Fight or Flight

I have a neighbour who has turned a bit nasty.  It's horrible.  Well, nasty is probably a bit of a stretch really.  It feels like nasty to me, at the moment ... but the truth of the matter is probably more like: stressed, upset, angry, over it.  There's been stuff going on, for over a year now, that has made living where she is living really difficult, due to a project on my side of the fence.  Her boundary is compromised and her footpath is a mess.

I've had a few goes at sorting it out and getting it deal with - but the truth of the matter is, I guess - it hasn't been enough and the whole thing has just dragged on and on.  When that happens, eventually sometimes some people explode.  Explode she did.  Good and proper.

The trouble with some people, when they explode, is that rationality just disappears.  I guess that probably goes for most people, when they explode.  So - I can't have a discussion with her, she just shouts accusations and name calls and adds more and more problems and complaints to the list.  There's not, at the moment, actually a way of sitting down calmly and figuring out what it is that I could do to make things better for her.  I wish I could.

I really dislike dissent and anger.  So much so that my whole fight/flight response goes into high alert over issues like this.  After the first conversation with her I had already decided that I didn't want to live there anymore at all and that I would just put the place on the market.  I've been looking at Real Estate websites, trying to work out how much I might be able to get for my house, and then looking to see what kind of a place I might be able to afford to buy.  I actually saw a place not too far from my current place that looks really great!

A lot of money and effort to spend rather than dealing with a neighbourhood dispute though.

I hope I stop feeling like that soon.  I really do.  I hope she calms down.  I hope we can find a solution that is going to work for her and make her feel like her issues have been addressed.

I have this horrible feeling that she spent such a long time getting to angry that now that she is there, she's decided she's damned well going to stay there.

*sigh*

Tracking Again

I've gotten back into transcribing my blog posts & journal entries into my "book".  I like it - but at the same time it's a quite confronting project.

Reading over the places that I've been, the dark holes that I fell into over the past year and more - it's not a comforting activity.  It's also quite concerning and disturbing to see how far apart my posts in here  and in my journal sometimes have been from my more "public" blog - where I own my own identity, name, face, location ....

It's scary sometimes, when we realise just how much we conceal - even from ourselves!

Even though it's scary, somehow, I've come to think that part of the healing process is in bringing the worlds together.  The very internal, introspective and dark world of a blog that has been intentionally set up to track depression and longed for recovery.  The day to day drudge world of a journal, kept to just record whatever happens, however insignificant.  Then the blog set up to present a public face and to take baby steps as a public writer.  Combine those with the locked and safe blog where there was a defined audience, who were also revealing their own stories, and a facilitator who was leading and asking sometimes quite though provoking questions.

Worlds collide.  Watching it happen on my electronic pages as they thread and lace together is a bit weird.  It doesn't always make me feel safe or wonderful about who I am - but I feel it is a task I must do and I also feel that the result is something that I am bound to share.  No more hiding.  No more shying away from the ugly (but sometimes beautiful) truths of it all.

Other Fish to Fry

I was just writing in my personal journal. I was singing happy songs about the fact that I might be seeking alternative employment before too very long. I was noting that have:

Other fish to fry.

Other ponds to fish in, other horizons to seek.

I'm a change lover, a wanderer, a non-conformist, a gypsy soul.

I love to travel to new places, see new faces, make new acquaintances. To me, stability isn't that far off sterility. Too much of the same bland sameness makes me feel like I am stagnating and suffocating.

I need to breathe new air, I long to set sail on new seas. I want to learn new things, I ache to see with new eyes. I want to hear a different song. I am tired of this marching beat. It's time to waltz.

I don't have that much of a plan. I don't even know quite what direction I will head in when my leash is unbuckled. I think at first I might just run in ecstatic dizzy circles, like a dog let off after too long on the chain.

I'm thinking its time that I started working towards formulating my "what comes next" plan. There's lots of things I WANT to do, but I also need to address the age old basic of food on the table and a roof over our head. I'll be neither financially independent nor debt free when I make good my escape from this desert of the mind. I will have to find a way to make all of our ends meet and to keep on re-weaving the threads that hold us together.

For now, I'm thinking the two greatest things for me to have, and to hold to are trust and confidence. Trust that the right path will open before me, when the time come, and confidence in my own strength and ability to tread that path both boldly and well.

Until then, on I plod, head down, heart playing the slow and steady drum of those who drag their feet ... doing the thing that they seem doomed to do, for the simple fact of the imperative of holding the physical threads of shelter and nourishment together.

 

 

New Horizons ...

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I've lost it a bit with the book thing

So, at one stage a while back I started out on a bit of a book project.  I got really excited and started pulling together posts from this blog, another blog of mine, my journal and also from a writing project I got involved in.  For a short time, I put huge amounts of effort into collecting, collating and commenting on my various pieces of writing and working hard to getting it into some sort of chronological order.

The whole point of chronological, rather than reverse chronological (blog reading style if you discover a blog quite a while after it's inception) was that it would be make much more sense so far as tracking recovery from depression is concerned.

I must admit that it seems like I've lost it, quite badly, with the project.  I don't know - work and life took over I guess.  I got excited about food prep - HOORAY - all over again and went off on a particular food quest, amongst other things.  The world is a crazy, busy and often (to me at least) exhausting and slightly bewildering place.

For a while there, I hardly even wrote.  Not even in my journal .... let alone trolling back through older pieces of writing and getting them into some kind of order.

However - I think that the project has merit and I really really do want to get back on the wagon with it.  I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to make that happen, but I know that I have to.  Really.  It's important, on more levels than I can even begin to express or describe.

I gotta get me back on that writing wagon!

