I would've posted my second blog a little earlier, but I've been getting slammed by work. Not that it's all bad; I'm enjoying the freedom of seeing the zero's build in my bankroll, as well as thinking about the options they create. But as the title of this blog suggests, I'm regularly getting in-touch with the weakness of my mind whilst deprived of the precious thing that even the world's best experts know very little about; sleep.
I've battled the beast that is sleep deprivation before; more than once, but I'll speak about one particular situation which was completely avoidable, not only on my part, but on the part of my employer as well. I've mentioned in my previous blog that I used to work in Newcastle. As a regular part of my job I would have to drive either north; up the coast, or west; out as far as Dubbo. In this little adventure, I was by myself and had 3 contracted jobs to do in 2 days. I was to get a hire car and a two separate hotel bookings. Sounds easy enough. On the Monday, I was to work in Taree at 6am, finish around midday, then drive a further hour to Port Macquarie, start work there at 4pm, now here's where things get..hairy. I wouldn't end up walking out of this job until 12.15am, and had a 6am start in the morning 2.5 hours north in a beautiful town known as Coffs Harbour. Fuck me. I had realised that the job would end very late at about 8pm. But I made a conscious, yet unwise decision. See, technically it's illegal to make someone work without at least an 8 hour break. I could enforce this rule upon myself, but I needed the money and saying no meant I'd lose it. Yeah nice, Jamie. Let's fucking kill yourself over $300.
So as soon as I finished the Port Macqurie job, I showered at my hotel, checked out at 12.30am and drove straight to Coffs Harbour. I gulped down a Redbull (something I'm not used to doing), put my beats on high volume and hit the highway. First hour was an absolute breeze, it was like I wasn't even tired. But then it hit me, and holy shit, did it hit like a tsunami of drooping eyelids. It got to the point where I was physically struggling to keep my eyes open. I would take a quick break on the side of the road, feel replenished, then keep going to feel exhausted again not even 5 minutes later. I got to Coffs Harbour main road at 3am and had no choice but to sleep in my car until my 6am start. It was at this point I realised that even the most luxurious car couldn't provide me with a comfortable position to sleep on, and I got little to no snooze time before the alarmed jackhammers came relentlessly powering into my skull at 5:55am. I finished that Coffs Harbour job at 3pm that day, and managed to down two more Redbulls for the trip home. (I drove about 3 hours to meet my then GF, and she gladly took the wheel back to Newcastle.) I woke up to my self and knew it was incredibly stupid to do this, and had a serious talk with my boss about future scheduling after it.
Nevertheless, I had two lessons pounded into my mind after this trip: no job is worth killing yourself (or others) over, and that the mind play funny tricks on it self as it quickly loses it's cognitive ability. I say this, as just the other day I worked from 10am till 2.30am straight. Yes, you read that correctly, 16.5 hours, only to get up at 6am to work again at 7am. While working during these silly hours, I would look at the time, work for what seemed 2 hours, then look up again and cringed when I saw only 15 minutes had passed. Unbelievable.
It doesn't take much to turn your mind to pure sludge.Your hands start getting shakes, you go pale in the skin, and your mouth and brain miss words that would otherwise be autonomous to you. Eventually the feeling of wanting sleep gets so over-whelming that you find everything indisputably funny, but at the same time, you get get incredibly short with other people around you. You seriously forget what sleep feels like, but you crave it desperately. The whole day turns into a blur and you begin to relive moments in your life from years and years ago. I noticed I couldn't concentrate on my effortless task at hand, but my mind was flicking through life old memories as if they we're yesterday. This really happened to me and all of it is automatic, I wasn't in control of any of it, I was simply grinding away, waiting for the end of work.
I didn't go home till' the end though; I didn't stay for the money, or to prove anything to myself, I simply didn't want to let others - who were in the same situation as me - down. If everyone stayed until the end, we would've finished within semi-reasonable hours, but people we're leaving left and right, and I simply didn't want to be on of those people. I've been in situations before where I've bitched-out and let my friends/work-mates down and regretted it. I didn't regret it that time though, and the truck-load of money for it felt like fringe benefits for me.
