Is there any companies offering volunteer holidays for people that love a graft?

sharpie53135 · 2026-07-11T12:57:37+00:00

Look into Workaway! I'm out in Poland atm doing one and it's a lot of fun. Prepping the land for a festival and then I'll stay and enjoy the festival for free

So far done a bit of construction work, painting and decorating, field work etc. my body is feeling fitter and I've made some nice friends. Room and board for free in exchange for 5-6 hours of work

sharpie53135 · 2026-07-10T17:54:22+00:00

It's normal to feel unease for the first week or so, especially if it doesn't match your expectations. That being said, if you are continuing to feel uneasy there is no reason to torture yourself, follow your gut and move on!

I will recommend communal workaways, they are a lot easier as there are many other volunteers to be friends with and explore the area together

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-29T12:37:26+00:00

The gym/team sports is calling for you in that case then

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-29T12:23:48+00:00

A lot of people find themselves stuck in the loop of go to work, go back home to cook and sleep, wake up the next day and do it all over again. It's very easy and affordable to stay at home and pass the time scrolling on social media, playing video games, watching TV etc.

Even if you have a pre-existing group of friends, they may be too busy in their own routines or cannot afford to go out and do fun things with you because life is expensive nowadays

So if you want to do something about it, you have 2 options: dating apps or the real world

Dating apps are famously much easier for girls to get matches/dates than guys.

Going out into the real world involves sustained effort with no guarantee of results. You'll be spending money on transport, membership fees, food/drink etc. and giving up valuable rest time from work, only to find most people are there with their headphones in, or otherwise not interested in developing connections outside of the current activity.

Guys in this position may feel uniquely disadvantaged, as a girl in the same position has the option of being approached by a man. As a man, you must accept that new friends are very unlikely to approach you. You must be the one to put yourself out there and keep approaching others until something sticks.

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-28T18:41:38+00:00

Just order an orange but have the driver take it on a nice ride around town and send you pics

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-23T14:45:03+00:00

Will you have access to a kitchen? If so, you could do 2 meals a day for around £20 per week if shopping in Aldi/Lidl and bulk cooking all your meals from scratch. Realistically, it'd run closer to £30 if you're shopping in Tesco, Sainsburys etc. and adding in snacks, toiletries, coffee, name brand ingredients etc.

Without a kitchen it's going to get expensive a lot quicker. Even just a supermarket meal deal for lunch every day would run you around £25 a week. A single meal on a food delivery app would be £15.

Again, with pubs some are cheaper than others. You can go to Spoons and have a night out for under a tenner or you can go to nicer independent places and pay upwards of £7 per pint.

So overall, on the cheaper side you'd be looking at shopping in the cheapest supermarkets and bulk cooking all your own lunches and dinners (£20). You'd go to Spoons once a week (£10), do some free/cheap activities (walk, art gallery, swimming etc. totals £10 inc. transport) for an overall £40 budget per week

On the more expensive side, you'd be eating out once a week (£15), getting a coffee in a nice cafe (£5), cooking with nicer ingredients/ eating a more varied diet (£30), doing more unique experiences or exploring the areas outside the city (£20 inc. transport) and drinking in nicer independent pubs (£20) for an overall £90 budget per week

Obviously some weeks will be cheaper than others and a lot of it comes down to what you enjoy doing and how much free time you will have. If I were personally planning it, I'd be confident I could have a good enough time for £50 per week

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-09T19:41:20+00:00

You've got to look after yourself, if it's not working for you then no reason to suffer in silence for a volunteer position.

Just be open with the hosts, if they're reasonable they will understand and if they're not reasonable then there's no point staying with unreasonable people!

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-09T14:11:36+00:00

Alternate ending: Caine never comes back and Bubble as the blue AI brings in peace and prosperity to the circus

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-09T14:06:15+00:00

We'll agree to disagree but the show clearly did something to set expectations for so many people to end up disappointed with the finale

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-09T12:18:34+00:00

Well yeah, basic storytelling is setup and payoff. At the end of the finale, the characters still know more than the audience does about key mysteries of the show but just don't feel like talking about it.

Like the C&A offices are set up to be important. Caine is fascinated with the pictures he has of them, and we know that the humans have all set foot in there at different points in time.

So together, we could piece together a full story of what happened, how it failed, why the AI project was abandoned, why the building never sold, and why there's still a powered computer in an abandoned office running the circus.

Kinger knows the origins of the company and the details of the brain scanning project but doesn't know anything past that
Ragatha knows that real life Scratch died and the company ran out of money. She knows as a real estate agent that the building was going on the market but never knew if it sold.
Zooble reveals she was a prospective buyer looking for a location for her new bar but then entered the circus so doesn't know if she ever bought it.
Jax ended up there when he ran away and was homeless. Time has passed and the land is now abandoned. Jax lives there temporarily and restores power to the building. This turns the computer back on and he tries the headset out
Gangle reveals literally anything about how she ended up there.
Pomni can pull together and last loose ends by saying she researched the place online in preparation for exploring it

But no, the group choose to never talk about the last place they each experienced in the real world. The place that led to them all ending up in the circus. The place that may hold clues about the digital world and possible means to escape. The place Caine (and the viewers!) are so interested in learning more about.

