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Cleaning the Windows…

2014 - 09.12

Posted in General, Health, Photography, Work | No Comments »

Looking I see that it’s been about 6 months since I last updated. During that last 6 months quite a bit has happened, mainly on the Depression front. Obviously this was the main task to deal with over the last six months, as I was disappearing down a vortex, feeling like I was never to return. I finally bit the bullet and acquiesced on the Anti-Depressants. I must say that’s been a positive choice for me. My GP favours a gradual approach, so I’m pleased to say that outside of the first fortnight, I experienced no devastating side effects. My outlook on my place of work has changed enough for me to be able to function quite positively again. I can get there on a regular basis again. I’ve not had a period of depression that has had me debilitated to the point of not being able to get to work.

Financially things are getting much better, I’ve had my two big spending efforts for the year, and I’m now back on track to knocking of the last of the debt outside of the house. I’m loving my iMac 27″, and my Tamron 150mm to 600mm lens. Now it’s back to financial responsiblity.

From a more general perspective life has changed too. Considerably in some aspects. I get up now about 4:40 on a work day, about 5:00 to 5:30 on a “non” work day. Mornings are something I am beginning to appreciate again. In fact if I do sleep in, I’m quite frustrated by how much of my day I’m losing out on now. Overall I’m more social again and am getting out again far more. I’ve been making quite active efforts to keep in touch with people on a regular basis again, and it’s been good to renew some old friendships (yes Papoose that’s you)!

At home the “maintenance” tasks aren’t appearing so overwhelming now because there’s generally no one else to assist.

Photography is providing far more enjoyment again. I’ve got some trips planned for some shoots, and there’s a good quality handheld GPS on the list soon. My work has been improving, and my skill set is continually growing. I’m very pleased where that is taking me.

Time in A Different Sort of Dungeon…

2014 - 03.10

Posted in Games, Health, Humour, Tech | No Comments »

I’m just sitting here reflecting, on the weekend just past. I’ve had a great weekend. Dusty arrived on Friday night, and we had a quick chat and then went to bed at my usual time. We both were up early on Saturday morning, enjoying a light breakfast then after that making sure the chores were done. Subsequently we went for a walk around the neighbourhood for him to reminisce and then a drive around town so that he could enjoy some fresh air with slightly more insane traffic than he’s used to now. After that there was a quick jaunt in JB and Officeworks. We returned home to have a quiet afternoon sitting on the patio chatting and generally taking it easy. Our original intention was to spend Saturday playing Descent: Journeys in the dark (first edition) and possibly Sunday too. It seemed, that we needed Saturday to unwind, debrief from work / study as both of us confessed to feeling extremely relaxed after basically doing nothing Saturday afternoon and evening. Anyway, Sunday was spent playing Descent: Journeys in the dark (first edition). We managed to put in a good 13 hours solid dungeon crawling, With Dusty creating a huge pile of carcasses comprised of Skeletons, Dark Priests, Spiders, Kobolds, Ferox, Razorwings, Sorcerers and an Ogre. What can I say other than that it was as good a weekend as I had hoped it would be.

A Different Sort of Blossom…

2014 - 03.01

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A friend asked me to help her out with her pet project that she’s been working on for the last couple of years. Her project is called Blossom Connect. Give it a look, it’s a worthy pursuit. Our Society undervalues our children and short changes them so much by stinting on Educational and Social Resources.

Louise’s been working on this to see that local children get the support they need to assist their “learning and development”. She wanted some photos shot of her with some of the children she seeks to help while she was playing, interacting with them just to help give the site a bit more of a sense of what it’s about and who it’s for really. Louise’s invitation was a bit surprising since I’ve never made much secret of being any good with children or being particularly fond of them. Still it’s a challenge worthy of pursuit and I’m pleased she thought to give me an opportunity to stretch out my repertoire and help her cause. Hopefully I will do both her faith and the Children justice. Many thanks to The Children, their Parents, and Louise for the opportunity. I won’t be using any of the photos on my site, as I didn’t gain permission for that sort of use, so the finished products will only be available to see at Blossom Connect. As I said it’s worth a look, you may want to use it yourself or suggest it to someone you know in the future.

Quicksand or Solid Ground, that is the Question…

2014 - 03.01

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Last week’s been a bit of a setback as far as overcoming my Depression. I missed 3 Days of work due to it this week just gone, and had to make up a few extra hours for the Thursday. However I think I’ve moved on from that bout, and on reflection think I’d been doing pretty well, nearly 2 months since I’d been impacted by a major Depressive period. So I suppose all in all it’s still moving forward, although earlier in the week it didn’t seem like I was keeping ground. Last few days I seem to be doing much better again. However I’ve been up even earlier than usual last few days, it’s about 05:00 it seems last 3 days! Ugh. Hopefully this won’t be a future trend 06:00 is early enough to be up and about it seems to me.

