For me, everything is slowly lining up. I moved into my own place at the beginning of August, I finally got back on my bicycle and also back in the gym, and most important of all I’m finally settling into the new job.

My first few months left me feeling somewhat useless and overwhelmed as I had to play a major catch-up game both in learning the company, their ways, their goals, and the actual position itself. Moving into a completely different job — one that is essentially a mid-level skilled position — with absolutely no experience and having to meet the expectations thrust upon me was quite a daunting task. Fortunately my coworkers have been great and in general very helpful and understanding with my lack of expertise. Though there’s quite a few things I’ve noticed while working in the corporate machine; this will of course be the basis of my next entry.

Moving into my new place presented me with quite a few problems. Time, money and space. Together they really did give me a lot of headaches, somehow though I managed. With the amount of work I was doing, finding the time to move my stuff as well as buy furniture and appliances, unpack and organise everything, and do everything else life demanded of me. I managed somehow, working through the night on occassion just to get everything sorted. For the first week I barely had a thing to eat seeing as my fridge was still in its box and I had no place to put it while I was still unpacking.

This of course brings me to money. After I’d blown what little savings I had on the move to JHB, buying large appliances (and everything else) required some funding… so I took out another loan. How I love debt. It’s just one of those things; buying a bed, fridge, washing machine and microwave in one shot leaves one feeling rather bleak, especially when you get the bank statement at the end of the month. Hopefully I won’t have to do that again any time soon.

Lastly, space. I’ve managed to unpack and pack away about 90% of my stuff by now, but the place is still a bit of a mess, and I haven’t got around to cleaning it completely. I did buy a vacuum today, so I guess I had better do something about it.

Along with the move come the new roads and new areas to learn. My new trip to work is around 9km, but still takes me 20 minutes or so at the time I leave (06h40). Incidentally there are 22 robots on my way to the office. They’re mostly green since I’m travelling along the main road for 90% of my route, however there’s this one damn robot that is blinking red more often than not.

Brightwater Commons is my closest “shopping centre” being around 2km away and very easy to get to. That place is more like a playground that a real mall, which makes things rather annoying since now I have to go elsewhere to do my shopping, and there’s nothing that close by. There is however one nice thing about BWC. It has a skatepark, now I don’t skate myself, but at least I get to watch kids getting very closely acquianted with concrete pavements.

Cycling is really great. I live halfway down a valley (and for those of you who don’t know JHB, this place has some really mean hills) so this affords me the opportunity to do some serious hill training whichever direction I head. The first 2 days back on the bicycle were absolute torture as I struggled my way up those hills. What surprised me though is that I managed to obtain my previous level of cardio fitness within a week of getting back on after what was almost a 4 month hiatus. Gym however is slightly more difficult, I lost a fair amount of weight and muscle in the journey to get my life organised into some semblance of routine that allowed me to eat properly. Even so, gym will mostly get neglected for now as I do cycle training since I want to enter the 94.7 which is only 3 months away. I usually do 20-25km per run, so working my way up to 100km is going to be tough in the short time I’ve given myself.

Don’t suppose anyone has a workshop that I can borrow for a day?

Editing sponsored by Kenny.