It's my first day back in the office since I was signed off. As usual nothing has changed, I need to be cautious with the work checking though. Currently though it appears to be a small amount of calls and not worth my time, maybe this week I can try and avoid it somehow.

I won't lie, it is usually a relief in this job where I can come back from sick leave or holiday leave and not have to worry about anything I have missed. The job has been streamlined for such a long time now it's just standard. But that also went for any of the other teams I was with, I don't have anyone relying purely on just me. The job is so team focused it easily gets done by someone else.

My only concern and counteraction about that is once I find another job, I'm concerned about how much I'm relied upon if I'm away for a set amount of time. I'm trying to heavily get into E-Learning development but I lack the experience greatly. I think the only thing I can do at present is pirate the packages that are around. Everything is nothing but enterprise licenses and so on, and I know for sure getting any kind of help at work is going to be a waste of time.

I feel like I need to blag my way in order to get anything sorted or to say what "experience" I have. I just need to work on something to have as proof and a portfolio.

 

 

 There's something unusually tranquil and quiet about today. I dropped the kids off in the morning and it felt oddly quiet around the area I usually park. Coming back home I didn't feel like there was much to get on with like there was last week.

It's my second week for being signed off by my GP but sadly only 4 days left for the week due to the bank holiday yesterday. Never the less I've currently applied for 3 jobs, 2 of which are IT support roles. The problem is I didn't want to keep applying for roles like this. One of them is still back at the Nuffield but with Oxford University rather than the hospital trust. I never realised until I logged into the old job vancancies account for them that I've been applying for jobs with them for almost 10 measly years. It all harked back to around 2016, this I find interesting as it goes to show how long I have wanted to move on. Back then though I was still so casual about it that I didn't feel loss even if I failed the interviews. I was surprised that I was getting interviews!

My careers advisor gave me my last CV (Resume) update yesterday, she helped me apply for at least 2 jobs along with cover letters which greatly helped as they're good to work from with anything that I apply to from now on. The only thing that slightly concerns me is whether there is anything else she has planned in the pipeline. I hope there's still other things she can help me with.

 In my usual fashion of starting this...no sooner did I complain about the work environment I ended up  being off sick for the next 2 weeks due to anxiety. The problem was by Friday management found another problem with something in my work checking. This then triggered my line manager to arrange a one to one with me by the Monday morning. This bothered me throughout the weekend as I didn't want to go through this type of shit again for another week. This has basically been happening prior to Portugal and it just annoys me now.

I decided I'd still travel to my mum's in the morning, but then contact the work sickness service via their app to say I wouldn't come in. Then for further "enhancement" I messaged the line manager just to make it clear to him what state I was in. The reality is I've simply had enough, I then contacted my GP Doctor the next day who gave me another week off from it.

It's really helped when the weather has improved, I can sort the kids with school and have a few hours to myself with little hassle. It's definitely helped whilst job hunting.

In the meantime I've been sorting more things out with my careers advisor, I've applied for one vacancy so far with another one I want for her to check out. Annoyingly she hasn't contacted me today, so I haven't been able to apply for that job yet until she's sorted out my covering letter. I only have until Wednesday but hopefully she casn get that sorted.

So I eventually changed my 8BitDo keyboard keys to be quieter. I went for the quiet tactile ones. I know it defeats the purpose for this type of keyboard but I honestly like this style of key press better. Plus I can change them over still anyway. I'm only able to get a set of 24 keys per pack, so in my case I went for 2 lots of 24's which mainly covers the main letters and numbers. That for me makes more sense rather than covering the whole keyboard with them. Function keys and the like aren't a big deal as they aren't always used. Plus it's still nice to have the odd set of keys that do in fact click.

(Partially) back in the office...

I'm now back in the office - or at least for the first 2 days of the week. I decided to do this primarily because of management not being happy with my performance at work. Therefore, with their threats being that I may have to come in full time if further problems occur, I might as well show some willing for coming in on my full days.

