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Another full week in furlough completed and another full week during which work have not contacted me once. Considering they promised a weekly update and I haven't heard from them for the last three weeks, I can't help but feel all of those mental health emails were something of a box ticking exercise. Anyway, I have managed to apply for six new jobs over the last week, taking my overall total to sixteen, and while there has been one rejection, it was from one of the applications that I thought would be an outside chance. I am still optimistic.
With Wolfie now working 80% hours, and with it being Easter Weekend, he only ended up working three days last week. I largely mirrored him, except I swapped Monday for Thursday. Monday was our anniversary and although Wolfie was working, we spent much of the day together, particularly in the evening when we had a boxed curry and watched Rick Stein together. I had a fem day, where I was dressed in female clothing throughout, trying my new D-cup breasts to boot. I wore two outfits, a more revealing negligee in the afternoon and my rock chic attire in the evening, with the latter making me feel particularly confident. All I need to do now is shift this belly, which is proving harder than I had thought, and I may be able to gain more body confidence.
Tuesday was conference call central, with our regular monthly LeedsFurs coffee meet being replaced by a pizza party. This saw us order Dominos, with their Two For Tuesday deal giving us three meals in total as we ended up saving much of the pizza for the following day. The usual crew were on the chat, but I fell into disinterest pretty quickly to be honest and once they all started playing Jackbox games, I slunk away. I really do struggle to speak to the LeedsFurs en masse and the chat was basically a competition to get heard, so I didn't particulalry enjoy it. Later in the evening, it was a competition to get herd (tee hee hee) as it was our regular pony chat, which is growing quite nicely as it's a regular event.
Thursday offered me a big dilemma as I was walking about, taking photographs of the Pudsey Loop railway line in the hope of starting a new Twitter hashtag #furryhometowns. Alas, this didn't go anywhere, but having called off at One Stop for a few essentials, an elderly lady on the pavement in front of me tripped and fell to the floor. She was with her husband but it was hard to know what to do, with the current social distancing measures in place. I hung back, seeing if her husband could help her, while a number of other pedestrians understood my plight. A lady with two tins of paint came bounding over too and did try and get her up, as her husband started to struggle. We all hung around to check she was okay - she just had a grazed elbow and a nosebleed - but it was a very hard situation to find oneself in. Had it been normal times, I wouldn't have hesitated helping her, but she was of an age and frailty that should she get COVID-19, it's likely it would be fatal to her.
Friday and Saturday were both warm sunny days, so we took advantage by sitting in the garden, enjoying a good book with some beer. There are a number of books I have been meaning to get through, so this furlough period is proving very useful, and it does make me feel I am doing something constructive. Indeed, I have been playing a lot of Animal Crossing too and really enjoying it, but I do get the sense that it is time wasted and I often feel very guilty for doing so. Still, Adia keeps sending me cute female clothing to wear, so that's nice. Friday also saw us have our first face-to-face conversation outside of our neighbourhood when Mike Hampshire came around with a keg of beer. We had ordered a keg from Nomadic, a local brewery, earlier in the week and didn't realise he would be delivering it, even though we know he is associated closely with the brewery. He is someone to whom we have spoken on a few occasions in the past, and it was great just to have a ten minute talk (at a safe distance) with someone new without having to resort to technology. Indeed, it felt quite liberating if anything.
Last night was meant to be Stray's regular weekly Discord gathering, but he fell ill just before it. Meanwhile, we were already playing Jackbox games with Arakin in honour of Avon's birthday. This went on for many hours and was great fun, continuing a smaller Jackbox gaming session we had had with Arakin on Thursday. It was good to game with and speak to a number of furs with whom we don't usually cross paths, while Arakin has spent much of the week trying to get me into Magic the Gathering, which is still looking pretty impenetrable to me right now. Still, it was great spending time with him as indeed had times been normal, we would have been in Berlin with him this weekend. It's a shame we have missed out on that, but at least I have refund vouchers from EasyJet so we can do it once things are back on an even keel.
All in all then, I have hit my daily exercise target, have done three guitar sessions this week, done Duolingo, bought a German language workbook to improve my knowledge and done six job applications, not to mention register on a load of job sites and spoken to key contacts I have in the industry. I am pretty content with this but doubts are starting to creep into my mind about how constructively I am using this time. I do need to relax, seriously, so I am trying not to put too much pressure on myself by keeping targets attainable and modest, I just hope that my mind doesn't descend into thinking it isn't enough. For someone who derives self-worth from achievement, I think the battle is just beginning, but I do have ideas and steps to keep it at bay so hopefully this will work.
