogging is that it doesn’t quite come as naturally as it did, perhaps 10 years ago now. The problems also come in separating what I want to talk about. I had a separate engineering blog during university as I thought it might get too technical or formal for personal use. And as for the personal one, I have said things too sensitive not only to others but to my own self also. For a person that hides a fair amount to others, I don’t really like the idea of exposing myself because I am bothered by something. Anyway, the issue lied with thinking “I should not mention uni in my personal blog, I’m covering it on the other blog”, aaaand it becomes a bit messy.

So I guess I will see how this thing goes, hopefully will make it less boring with pictures! The main things I will probably talk about are fitness, Engineering, games, food, maybe my social life too, and whatever I happen to be watching or reading [comics].

As for fitness, I don’t see myself as fit, to be honest! I started a gym membership in February 2015. I contemplated it a lot before getting it. Firstly from a financial position. I dislike getting into new contracts, even rolling ones. But mostly because this is at least the 3rd gym contract I’ve had in my life. And previously I hadn’t been to the gym more than three times in each contract. What a colossal waste of effort (and money). I wasn’t interested in losing weight either. I just thought I should probably get fit or something.

Anyway, it’s been a while now and I’ve been going pretty regularly – apart from the last week or 2 weeks where I wasn’t really at work or at home much. I went regularly before work and people are usually shocked to hear this. I wake up around half 5, leave for my 06:36 train to get to the gym at 7am for an hour. This week I have been going to the gym in the evening and been going with my friends from Highways (from work). I say “with”. I plan to go with them and just bump into them, maybe. But we usually do our own thing.

Today I did a gym class for the first time since joining. I joined this gym initially for the classes. But found that weight training and being fiercely competitive with my own self on the stair machine was pretty fun. Fun enough not to go to classes. The class was only half an hour, but it was so intense. I made some un-ladylike noises for sure. After the class, I felt like I should do some training for my arms so did so. The class instructor saw me and smiled at me. I… smiled back but probably looked kind of psycho, to be honest. In sweaty glory, in the middle of a rep.

Anyway, despite all of this, I have been getting some chest pains recently. Even after the gym today, I got it whilst walking home. They don’t last for long. I booked an appointment with the GP today. The earliest appointment they could give me was in 2 weeks time. I didn’t mention the chest pains though as I figured they would diagnose me properly in person, right. I only signed up to the GP a month ago where I had to go through a medical examination (not as daunting as it sounds). My blood pressure was more than fine really. The chest pains were particularly bad today (at least 3 different occasions). As for food, I’ve been eating pretty well in the last 2 days, and at least 2L of water.

Mystery really, unsure if it is something I should really be concerned about or if this is just a part of reaching my quarter-of-a-century milestone.

[ r e f r e s h ]

Starting again with this blogging malarky.

Xiarrr