I don't actually mind too much, since the COVID events happened 5 years back the office hasn't been the same anyway. It's a lot quieter and there's less of us around. But regardless of what they think of my dwindling, I still procrastinate the same way. The only difference is how I do it, maybe that's why Blogging worked better like this? I think it might also help with the desk layout. At home I don't bother connecting my laptop to a larger screen or anything like that. I purely use the laptop stand-alone and have my PC for my other "activities". The benefit with that is it means I'm not using the laptop for my other logins like I am for now for Blogger and therefore not using the work's network. Not that it's a big deal anyway since I've been using YouTube etc at this place since day 0. With blogging it makes me look like I'm doing activities whilst typing away but I think I get inspired better when I'm not at home. But at the same time I'm making different distractions for myself in the office. 

Also, my "desk" (hotdesk really) got relocated into a less viewable spot which is a bonus. As I type in-and-out of this post whilst multitasking, I do find myself feeling bored here. I kinda expected the day would drag on especially when I'm here all day. Now I realise why I resorted to YouTube so much at work also.

Since being back from Portugal I haven't had anything new as yet from the careers advisor. I completed all of the activities she asked for before I left and had a few emails in the first week whilst I was there saying that everything is ready for the next step. The Easter break has just finished though so I'm hoping I'll get some news within the next few days.

In other news since being back, we found out that the house was getting tripped! My theory is thusly...

• When we left we switched off all appliances except for most of the kitchen ones.
• When we got back the main ring of the house probably couldn't handle the sudden amount of stuff we were putting back on (if that's even possible?).

Electrician confirmed this morning that the problem was due to the cooker - previously we had a problem with the ring shortly after moving in but was never told what the cause of it was. Or at least I remember the electrician not being very specific about it.

So the problem now is finding a slimline cooker and removing the huge old one that's always been with the house. Upon researching today I noticed that most electric cookers require to be hardwired which is fine for me but needs the electrician again to have it installed in our kitchen.

 

 

 I finally saw the careers advisor on Friday which was for a trial introduction for an hour. In the week leading up to seeing her she emailed me a couple of things to get an idea of what to discuss. The first one was to send her my copy of my CV/Resume but it didn't matter if it was in an old state, as long as it was something recent-ish, in my case I think this was last updated in 2017. 

The other email was for an online stress test which gave general questions in regards to how I am at work etc. She told me afterwards that the stress test gave realistic results, although I did tell her at the time that most of my answers didn't feel like I was generally stressed at work but she understood regardless.

 It was definitely a good conversation, it was just over an hour on Zoom, she seemed to have a good understanding of what I should be earning and took an interest in the system I use along with the company who are responsible with it.

Devastatingly though, her service is going to cost a fortune, I'll most likely have to pay it across several months. It's almost the equivalent of a months wage give or take a few hundred less. Obviously a lot of people around me don't see the point, they think it's easy to just go ahead and do something. My problem is that I need someone to talk to, I need an outside perspective to know what I can do next without the worry of jumping to something completely different.

I kept thinking a lot that evening what I should do, we're doing a follow up call on Wednesday to discuss what I want to go ahead with, but sadly I feel I don't have much of a choice. I feel like throughout my blog years all I've ever talked about is jumping teams or the uncertainty of what is going to happen next. I still treat work as a chore, I've never seen what I do as a career, it's merely been a stable job and nothing less.

I hope for my sake I'm doing the right thing, and that this could lead to a potential of being free and knowing I could enjoy something. The way I see it is although I'm paying a lot I can earn this back in whatever future role I have ahead of me with possibly more money. How long that'll take will be a matter of time, but ideally at least I'll know which direction it'll take me.

 I decided to finally talk to a careers advisor, this all happened by chance from reading a forum post about said subject for over 40's. It's something I never though about, but some of the ones people linked all have 1 hour free sessions so I thought it was worth a go.

