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  • Archive for October, 2013

    I’m Not Alone Out There…


    2013 - 10.29

    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

    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

    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.