unhappy

I've been feeling down for a while.

I'm finding work to be quite an unpleasant experience.  I find the lack of any clear direction, the lack of common sense and, in particular, the lack of any ability to make change for the better very frustrating.  I have known for a while that I disagree with some of the things they seem to have decided on, but even then I'd be happy if stuff was actually happening - I'd kinda be happy to be proved wrong, but the whole "limbo" aspect of things is just not fun to be involved in.

Of course I've also been more proactively looking for a new job again.  This hasn't been going too well.  I clearly have a good CV - at the least it is good enough for me to get interviews.

I've now had a total of 5 interviews, though these have not been all they could.  I'll hopefully blog about it separately, but I don't really see myself getting/wanting those jobs.

And of course I'm back to the old situation of no apparent prospect of a salary improvement at work (it's now getting on for 2 years), despite my rent and various other costs going up, so I'm struggling financially again.  Particularly since I desperately need to save money for the Canada trip.  This last month or so I've had to spend a fortune on my car:

£450 for a complete new set of tyres
£200 on a service & MOT (plus some replacement parts)
£250 on insurance
£175 on Car Tax

So that's over £1,000: I only take home about £25K a year, so I've had to spend nearly 4% of my entire year's salary in one month!

I've also been struggling with the weight thing.  I decided I was going to lose a few stones in preparation for the Canadian Grand Prix and blogged about the "progress" here, but just recently ti stagnated and then, while I wasn't blogging, it actually went into reverse - I gained 1 pound a few weeks ago (although I lost it again the following week), but this week I'd gained 2 pounds.

The problem - and it's been a problem all my life - is that when I feel down I eat.  I am the very definition of a comfort eater, and since I feel down quite often, I eat quite a lot.  Of course it's a vicious circle - when you get very big and find it difficult to do things like walk up flights of stairs that becomes a source of unhappiness, prompting me to eat more.

The other problem is I've not really gone about it by sticking to a proper diet.  I've increased the amount of exercise I do, which has been helping to keep the last few weeks of not eating well in check, but I've also slipped back into some of my weirder habits.  In particular I've been "multiple buying" again - this is where I buy several meals worth at one shop, then for some reason buy stuff for the same meals at another.

So, specifically, while I was away I had several meals to buy for and bought cheese on toast, hot cross buns and some mini-sausages plus buns as meals.  Only if you do the maths while I needed 4 meals worth I had therefore actually bought 7 meals worth.  Since none of it was particularly long lasting, that meant I had to eat more meals than I needed and for those meals to be bigger.

And to be honest, I didn't really need to buy any of them - I have stuff in the freezer and cupboards that I really need to get rid of (and, of course, would, therefore, effectively be free meals instead of spending more money).

I think I need to introduce some will power and/or start actually thinking about stuff more.