FrunkSpace #3
How time flies. January feels both ages ago and not so long ago. So much has happened in that time, for good and for not so good. I guess I'll start by updating from my previous blogs.
I'm still at the sharehouse, and it's really quite good. We've had a couple of changes in housemates but there's a core group of three of us who have been here since I moved in, and we get along great. We're not just housemates, but proper friends, which is awesome. We've been gradually improving the house, again largely driven by me, in an attempt to clean out clutter from what I discovered is at least 7 years of former housemates, as confirmed by paperwork I found in the back shed dating back to 2011. The house was just generally full of discarded stuff, so moving that on just makes it a bit nicer and more enjoyable. We're planning a house party or two in the coming weeks so the plan is to have common areas sorted out by then.
As promised, pictures of my psychedelic bathroom.
I mentioned last blog that I felt like I was working so much and had no time. Well, that's been flipped on its head. In February, I pretty much stopped receiving shifts at my job, in part because the business owner is now there pretty much full time when he wasn't able to previously, meaning there's not as much need for me. So, I've barely worked since then, which hasn't been all bad. I took the time I needed to finally plan and book an overseas trip. I'm going to Europe in July for a whole month! I'm super excited for it. I'm doing a group tour which starts in Rome, then goes south to Greece, then north along the Adriatic via Albania and Croatia, then through Vienna, Budapest and concluding in Prague. After that I have about 10 days solo travel in which I'm planning on going to Germany, Poland, Venice and wherever else I can manage before departing from Vienna.
This has literally been six years-coming, but I guess before now I didn't have the time, money and, perhaps most importantly, life experience to be able to do it properly, so I'm sure it will have been worth the wait. I settled on south-eastern Europe because I felt like its a little less common than western Europe. When you want to go everywhere in the world, I guess you have to just start 'somewhere', right?
Another thing I did in late January was start playing cricket again, after taking a break at the start of the summer for the first time in probably 16 years. I really needed it, clearly, because I had so much to sort out, especially with the move back then. Going back was great, though, even better than I expected. My club mates were brilliant, and made me feel right back at home, so much so that I can't wait for next summer. I'd like to take on a leadership role if I can and pass on my experience to the guys who are a little bit younger. I also feel like my body is better than it has been for quite a while. I've been planning to spend this winter getting really fit, and while that hasn't really happened yet, I still have time.
I've been pretty distracted by not working. I burned through a bit of my savings for the first couple of months from February until I finally bit the bullet and applied for welfare, which is something I really hate doing. While this welfare comes packaged with a job search utility and enough money to pay my rent and bills, it's just pretty disheartening to be in this position at all. Ideally, I could have kept doing my old job for another couple of months; enough so that when I come back from Europe I'm not completely broke, which I'm pretty sure I will be. It's proving very difficult to find any temporary work before I go, because not many employers are interested in employees they have to train only for them to go away.
That said, I got in contact with an old coach of mine and to my surprise he replied almost straight away with a whole bunch of opportunities at his business. They are commission-based projects which aren't exactly lucrative, but as he plans on expanding in the future, the idea is to build up his brand in the meantime with these projects. Long story short it all sounds very promising, so I'm getting to work on that now. It's only come up in the past week.
Also in the past week I've starting using Airtasker, which is basically Uber for odd jobs, and I've already made a little bit of money that way by doing things like delivering packages, collecting junk from other people and disposing it for them and, in one instance, even doing somebody else's laundry and returning it to them, folded. Thankfully, it wasn't even very dirty; just regular weekly laundry that he couldn't be bothered doing and paid me $40 for (less Airtasker's cut of 15%). It doesn't bother me, so why not! While I don't get reimbursed for my petrol, so I'm not exactly raking in big profits, it's literally better than nothing. It's also something I can do up until I travel, and something I can immediately resume when I get back, so I don't have as much of a gap in my finances upon returning (my welfare will probably get cut off for the trip).
In between these recent developments and 'losing' my job, I've obviously been gradually planning my trip, looking for work pretty much full-time, and also getting out a little bit more, so it's actually been pretty good all things considered. I've been volunteering at an op shop nearby, which is actually quite fun and rewarding, and very similar to my old retail job, minus the pay. 
I figure it's a way to get out of the house, keep up a work-style commitment so that I don't get too much of a culture shock when I start working again, and a way to meet new people, learn new things and, potentially, even network my way to a new job. I've also spent a decent bit of time in the city, going to a few nights of the Melbourne Comedy Festival with both my aunt and cousin last month and also doing some volunteer things in the city as well.
I've also not been using TWCenter for about a month and a half. I'm pretty sure it was late March where I just hit the wall, so to speak. I'm sure it's mostly because of my real life circumstances. Putting hours a day into TWC just didn't seem right, or fun, or responsible while I'm not working. So, I stopped visiting completely for a little while, and currently I'm just doing a few small tasks for moderation and content, and feeling better for it.
Like I mentioned in a post in the Symposium, it's amazing how quickly I've filled the 'void' in my time that was previously for TWC. To be honest, though, in the past week I've actually been playing some Medieval II again for the first time in a long time. It's the first time I've played SSHIP and I have to say that it's a really great mod. My current campaign as Pisa is the most I've enjoyed the game in a very long time. I was daunted at first because it's very different from Stainless Steel, but I found it pretty easy to capture nearby independent cities like Florence and Genoa and thereafter the money came pouring in. I have something like 150,000 florins without breaking a sweat, and have established a formidable little republic with maybe 8 provinces now. Compared to SS, so far I've found SSHIP challenging because cities have limited recruitment slots, and most units have high recruitment costs, high upkeep and multiple-turn recruitment times. I've only just captured/upgraded some castles, though, and notice that these have more slots, which makes sense. I like how active the independent (rebel) faction is. It laid siege to me a couple of times and then assaulted the following turn when I deliberately didn't sally forth, which meant I got to play some cracking castle defences. Battles in general have been a lot more fun than other mods I've played (but I honestly haven't played many). I'm playing with a handful of mini mods (listed below) and my own changes to faction names, which I changed back to English, and some other text. I might upload my tweaks on their forums as my own mini mod soon.
I've been finding playing Medieval II again a really good stress relief. I feel like I've barely played it since I moved to Melbourne, which also encompasses pretty much the entire time I've been active on TWC, so I feel it puts things back in perspective, in a way. I still love the game. I feel like I got too much into other things here, and forgot that love, so in the future when I am willing and able to be more active on TWC again, it will be with a more healthy emphasis on Total War and probably on Medieval II. I've handed over control of my work-in-progress mod, Colonies & Empires, to the rest of the team, but I do hope to one day be able to return and resume work on it, and also create the mod I always wanted to out of it. My dreams and the dreams of the team may differ slightly, but that's more than okay. We can all achieve our goals, in time.
Lastly, I haven't made any new plans for the future just yet. Like I said in the Symp, the timeline right now is travel (July) > cricket (summer) > university (next year?). I think it's the next step for me, having worked various jobs for what will soon be nearly 10 years out of high school. It's a path I needed to take, I believe, even if I'm years behind my 'peers' in that regard. Fields of study I'm going to look into include archaeology, astronomy, meteorology, and others I'm probably overlooking. Anything history or science based interests me, so, as someone who's never had much 'career ambition', I'm really starting to feel like that's what I want to do. Ah, decisions.
FrunkSpace
Reply With Quote
