So those who are aware that I exist on this site have probably noticed I have not been very active the last six plus months, I just thought I should make a blog to say that I am still around and still active and explain where I have been. I have been making a lot of changes in life because things were unbearable.
My job which was initially great slowly became intolerable for one thing. We had a shuffle of management and direction for "the business" which in the end resulted in absolutely everyone resigning over the course of six months. My whole team, the team under me, and two members of management all went and the higher management were seemingly unconcerned and tried spinning it as a positive. I was literally at the point where I would dread waking up in the morning knowing I had to go in. The expectations where just nonsensical so I really needed to go somewhere else. So in November I found another job which seemed really cool with cool people. However shortly after joining I started getting bad vibes about the place. I am an IT admin so I have access to the organizations active directory and office admin portal. I was told that the organisation was 60 people plus, looking at things in our directories I could only find around a dozen users in total that I could account for. I realized the big building I was being shown around at the interview stage was nothing to do with my company and that we were all in fact in the fucking basement of the building. I was literally stuck in a basement with half a dozen guys 9 hours a day and I hated it. It got to the point where I could not take working there any longer so two and a half months after starting I quit with no job to go to with immediate effect which I did in early January.
Another thing that I was trying to work on for a long time was selling my house and moving out of the city to some place better. My old place was always a constant source of stress and anxiety to me and I hated living there. Around three or so years ago the extension started suffering from extreme subsidence. I remember waking up one day and seeing a hair line crack in the wall of the kitchen that I did not think much about. A few days later that crack was an inch wide and it was obvious the kitchen and extended bedroom where being pulled apart from the house and were sinking into the clay soil. My old house had very poor soil, the whole block of houses had been demolished during WW2 by German bombs meaning if you dug anywhere in the garden you would find smashed bricks, pottery, rusted bits of metal and so on in the ground. This along with the clay meant that all the houses on the street are prone to having their extensions subside, the same thing happened to two of my neighbours but my case by far was the worst. I ended up finding a way to get it fixed using resin injection into the ground. This entails drilling penny wide holes down underneath the foundations and pumping resin foam. This foam hardens and expands in the ground, pushes out and air or water pockets, and makes all the loose ground that is subsiding into one huge chunk while raising the extension back up to an extent at the same time. So I had this done and the whole process only took a day, one side of the extension popped back into place while the other side did not do as well, but thankfully the subsidence issue was fixed and it all only cost me 15k in total.
The stress of this I am pretty certain looking back contributed to my medical issue where I started bleeding internally in February last year and almost died. Stress aggravates the ulcers I had and I would literally wake up in the middle of the night after having nightmares that the house had subsided more and all the walls were cracked and being pulled apart.
So I quit in January and at the same time I finally got an offer for my house and had found a new place to move to. So I made an offer that was accepted on the new property and all was good to go. Moving date was set to February the 18th and at the start of February I decided I needed to get another job so started looking. I uploaded my CV on a job board on a Monday evening and the next day I got over 30 phone calls. One of them was for a role at a fairly large healthcare provider a short distance from my soon to be new place as an IT engineer there. I was job hunting for less than 24 hours and had already got an interview for a role near my new place. But at the same time the sale of our property was being held up by my neighbour who was disputing some access relating to the freehold of the house. In my opinion he was trying to sabotage the whole chain so the sale would fall through for the six buyers and sellers in my chain. I was literally on the bus going for my interview while emailing my lawyer and speaking to my property agent on the phone. Luckily in the end my lawyer was quite good and she found a loophole that this neighbours block got removed from the chain and he will never have rights to dispute anything going forward.
Back to my interview I had a nice first stage interview and they seemed really keen on me, the job recruiter called me up shortly after I walked out of the interview and told me they loved me and that a second stage interview would take place as soon as possible. A few days later I had the second stage interview and 10 minutes after I walked out of it the recruiter called me again laughing like a maniac and told me I got the job. Apparently they had been recruiting for this role for 8 months but nobody they found was any good, I had no idea about this until after I had gotten the job.
So new job secured close to the new place and house sold, I just need to move on the 18th and start my new job ten days later. Of course nothing is easy until the very end and Storm Eunice hit us on moving day, luckily despite this making the move more stressful and difficult we managed to make it ok. But as I was performing the very last act of moving house in my old place, getting @p1ngpongs cat in his carrier I hear a crash crunch sound coming from my garden. I see that all the fences in my old house have been blown over and destroyed by the storm, luckily as the sale had been completed I packed up kitty and left and gave no fucks.
So I am at the new place now and its great, nice and peaceful and roomy. Cat is happy. New job is way better than the last two and is easy and cheap to get to by bus. I feel a whole lot less stressed than I have felt for many years now and the sense of anxiety I always had with the old place is gone. I feel bad that I abandoned my post here for so long I just had so much to take care of and get sorted over the last 9 months. I even had a review slip that I never finished, fitting that in with everything else was just impossible. So yes I hope to be more active now on the site going forward, once all the refurbishments at the new place are done I may even post some pics.