The past two days have been blissful, however. I've managed to catch up on any lost sleep. I feel great and my mind feels sharp. At least until the time comes to forfeit sleep again for something more important such as: The Tour De France (which I've always fascinated with), The Ashes Series, or just drinking late with a few close friends on an upcoming snow trip.
Get your sleep, peeps. Thanks for reading and keep up with my posts!
-Jamie
Monday, July 1, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Opening Blog - My First Month in Sydney
After considering this for quite a while, I've decided to start writing a blog; a proper one.
I think it'll have many benefits on my life, not least is getting my inner thoughts out in the open. These days I really don't do that much of that, and even if no one reads, I still feel it'll be beneficial to me. I've experimented with blogs before, but it was a poker related one, not a general one like this will be. I became disinterested in it after just a few entries, (a bad habit of mine with a lot of things) but I plan on keeping this one updated regularly.
So a little bit about me. I'm a 23 year old (recently becoming) Sydney-sider. I've lived here for a little over a month now after living in Newcastle my entire life. I have further career goals, but right now I work for a company called RGIS. My two favourite things in life are sport and music. I'm an avid gamer, poker player and wanna-be hip hop writer. These are real basics, I'll disclose a lot more specifics as my blog progresses, but I don't wanna bore with details about my like/dislikes in my very first entry.
As I mentioned, I moved to Sydney in early of May 2013. This was huge for me. I've lived in Newcastle for 23 years, I have family and friends there and all sorts of revering for the city I grew up in, but I felt I had to get out. In the end, it was an easy decision for me. I just got out of a 4-year relationship which started when I was just a baby-faced 18 year old, I realised I could earn twice as much money doing the same job, and god damn if the allure of the big BIG city didn't completely hook me. So I was going to live in an area I have no idea about, with people I've never met before and work in a completely different environment than the one I was used to. Some people would find this scary, and I'm not gonna lie, it was intimidating. But I think all the best plans or experiences start with "Fuck it".
A lot of people dislike Sydney as a place to live, and understandably so. The cost of living is through the roof, with astronomically high house/rental prices, insane traffic during peak times and generally a noisy, busy ambience with people, people and more people. None of this truly bothers me, though. In fact, so far, I fucking love this city. There's a few reasons for this:
Firstly, fuck this place is big. You don't really grasp how big it is until you're driving around it every day. My work involves me working in a new place everyday, so even in just a month, I've driven to/experienced a TON of suburbs that this city has to offer, and it's still just the tip of the iceberg. The first and obvious benefit to this is that there's no limitations to what ever you want to do. I've already been to a few sporting events (theres plenty to choose from every weekend) and already bought two tickets to upcoming concerts. And all of it is withing a 30 minute train ride from where I live. I'm already sounding like a real estate agent who wants you to buy the house he's selling in Sydney.
Secondly, the people. Over 4.5 milly to be exact. Mostly everyone I've met so far have been awesome to talk to. Sydney is an incredibly multicultural city, and it's fantastic. Everyone I meet has a story to learn from, and I've already learnt a lot. For example, which roads are best to take at which times; the M2/M7 toll way has become my daily "kingsroad". I use it nearly every day, but only because *smirking* my work pays for the tolls for me. Fuck paying 5 hot dollars for a one way trip in your own damn car. It's mostly all smiles too. I feel like people are just generally nicer drivers here; always willing to let you cut in front of them so you don't have to wait 5 minutes for a gap in traffic. But that's my experience so far, I have plenty more driving to do while I'm here.
There are some negatives I'm slowly becoming used to here, though. Like I mentioned earlier, I just got out of a super-long relationship. I've also moved somewhere with no friends or family, and I struggle to get home often because I find myself always working weekends. I have two housemates, but they go home on weekends and my work hours generally conflict with theirs, so I don't see them much. I feel like I speak 1/4th of the amount of words I would speak while living in Newcastle, and most of it's work-related. This probably isn't healthy but I do try and keep distracted; I work stupid hours and try and read as much as possible. I'm try my best to keep in touch with my good friends/family in Newcastle, I'm working out as much as possible and even trying my hand at writing song lyrics. So I am keeping busy, but it's a lot harder to keep collective when you live more than 2 hours away from all your social connections.
