Life, University and moving home

Ok, so it has been a while since my last update. Much longer than I would have ideally liked but a lot of things have happened over the last few months, which I will summarise here.

University.

So, University was very slow to start. Lots of introductions and messing around. I was hoping things would happen quickly and I could come in running but looking back it feels much more like a slow crawl.

As expected, when it comes to practical stuff, I am far ahead of everyone else, when it comes to using a studio. I have been very ambitious with what I have tried and I spent quite a bit of time trying to learn the Broncolor Siros lighting system, with very mixed results. And I only really got into my first project a couple of weeks ago.

The theory side of the course, which I thought I would dread has been a surprising about of fun. Much of what has been taught I have known but I have asked some very probing questions, which can’t be answered easily.

The main problem is I seem to be the only person regularly asking questions. Whilst a couple of others may ask 1 question, I end up asking about 6-10.

It isn’t easy for many on the course. There are a lot of international students. Mainly from Asia, with most being either Chinese of Indian. The Chinese are very nice but generally, their English is very poor. Whilst the Indians speak very good English but do have quite strong accents, which with my auditory issue does make it very hard to understand.

So generally the Chinese don’t speak in class. One other thing is so many of the class turn up late. I have done this a couple of times, but I have always emailed the lecturer before, and there has always been a good reason (normally involving lawyers and moving house).

Things are starting to get serious now, and I am starting to work on my essay, which is the focus of my first term. This is where I am going to be weakest and have tried to find something which is going to be a strength and also linked to my practical work (More of which I will talk about in another post).

Health
Anyone who has read my blog, will have realised that I have been very stressed. It turns out, that things were much worse than I had expected.

At the beginning of June, I had an ECG before I could be put on medication for my ADHD. In early October, I had another ECG, as I still hadn’t been put onto any medication. Unfortunately, whilst I was meant to have had the ECG before going onto the medication, with waiting times I actually had the second ECG around the same time.

The medication for ADHD is a stimulant and it can have many side effects. For me, there was only one, my body felt permanently wired, with my muscles on edge all the time. To try and get past this, I had to do a walk each morning, between 3-6 miles, which I guess helped get the medication around my system. So the side effect wasn’t nearly as serious.

Things were about to take a serious turn. I had been on the medication for around 10 days and the side effects whilst still there were starting to become more manageable.

I had asked to speak to the ADHD doctor, to see if I would be allowed to drive. It turns out that the doctor wanted to speak to me about something else.

The ECG had turned up something. Apparently, I had had a heart attack. They didn’t know when but it was me who pointed out that the previous ECG had only been done 3 months before, so the heart attack would have been within that 3-month period.

Now, when I say heart attack, fortunately, it was not a severe heart attack. I think they class it as a mini heart attack, and fortunately, it doesn’t look like there was any damage to my heart.

Of course, having a heart attack doesn’t go well with being on a stimulant, and I was instantly taken off them. At this point, I was on them long enough to have a rough few days, but after, I was back to normal.

The downside is that whilst the side effects of the stimulants were quite severe, the positives were noticeable, and I could definitely see an improvement in my concentration and ability to focus. This has meant that I have had to change the way I think about doing work, with my focus having to be much more on a single thing.

House
I write this, 9 days after completing on the house and having moved in 5 days ago. I will probably talk about living in halls in another post, but I will just say that it was quite different to how I expected it to be.

What I will talk about is the new house. It took less than 3 months to get everything down, but it did drag, and I was trying very hard not to get stressed over the entire thing. At some point, I realised I had got the price of storage completely wrong and I had to pay 7 times more than I expected. Also, the solicitors were very bad at communicating and generally, it felt like was the last to know anything but eventually, everything got done.

The last week or so before the move didn’t go quite as planned and everything was put back a week, as the sellers couldn’t complete on their new property and when they did, I couldn’t get the removal company to deliver for another few days.

The move in went as smoothly as I could have expected. In many ways a lot better. I had Skin’s over helping for 2 days and this made a massive difference. With the house, being in a livable state by day 2 and I was able to collect Reggie by day 4.

Reggie
The last few months have been very hard on Reggie. He was very well looked after but it sounds like he wasn’t himself and he missed me terribly, which is completely understandable, we have been a team for the last 7 years and I have spent the vast majority of my time with him.

For me, whilst I was ok, the first few weeks, as time went on I began to miss him more and more. So the day that I collected him was one of the biggest I have had in years.

When I got to the house where he was staying, he was asleep, so when I woke him up he was very confused and it took a couple of minutes for him to work out who I was. But then his tail started to wag and he was more with it.

Since then he has stayed at the new house for the last 3 days, and it hasn’t been the easiest 3 days. Reggie has been noticeably anxious, and the moment I disappear, he starts looking for me. It also doesn’t help that the bedroom is upstairs and he, of course, wants to be with me, when I go to bed, but he doesn’t handle stairs very well. So I have had to sleep downstairs for the last few days.

His ability to walk is also noticeably weaker than it once was. This has been happening for a while, and it isn’t helped by his eyesight getting worse. So when he sits on the sofa, he will often fall, and this has become more of an issue when we both sit on the sofa. This evening he is very unsettled, wanting to go into the bedroom, but it isn’t going to happen.

So that is about it for this post. Hopefully, things will settle down over the next few weeks (particularly Reggie). I have a great deal of college work to do in the next 2 months, and time is getting very real. More on that, in another post.