Cool Breeze under my armpits…

2014 - 02.23

Posted in Dreams, General, Health, House, Humour, Photography, Tech, Work | No Comments »

Things seem to be coming along well in my journey through the Straits of Depression. I’ve managed to keep my head above water for almost a month now, without a profound bout of Depression. That’s not to say the Depression isn’t lurking at every corner, but at the moment I feel a sense of being able to float above it, not completely out of the depths, but at least if I was in quicksand, I’d be able to feel the breeze under my armpits! So far, with the help of my Psychologist, a Team Leader & Manager at work willing to exercise a bit of flexibility, I’m feeling better about a few things, including work. That’s not to say I’m doing Great! However, my days are noticeably changing. I’m up and out of bed most mornings at 06:00 feeling at least like facing the day and trying to some things done. I’m not quite so settled with the being in bed at 22:00 in the evening, that’s a psychological challenge, but I’m making the effort and clearly there’s benefits.

No, there’s no extension on the house, no there’s no Garage, but at least I’m working towards getting a list of tasks done about the place. In addition I’m starting to enjoy other aspects of life again. My photography is providing me with considerable challenge and enjoyment, and I can honestly say I hope I can turn that into something to give me an income in my later years. There’s a bit of Creative Writing going on again, but I’m not ready to share that yet. I at least am starting to think about the future again, as I’m definitely over IT.

Just A Point in Time…

2013 - 12.28

Posted in Health, Philosophy, Relationships | No Comments »

Well I’m “psychologically” limping towards a new year, hopefully to make more positive headway in dealing with my Depression. Christmas is passed for another year, and now things will begin to take a more “normal” course for most of us.

I caught up with a few friends I don’t often see, although I make an effort to communicate to most of my friends by email or phone, or even Instant Messaging at least every fortnight. I think I’m quite lucky in some ways (when I’m thinking positively that is), I still have a few good friends from many years ago. I have at least one from my teens that I still see and talk to regularly (now that I’m not being slack).

I still have three or four from my early Twenties too, made during my first stint at University. It doesn’t sound much, but when you have held such friendships well over Thirty years, you can feel that they mean something. I remember being told by a man I admired very much when I was young and he was alive, that “(I)f you have even one friend in your middle age from your childhood then you should feel very lucky. You can also tell yourself you worked hard with that one!”

Not something easy to appreciate to it’s fullness when you’re in your early Teens, but now I feel the truth in that statement. I try to pass that small jewel onto some of my younger friends today, but whether it will stick is something only time can tell. But I’m glad I listened. Friendships do need to be nurtured or they do eventually die of starvation, just like a plant that isn’t cared for, or a house that’s not maintained. There are sometimes ones that are lost through circumstance, you can only do so much each, and there are always factors outside of our control, we don’t live in vacuums. There are myriads of connections between people, like nodes on the internet. We can’t always have the solid connection that others will have, and sometimes things just break and can’t be reconnected. No matter how much effort we make, sometimes things just aren’t meant to have a span past the time they do.

I want all my friends to know that they ARE appreciated. More often than not you are there when I need you, although sometimes you won’t even realise you’ve been needed and come through! 🙂

I’m Not Alone Out There…

2013 - 10.29

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Today I saw one of the people I most respect at work, lose it with his Manager. Not in a Machete, blood on the walls sort of thing, but he expressed to his Manager just how he saw it.

What was interesting about this for me was that I’ve always seen this person, whom I consider a friend in addition to a colleague as relatively cool about work. I’ve always had the impression, that he’s relatively “unflappable” at work. I’ve always had the impression that he leaves work at work and goes home to a family and thinks not of work unless he’s paged. I’ve found his advice and reflections very sound and useful. Clearly though by the way in which this all came to a head it was a matter of the straw that broke the Camel’s back. What ensued was approximately 90 minutes of back peddling by the Manager to calm and settle what quickly erupted into a major team dummy spit!

What this reaffirmed for me was that I’m not the only one believing I work for a Circus run by the Lunatics that have escaped from the Asylum! My day had been running a shabby second to anything else, but this did lift my spirits simply by indicating to me I’m not the only one…

A Sieve Full of Sand…

2013 - 10.28

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Although I feel I’m making ground with my depression, and definitely feel I’m making some progress towards dealing with the work burnout, it’s still a hard slog.

Work more so at the moment. I’ve been applying for a couple of roles, so far I’ve had one interview which felt quite favourable. At least I know the Resumé is doing the job, and so are the cover letters. If I’m offered the current role I’ve recently interviewed for, and I choose to accept it based on what I know about the conditions, I’ll be taking at the least a $7K pay cut. I hadn’t realised it was costing me so much more to live than when I did the figures a couple of years ago. Well around 2010 actually when I was feeling the pinch after buying the house! Yes I’m willing to take a pay cut to improve my current disposition, but unfortunately there’s to be a bottom line I guess. I guess I can only wait and see if I have to actually make that choice this week.

As regards life external to work, I do feel I’m making ground, albeit slowly. I’ve been waking up AND getting up at about 06:30 each morning including weekends, and making better use of my days. That does now seem to be having a positive effect over the medium term (approximately 6 weeks now). Even though I’m not necessarily taking huge steps, I’m definitely able to see that there’s forward and upward movement. My photography is providing more satisfaction than before, I’m putting more effort into cleaning up the substandard work and leaving myself free to enjoy the better work without dwelling on the poor. Not that it’s bad, but I just want to clean up the unnecessary boring work that provides no springboard for further development. The photography blog has had some more work done on it, although I’ve noticed that some of it’s not displaying correctly: I’ll get to that later in the week. It’s really about me not having had time to read up on how to make best use of the facilities provided by the particular template. Bear with me on that one! It’s good just to having something up and getting there. I’ve also promised Tiggakat that I will get to finishing off her blog and hopefully then she’ll continue to update to keep up the tradition.