With Wolfie now working 80% hours, and with it being Easter Weekend, he only ended up working three days last week. I largely mirrored him, except I swapped Monday for Thursday. Monday was our anniversary and although Wolfie was working, we spent much of the day together, particularly in the evening when we had a boxed curry and watched Rick Stein together. I had a fem day, where I was dressed in female clothing throughout, trying my new D-cup breasts to boot. I wore two outfits, a more revealing negligee in the afternoon and my rock chic attire in the evening, with the latter making me feel particularly confident. All I need to do now is shift this belly, which is proving harder than I had thought, and I may be able to gain more body confidence.
Tuesday was conference call central, with our regular monthly LeedsFurs coffee meet being replaced by a pizza party. This saw us order Dominos, with their Two For Tuesday deal giving us three meals in total as we ended up saving much of the pizza for the following day. The usual crew were on the chat, but I fell into disinterest pretty quickly to be honest and once they all started playing Jackbox games, I slunk away. I really do struggle to speak to the LeedsFurs en masse and the chat was basically a competition to get heard, so I didn't particulalry enjoy it. Later in the evening, it was a competition to get herd (tee hee hee) as it was our regular pony chat, which is growing quite nicely as it's a regular event.
Thursday offered me a big dilemma as I was walking about, taking photographs of the Pudsey Loop railway line in the hope of starting a new Twitter hashtag #furryhometowns. Alas, this didn't go anywhere, but having called off at One Stop for a few essentials, an elderly lady on the pavement in front of me tripped and fell to the floor. She was with her husband but it was hard to know what to do, with the current social distancing measures in place. I hung back, seeing if her husband could help her, while a number of other pedestrians understood my plight. A lady with two tins of paint came bounding over too and did try and get her up, as her husband started to struggle. We all hung around to check she was okay - she just had a grazed elbow and a nosebleed - but it was a very hard situation to find oneself in. Had it been normal times, I wouldn't have hesitated helping her, but she was of an age and frailty that should she get COVID-19, it's likely it would be fatal to her.
Friday and Saturday were both warm sunny days, so we took advantage by sitting in the garden, enjoying a good book with some beer. There are a number of books I have been meaning to get through, so this furlough period is proving very useful, and it does make me feel I am doing something constructive. Indeed, I have been playing a lot of Animal Crossing too and really enjoying it, but I do get the sense that it is time wasted and I often feel very guilty for doing so. Still, Adia keeps sending me cute female clothing to wear, so that's nice. Friday also saw us have our first face-to-face conversation outside of our neighbourhood when Mike Hampshire came around with a keg of beer. We had ordered a keg from Nomadic, a local brewery, earlier in the week and didn't realise he would be delivering it, even though we know he is associated closely with the brewery. He is someone to whom we have spoken on a few occasions in the past, and it was great just to have a ten minute talk (at a safe distance) with someone new without having to resort to technology. Indeed, it felt quite liberating if anything.
Last night was meant to be Stray's regular weekly Discord gathering, but he fell ill just before it. Meanwhile, we were already playing Jackbox games with Arakin in honour of Avon's birthday. This went on for many hours and was great fun, continuing a smaller Jackbox gaming session we had had with Arakin on Thursday. It was good to game with and speak to a number of furs with whom we don't usually cross paths, while Arakin has spent much of the week trying to get me into Magic the Gathering, which is still looking pretty impenetrable to me right now. Still, it was great spending time with him as indeed had times been normal, we would have been in Berlin with him this weekend. It's a shame we have missed out on that, but at least I have refund vouchers from EasyJet so we can do it once things are back on an even keel.
All in all then, I have hit my daily exercise target, have done three guitar sessions this week, done Duolingo, bought a German language workbook to improve my knowledge and done six job applications, not to mention register on a load of job sites and spoken to key contacts I have in the industry. I am pretty content with this but doubts are starting to creep into my mind about how constructively I am using this time. I do need to relax, seriously, so I am trying not to put too much pressure on myself by keeping targets attainable and modest, I just hope that my mind doesn't descend into thinking it isn't enough. For someone who derives self-worth from achievement, I think the battle is just beginning, but I do have ideas and steps to keep it at bay so hopefully this will work.