Exhaustion Takes it's Toll

Some days, I just cry from tiredness.  Just lately, despite the fact that I've been eating as well as I know how, and possibly better than I ever have in my life - I feel so much physical pain.  There just doesn't seem to be time to do the basic bodily maintenance to keep it all at bay.

I've taken to wearing socks two days in a row, just airing them on top of my boots.  It saves on washing.  I've NEVER done that before.  I only wash my hair every second or third day now.  That saves time too.  It only looks a bit ratty.  I've stopped caring.  I'm just to tired to really give a rat's arse.

Today I got up and I showered, washed my hair even.  I brushed my teeth, I ironed my shirt.  I was dressed, all the way down to the boots and it was time to make my lunch.  I just sat there, in the living room, in a fog of fatigue - not being able to figure out what to do next.  Minutes elapsed.

Eventually I came back upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed and took my boots off and just cried.  I was so tired, I just couldn't face it.  And now, ironically, I can't sleep.  Unbelievable.

I don't know what to do.  I am unsure if I can wait the required weeks or months to wait to see what will become of my job.  I feel like I need to change something right now.  I won't though.  I can't afford to.  I have to hang in there.  For just a little while longer.

I keep promising myself - for just a little while longer.  Plod the plod, nod the nod.  Do the shit.  Cop the crap.  For just a little while longer.

Totally Over It

I’m really completely over my job. I’ve been trying so hard, for so long to jolly myself along – telling myself to be grateful for the income and the stability … that I like my team yadda yadda yadda.

Well, the truth of the matter is IT SUCKS. I get up at 4 in the morning in order to start at seven thirty. I spend at least 3 hours of MY PRECIOUS TIME just getting to and from that damned torturous hole. And while I’m there … unable to do any of the things that currently interest me, make my eyes sparkle or reflect my core values (other than that of putting food on the table for the kids, oh – and a roof over all of our heads) … pretty much a sum total of absolutely freaking nothing happens.

I hate it. I hate it with a passion. I hate feeling underutilised and overlooked. I hate it that my manager pretty much NEVER gives me any work to do other than the basic basic basic attendance issues of whatever shows in the roster. Nearly every other member of my team, in the last four weeks alone has been given some sort of development work to do above and beyond the call of what pops up in our day to day rosters. I have not been handed a single piece since I got back from my unpaid leave LAST AUGUST. I hate that. I resent it. It makes me feel small and angry and bitter and impotent.

No one turned up for my class this morning. Not a single soul, and despite that – and despite the fact that I know one of my team members, who I really like, is working on a massive undertaking, that she was handed just yesterday, I just stayed in my classroom, and started working on an application for another job.

Yesterday our two up manager sent out an email asking that two specifically named members of my team work on this project. One of them is a contractor who really doesn’t have the knowledge required. I helped yesterday afternoon and I talked to that manager about the project this morning. He seemed surprised that I was interested, or even in fact knew anything about it. I didn’t seek him out to talk about it, I just happened to bump into him on the train.

Just right now, two doors down, there is a meeting happening about the project. I don’t care, I wasn’t invited. I don’t see why I should help. Really. Screw them, really. That’s where I’m at right now. Screw them.

I’m hoping, so hoping, that my job gets dissolved in this upcoming restructure. I so don’t want to do it anymore. I’m so so so tired of all of this total bullshit. I’m so tired of, well, the whole dang box and dice. At this stage, I’d be happy to go back to waiting tables, or cleaning toilets. If only those jobs actually paid the bills!

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Am I ready for work?

Just to go back that is, after a bit of time off over the festive season.  No I'm not, really - is the answer to that.  I don't want to.  I don't feel like it.  I haven't ironed my work shirts.  I like it much better here.  I feel completely resistant to the idea of responding to that alarm, which is going to go off three or four hours earlier than I've been getting up this week.  I feel completely resistant to the idea of leaving our house with barely a backwards glance, while there's barely grey light touching the ground.  I am tired already at the thought of parking the car and marching to the station.  I feel despondent at the idea of lining up along the platform with all the other lemmings.

To be truthful though, once on the train, I quite like it.  I like the rhythm of the movement and the opportunity to nap or read.  And in a more positive mindset, I don't mind the idea of getting off at the station near my work and seeing friendly and familiar faces.  There's a bit of pleasure at the thought of signing on and saying hello to my team and finding out how their break has been.  A bit like the first day back at school I guess.  There's that catching up to do - with people who you don't usually see anywhere much else, but who you like, and who have become part of the fabric of your life.

It will be OK.  I will manage, for a while more.  I will serve my term.  However long it takes.  There's trains to catch, bills to pay...

I haven't written much over this break.  Not much here, not much in my personal journal .... I haven't read much either.  I'm behind on most of the blogs I usually like to follow.  In a weird way, I've had less time to myself than I would get in a working week.  I guess that's family for you!  It's been really good.  I've seen quite a bit of my daughter and spend heaps of time with my small son.  I even Skyped the big one who is O/S a couple of times, which is more than I usually manage.  My partner has had the same time off as me so we've gotten to spend lots of time together too, in a good way.  We've had a couple of nice dinners out together, a BBQ lunch with the neighbours, which was really nice, and just generally hung out.

That's what holidays are for I guess.  Rest and rejuvenation.  We go back to the grindstone with fresh will and determination to turn it harder so as to be able to stop again sooner.  What a world!

A few more years, I keep telling myself.  A few more years.

I couldn't even bring myself to want to go away over this break.  The thought of having to come back again was just too depressing.  I've realised that when I leave, I want it to be a much longer leaving.  I don't want to have the prospect of coming back lurking and looming over my shoulder.  Having said that though, I'd also like to get away at least once, maybe a couple of times during the year - just for the inspiration and fun of it.

So much to do, and yet, in so many ways, what I long for is to do more of this lovely nothing!