My job which was initially great slowly became intolerable for one thing. We had a shuffle of management and direction for "the business" which in the end resulted in absolutely everyone resigning over the course of six months. My whole team, the team under me, and two members of management all went and the higher management were seemingly unconcerned and tried spinning it as a positive. I was literally at the point where I would dread waking up in the morning knowing I had to go in. The expectations where just nonsensical so I really needed to go somewhere else. So in November I found another job which seemed really cool with cool people. However shortly after joining I started getting bad vibes about the place. I am an IT admin so I have access to the organizations active directory and office admin portal. I was told that the organisation was 60 people plus, looking at things in our directories I could only find around a dozen users in total that I could account for. I realized the big building I was being shown around at the interview stage was nothing to do with my company and that we were all in fact in the fucking basement of the building. I was literally stuck in a basement with half a dozen guys 9 hours a day and I hated it. It got to the point where I could not take working there any longer so two and a half months after starting I quit with no job to go to with immediate effect which I did in early January.
Another thing that I was trying to work on for a long time was selling my house and moving out of the city to some place better. My old place was always a constant source of stress and anxiety to me and I hated living there. Around three or so years ago the extension started suffering from extreme subsidence. I remember waking up one day and seeing a hair line crack in the wall of the kitchen that I did not think much about. A few days later that crack was an inch wide and it was obvious the kitchen and extended bedroom where being pulled apart from the house and were sinking into the clay soil. My old house had very poor soil, the whole block of houses had been demolished during WW2 by German bombs meaning if you dug anywhere in the garden you would find smashed bricks, pottery, rusted bits of metal and so on in the ground. This along with the clay meant that all the houses on the street are prone to having their extensions subside, the same thing happened to two of my neighbours but my case by far was the worst. I ended up finding a way to get it fixed using resin injection into the ground. This entails drilling penny wide holes down underneath the foundations and pumping resin foam. This foam hardens and expands in the ground, pushes out and air or water pockets, and makes all the loose ground that is subsiding into one huge chunk while raising the extension back up to an extent at the same time. So I had this done and the whole process only took a day, one side of the extension popped back into place while the other side did not do as well, but thankfully the subsidence issue was fixed and it all only cost me 15k in total.
The stress of this I am pretty certain looking back contributed to my medical issue where I started bleeding internally in February last year and almost died. Stress aggravates the ulcers I had and I would literally wake up in the middle of the night after having nightmares that the house had subsided more and all the walls were cracked and being pulled apart.
So I quit in January and at the same time I finally got an offer for my house and had found a new place to move to. So I made an offer that was accepted on the new property and all was good to go. Moving date was set to February the 18th and at the start of February I decided I needed to get another job so started looking. I uploaded my CV on a job board on a Monday evening and the next day I got over 30 phone calls. One of them was for a role at a fairly large healthcare provider a short distance from my soon to be new place as an IT engineer there. I was job hunting for less than 24 hours and had already got an interview for a role near my new place. But at the same time the sale of our property was being held up by my neighbour who was disputing some access relating to the freehold of the house. In my opinion he was trying to sabotage the whole chain so the sale would fall through for the six buyers and sellers in my chain. I was literally on the bus going for my interview while emailing my lawyer and speaking to my property agent on the phone. Luckily in the end my lawyer was quite good and she found a loophole that this neighbours block got removed from the chain and he will never have rights to dispute anything going forward.
Back to my interview I had a nice first stage interview and they seemed really keen on me, the job recruiter called me up shortly after I walked out of the interview and told me they loved me and that a second stage interview would take place as soon as possible. A few days later I had the second stage interview and 10 minutes after I walked out of it the recruiter called me again laughing like a maniac and told me I got the job. Apparently they had been recruiting for this role for 8 months but nobody they found was any good, I had no idea about this until after I had gotten the job.
So new job secured close to the new place and house sold, I just need to move on the 18th and start my new job ten days later. Of course nothing is easy until the very end and Storm Eunice hit us on moving day, luckily despite this making the move more stressful and difficult we managed to make it ok. But as I was performing the very last act of moving house in my old place, getting @p1ngpongs cat in his carrier I hear a crash crunch sound coming from my garden. I see that all the fences in my old house have been blown over and destroyed by the storm, luckily as the sale had been completed I packed up kitty and left and gave no fucks.
So I am at the new place now and its great, nice and peaceful and roomy. Cat is happy. New job is way better than the last two and is easy and cheap to get to by bus. I feel a whole lot less stressed than I have felt for many years now and the sense of anxiety I always had with the old place is gone. I feel bad that I abandoned my post here for so long I just had so much to take care of and get sorted over the last 9 months. I even had a review slip that I never finished, fitting that in with everything else was just impossible. So yes I hope to be more active now on the site going forward, once all the refurbishments at the new place are done I may even post some pics.