I've wanted to move on with my team for a long while now, in the past I casually had the odd moment and then brushed it off months down the line. This was often "rinse and repeat" for most years. About 2 years ago or so I was thinking whilst in Portugal that I needed to go back with the training team, it was just that moment of clarity moment. I often have those moments on vacations, I remember having a similar thought with an old job about 20 years ago whilst in Greece and thinking about giving it up.

Unfortunately, my ideas haven't gone so swimmingly. I got as far as getting a job interview last year for their band 6 position to work on E-Learning material, sadly someone else within that team had better experience but I was supposedly close. 

Since then NHS vacancies have gone into a recruitment freeze frequently meaning there's nothing to move on to. Not that it mattered since I've known for a while I've come to a stopgap where I don't know what other team I could move onto. Even if I was back with the traning team as a band 5, what would I do in my current part time circumstance? I don't think training is as what it used to be, or maybe it is? Either way the freeze has put an end to that. 

So I've come to the stage where I need to rethink what I need to do, I've overstayed my welcome with this team which unfortunately means it's been the longest I've ever stayed with a team - just over 10 years in fact! That's more than double the time I was with the training team, I think I was only ever with them for probably 2 and a half years if that. 

Ideally I'm hoping they can find me something where I don't have to feel I have to remain with the NHS, but my problem is the risk of losing a stable job and going somewhere where I have a bigger risk at being redundant.

 But I also feel it's time I just generally need to talk to someone about my career and what I'm capable of doing, and what I've underestimated about myself. This is something I feel positive about to say the least.

8BitDo's current keyboard - first impressions!

 I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to talk about something like this in a blog post as it involves using said product perfectly as I use it. In a way it's like a real-time first impression whilst using it.

Ever since I moved house 4 years ago to this year and having a desk again I found myself feeling really lost finding the ideal keyboard. I previously used multimedia style keyboards with their integrated trackpads which were fine for distance use but they were never great for typing. I found myself making so many mistakes on them. 

Then oddly enough when we arrived here I found randomly in the loft (attic) a fully wired USB keyboard boxed from around the late 90's/early 2000's. It had such an odd design though, one of those where the keyboard looks like it splits in half and gives it's shape such a bulk and takes up half of the desk space, it was horrid.

Eventually I ended up getting generic keyboards for free from places such as Freecycle. Again, these were ok, but never quite there. My wife eventually managed to bag some decent ones from her work in the form of some slimline Dell keyboards.

Within the last few years 8BitDo started doing their own "retro style" keyboards based on certain game consoles and computers. Initially they were selling 87 key versions (no numpad basically) and you had to get the numpad separately but annoyingly it meant the wireless connections still had separate connections to use them. So now they've released full 108 key versions as you would get as a full sized keyboard with numpad which I decided to get. I never realised they were planning to do versions like these as I liked what they were doing but was in no rush or no intention of getting one anytime soon. But as soon as I saw the full versions getting a release it immediately enticed me to get it.

The other appeal was that I had 3 different ways to connect - Bluetooth, 2.4G via USB dongle or wired. The idea of having variety was appealing, especially if there is a situation where I need to switch over or make use of different connections rather than a KVM switch of sorts.

Suffice to say I've been happy, the only downers I would say is that it's expensive, I also have no use over their external A and B buttons but it's a nice feature for macros or any other oddities so I can't really faulter that when it's optional. I do also like the clicky "old skool" style keys but I'm starting to feel concious when trying to type with the keyboard at night due to the sound. It's also US style but again I have no issue over this as I'm used to the layout and most recent OS's seem to make it easier to switch between regions anyway. In my case I haven't bothered to change to US style as I'm so used to the UK style. It's also a bulky keyboard but durable and suits the desk nicely.

Ideally I plan to buy their retro keycaps and I want to change to their quieter keys, or at least mainly to change the letter keys rather than any other the others. 

Other than this I'm very happy with it, I do miss the flat Dell style keyboard at times but at the same time I can always alternate if I want something different. I know that this is something that is great quality to have.