I'll end this one here. Today has actually been a fantastic day, Kanye West's latest album just leaked and I've had it on loop the whole day. But I'll give my thoughts on that and more in my upcoming entries, and I'll try to keep em' more interesting as they go. Thanks for reading and continue to do so!
-Jamie
I think it'll have many benefits on my life, not least is getting my inner thoughts out in the open. These days I really don't do that much of that, and even if no one reads, I still feel it'll be beneficial to me. I've experimented with blogs before, but it was a poker related one, not a general one like this will be. I became disinterested in it after just a few entries, (a bad habit of mine with a lot of things) but I plan on keeping this one updated regularly.
So a little bit about me. I'm a 23 year old (recently becoming) Sydney-sider. I've lived here for a little over a month now after living in Newcastle my entire life. I have further career goals, but right now I work for a company called RGIS. My two favourite things in life are sport and music. I'm an avid gamer, poker player and wanna-be hip hop writer. These are real basics, I'll disclose a lot more specifics as my blog progresses, but I don't wanna bore with details about my like/dislikes in my very first entry.
As I mentioned, I moved to Sydney in early of May 2013. This was huge for me. I've lived in Newcastle for 23 years, I have family and friends there and all sorts of revering for the city I grew up in, but I felt I had to get out. In the end, it was an easy decision for me. I just got out of a 4-year relationship which started when I was just a baby-faced 18 year old, I realised I could earn twice as much money doing the same job, and god damn if the allure of the big BIG city didn't completely hook me. So I was going to live in an area I have no idea about, with people I've never met before and work in a completely different environment than the one I was used to. Some people would find this scary, and I'm not gonna lie, it was intimidating. But I think all the best plans or experiences start with "Fuck it".
A lot of people dislike Sydney as a place to live, and understandably so. The cost of living is through the roof, with astronomically high house/rental prices, insane traffic during peak times and generally a noisy, busy ambience with people, people and more people. None of this truly bothers me, though. In fact, so far, I fucking love this city. There's a few reasons for this:
Firstly, fuck this place is big. You don't really grasp how big it is until you're driving around it every day. My work involves me working in a new place everyday, so even in just a month, I've driven to/experienced a TON of suburbs that this city has to offer, and it's still just the tip of the iceberg. The first and obvious benefit to this is that there's no limitations to what ever you want to do. I've already been to a few sporting events (theres plenty to choose from every weekend) and already bought two tickets to upcoming concerts. And all of it is withing a 30 minute train ride from where I live. I'm already sounding like a real estate agent who wants you to buy the house he's selling in Sydney.
Secondly, the people. Over 4.5 milly to be exact. Mostly everyone I've met so far have been awesome to talk to. Sydney is an incredibly multicultural city, and it's fantastic. Everyone I meet has a story to learn from, and I've already learnt a lot. For example, which roads are best to take at which times; the M2/M7 toll way has become my daily "kingsroad". I use it nearly every day, but only because *smirking* my work pays for the tolls for me. Fuck paying 5 hot dollars for a one way trip in your own damn car. It's mostly all smiles too. I feel like people are just generally nicer drivers here; always willing to let you cut in front of them so you don't have to wait 5 minutes for a gap in traffic. But that's my experience so far, I have plenty more driving to do while I'm here.
There are some negatives I'm slowly becoming used to here, though. Like I mentioned earlier, I just got out of a super-long relationship. I've also moved somewhere with no friends or family, and I struggle to get home often because I find myself always working weekends. I have two housemates, but they go home on weekends and my work hours generally conflict with theirs, so I don't see them much. I feel like I speak 1/4th of the amount of words I would speak while living in Newcastle, and most of it's work-related. This probably isn't healthy but I do try and keep distracted; I work stupid hours and try and read as much as possible. I'm try my best to keep in touch with my good friends/family in Newcastle, I'm working out as much as possible and even trying my hand at writing song lyrics. So I am keeping busy, but it's a lot harder to keep collective when you live more than 2 hours away from all your social connections.
I'll end this one here. Today has actually been a fantastic day, Kanye West's latest album just leaked and I've had it on loop the whole day. But I'll give my thoughts on that and more in my upcoming entries, and I'll try to keep em' more interesting as they go. Thanks for reading and continue to do so!
-Jamie
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