On the subject of writing, I’ve also been throwing a few ideas about for the creative writing again, and although I’ve had Ulysses for quite a while, I decided to make the additional purchase of Scrivener and explore both. I actually think I may be able to make use of both. Ulysses Ver. 3.x does appear to have mixed reviews and since I still think it’s Version 2.xx still has the functionality I’m looking for, I will wait and see how the fundamental productivity goes, before thinking I need to have another version quite different.

Lost in Time & Space…

2013 - 10.03

Posted in Furbag, General, Health | No Comments »

I look and it’s been almost a year since I last updated. No surprise really, this last year’s been fairly terrible for the most part. Nothing in the tragic: no house burned down, flooded out, hit by meteor or other completely earth shattering. Just the slow hard grind of depression. This is such an insidious condition, sapping everything from life day after day after day.

Work has been impacted severely during the last year in particular, although admittedly it’s been seeing the impact for several years now. I’ve come to the realisation though, that there’ve been two major dysfunctions going on for me over the last few years. Firstly and most likely foremost, my Depression. Secondly I’ve come to see that as far as work goes, I’m also suffering from Burn Out. Couple that with depression, and it’s a fairly toxic combination. It might sound strange that I’m experiencing Burn Out AND Depression, but the distinction has become important in trying to combat the deterioration of my work situation. Clearly I’ve been experiencing significant Depression for most of my Teens, and all of my Adult life. For the most part this has not been treated. But over the last year, I’ve been making inroads, albeit slowly! I have achieved some major milestones, as far as certain responsibilities that I’d been ignoring for a few years, i.e. Tax, and debts. I’m certainly not debt free, but I’ve been making some inroads over the last two years, and in particular the last 12 months. Tax is up to date, and I’m still working on the debt situation, moving forward rather than backward. However, although my material situation is settling, my psychological disposition is still “in Flux”.

Hopefully over the next month, I’ll get a few more aspects of life stabilised and achieve some more forward momentum. It’s so difficult to help people who don’t suffer from it (depression) understand how it works, or rather the way things DON’T work! For most people, it’s “just a matter of will”. Unfortunately that approach would never have got me clean and in Recovery, and it certainly doesn’t seem to work for Depression either! There are times I think that I need the Old Furbag to get out of the ground and smack me about again. Tigga doesn’t do a bad job, but she’s yet to develop that true superiority complex that only an “A” Grade Furbag can exercise. Still, she’s working on it, and me. She’ll get there.

Hopefully now I’ll be updating again a bit more frequently. I need to get my writing and photography happening. Speaking of which, I’m configuring my photography blog, and it will be getting it’s first load of content up hopefully this weekend. The blog itself is there, but until the content is on it, I’ll wait before putting the link up here.

Thy Time is now Two Score & Nine

2012 - 09.06

Posted in Furbag, General, Health, Relationships, Tech, Work | No Comments »

It’s hard to believe that it’s been mid February since the last update. Much has happened, but not necessarily much worth telling I guess! Back in the End of March I had a new arrival:Tigga. Yes another “Death Row Moggie”. At the time she was 3 months old, making her now about 8 months old. It seemed time for Furbag to have a successor lined up. Needless to say I’ve had to pay the price for my folly there!

Tigga in all her Glory

For just over five months I’ve had to put up with a different Furbag; one that seems to be invested with an extra personality that I don’t recall before. I’ll grant that after 5 months she’s started to mellow a smidgeon, but only to the point of tolerating Tigga on the bed with me as the “Berlin Wall”. I’m sure Furbag will have much to complain about on her blog.

Work’s been very depressing over the last 6 months, I feel like I’m the Protagonist in “The System of Dr Tarr & Professor Fether” suddenly realising who’s locked up and who’s not…

On the plus I’ve been reinvigorating my environment and infrastructure by the purchase of a few domains of my choice, and moving my whole virtual environment from Xen on Linux to VirtualBox on Mac OS X. So the Virtual Environment of a year ago is no more. I now have the whole “andulain.net” domain being serviced by 5 servers running on a Mac Mini with 16 Gig of RAM, an SSD (60 Gig) & a 750 Gig (7200) HDD. There’s still room for 2 more servers, and the whole thing is not missing a beat so far. I was so impressed, I have retired the iMac I’ve had for four and a half years, and replaced it with another Mac Mini with 8 Gig of RAM. Currently I’ve lent the iMac to my niece to bring her over to the dark side.

In my usual tradition I saw one year out and another one in with the mandatory shag, so yes another year (birth) has come & gone, nearly 17 of which the Furbag has shared with me.

Partners come & go, but the pussy stays it seems…

Between Bag End & Orodruin

Ramblings regarding my journey through the Cosmos…