Far from home

‘situation, never what you want it to be’ Sum 41 – Motivation

We’re off to Leeds in a few hours to see the afore mentioned band Sum41. I’m quite looking forward to it, not only seeing the band, but also seeing ::blueberry marcus who I haven’t seen in almost 2 years, a shockingly long amount of time considering we now live about an hours train journey from each other! Having never been to Leeds before I am also intrigued to see what the place is like.

Work is getting steadily worse. We had a wonderful (note sarcasm) meeting on Friday to discuss some new working practices. In theory they are fine and it’s a very good idea to be double-checking readings (some of our meter readers are horrendously lazy people, who I’m sure make some of the stuff up!) but they have increased our workload to the point of ridiculousness and we tried to point out that to successfully complete these new tasks we would need at least one more person per team. This of course fell on deaf ears, so all I can do now is hope I won’t be there too much longer. I also found out yesterday that a temp who has been there two weeks will be leaving next week for a permanent job. Whilst I was happy that she had found a permanent position, it just reminded me that I have been there over two months now and still nothing. I am fast beginning to feel that there is something fundamentally un-employable about me. I have just about everything crossed for a writing position which closed yesterday, so hopefully something will come through soon. I officially applied for my holiday yesterday which I’m sure won’t go down that well. It’s only in the past couple of months, when I’ve been stuck temping that I realise just how much I actually enjoyed my job at Trinity Mirror. Granted towards the end it got too much, but I can easily put that down to the highly stressful situation we all found ourselves in. Before that Pete was bearable, Sarah was nice and I actually enjoyed going in every day. They always say you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

We did the pub quiz on Thursday, but with only three of us we were shockingly awful. Less than 30 out of 60 (we didn’t hang around to hear our final score!). The once large team has slowly dwindled and I don’t think we’ll be bothering for much longer, which is some kind of shame. It’ll be a relief not to have to rush around on Thursday like crazy people, but I can guarantee that the chances of seeing our friends will diminish further. I can’t remember the last time we saw Tony & Kelly and actually spoke to them and I don’t think we’ll be missed next weekend at Kelly’s surprise meal and drinks either (Duncan is working till 8 and the whole thing kicks off around 7ish, even if we did go we wouldn’t get there until 9/9:30). I know that we should make the effort, but that’s all we ever seem to do. It’s always us arranging things and going to theirs. Every time I talk to Mary it’s always ‘you should come over more often’ never, ‘why don’t I come round one evening’. It makes me sad, because Tony was a great friend in many ways for a while, but now I feel like I barely know him. I sometimes wonder if it would have been better if I’d ended up with someone who didn’t share my friends. But then, I wouldn’t swap Duncan for anyone. I guess I just feel like something is coming to an end. In a way it may be good, we’ve both said we don’t want to stay in Newcastle forever (I can’t raise children with a geordie accent, I’d never understand them!). But it’s just like everything else in my life before this, no permanence, friends for a while and then moving on again, a job for a few months before moving on again. I don’t think it’s time to move on from Newcastle just yet (I don’t think my family could handle me moving again) but at the same time I don’t feel settled and happy. I’m happy with Duncan and I can’t see that changing, it’s just everything else around me.

Until there is a next time…

xx