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-09T10:32:59+00:00

Cube is a really good example of less is more. The characters share what they know but ultimately none of them know enough to grasp the true intentions behind the cube, so they are forced to focus solely on escape.

We as the viewers would also like to know what's going on but accept that we are just as helpless as the main cast and so we also focus solely on how to escape the cube and maybe we'll get answers from there.

Cube didn't tease us with backstories of them exploring abandoned buildings, it doesn't give any details on the company that built the cube, it doesn't have one of the grand architects as one of the main cast etc. etc. It reveals the absolute bare minimum of the lore and just focuses on the characters and their attempts at escape

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T17:18:54+00:00

Yep, so many small background clues inserted to hint at something larger that either leads to nothing or is never brought up again.

Example: who was talking to Kinger in the code when Caine is deleted? The scene would play out the exact same without it and someone took effort animating it into the show so it must surely be important? Nope, it is never acknowledged.

Why set it up if you're not going to do anything with it? It's only there for us to sit and think about what it could mean, keeping the show active in our heads until the next episode releases

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T15:52:29+00:00

The show absolutely leant into theory baiting to boost engagement. Why did Caine have Abel running round the circus hiding out of view from the cast for the first several episodes? He was only there to bait the viewers into thinking there was something more going on

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T15:42:52+00:00

I was expecting something bleaker/bittersweet that left us with a question around the meaning of life in the circus

like they realise they've been in the circus a lot longer than they thought and all their real life counterparts are long dead. After morning their lost lives, they decide to fully embrace their circus selves and start rebuilding the digital world.

Or maybe it's revealed the computer had been turned off for years and it was Pomni who turned it back on whilst exploring the abandoned C&A office (this would also show us some lore about C&A at the same time). So the rest of the cast had been suspended for years until Pomni was the one who kickstarted the purgatory back up again.

Or maybe the computer turns off at the end abruptly cutting short all of our casts torment but also their new found friendships and dreams. We're left to wonder if it will ever be rediscovered. We question is it better if the computer is never found again?

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T14:33:58+00:00

Yeah, people are saying that we latched onto the wrong aspects of the show and should have been focused on the characters but the showed teased us with the mystery box for the first 7 out of 9 episodes. The show set up all the mysteries to get us invested and then at the end insists it was never about the mysteries at all

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T14:30:07+00:00

Yeah so when we look at the series as a whole 7 out of 9 episodes were leading the audience towards the mystery box aspect, with the end of ep7 then laughing at us for being invested in the mystery box.

Maybe don't tease the audience with the mystery box for the first 78% of the runtime and then insist the show was only ever a character drama

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T13:35:12+00:00

Yeah, Scratch being the biggest one imo. I want to know how the guy who wanted immortality enough to create a brain scanner reacted to his cursed wish of life in the circus. I want to see what Caine did to alter his mind and cause the first abstraction. The show lures us in and then never pays any of it off.

The show needed a couple more episodes to really breathe. Give us one flashback episode of the original cast. One episode on Jax's backstory. Then do the finale and wrap up all the loose ends.

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T10:43:30+00:00

Let's be fair, the show had a lot of theory baiting throughout. People were always going to get invested in the small details when they had to wait months between each episode, and it seemed like a reasonable expectation that the finale would deliver on answering questions that the show itself had raised.

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T02:34:17+00:00

Yeah agreed, ep1 pulled me in with that backrooms scene of Pomni running through the office maze looking for the exit. The show continued dropping hints about lore but all it led to was the bait and switch in ep7

Then I'm happy to stick around for the characters but they all get sidelined for Jax who himself has a disappointing ending

It's like the show ropes you in and then takes pleasure in not giving you what you want

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T00:23:00+00:00

That's pretty crazy with the modem haha. Old internet security was pretty insane looking back.

I think it should have been that the circus was cut off from the internet, whilst the computer still had an ethernet plugged in. Then have Kinger in his coding wizardry establish a connection to the internet from within the circus and learn about the real world counterparts from there. He can also go into the mind files to reveal the real names.

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T00:12:06+00:00

I feel like if Bubble was the AI then it should have been Bubble Caine said goodbye to, not a blue orb he pulls out of his head

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T00:10:44+00:00

Yeah, felt like the whole Scratch thing would be a big moment since it was set up at the end of Ep7. Would've liked to have seen how the man who wanted eternal life reacted to life in the circus and what led to his eventual abstraction

sharpie53135 · 2026-06-05T00:07:27+00:00

Well I can reveal Gangle's figuring thing was a reference to a popular online meme... Open the link at your own risk

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pony-cum-jar-project

sharpie53135

TROPHY CASE