Depression sucks, but I’m sure you already know that.
So, yea, I’ve been AWOL from my journal for a while, and it is not like there hasn’t been shit to write about, I just haven’t felt up to writing about any of it. And before you start thinking I’ve been up to my ears in trauma and drama, that hasn’t been the case. My life’s been totally normal, some good stuff, some bad stuff, but I, personally, haven’t been feeling so hot, hence the lack of a will to write.
There have been a lot of good things happening lately. Honestly there have. I’ve been picking up more commission work, and have had a lot of inquiries that will probably lead to more work in the future. I got a cute, sassy haircut, and although everyone was initially scandalized that I cut it off, I have had a lot of compliments since. I’ve gone out on the tear with my friends, been playing a fun character in a great D&D campaign. Todd and I have been just fine, my family is doing fine, my plants are growing like weeds. All of the major, important outward elements of my life are in good order.
Just, at this moment, my head isn’t quite where it should be (i.e. not up my ass).
I’be been feeling angry and suppressed because of my current job, wherein the office atmosphere is remeniscent of a demilitarized zone. Besides the intraoffice cold war, the job itself isn’t that great, and I have recognised it as such for long enough that I am having a hard time taking my own job seriously. Then I feel guilty because plenty of people would love to have my job in today’s economy. I mean, yeah, it is a cruddy reception/clerical entry-level gig in a public office wherein you have to deal with seriously annoyed citizenry and cope with shambolic management and hostile co-workers, but it is a job, right?
So, my job has me in a constant state of mild irritation, sometimes escalating to boiling, barely-suppresed inner fury. I’ve been trying to start/run a business in my spare time, and I have been stuck on the extra-early shift at my day job again. By the time I get home from the Office, I am exhausted from managing my emotions, smiling and acting nice, and just the whole physical aspect of having been up since before 5:00 a.m. I get home in a vicious bad mood, and have to get supper, and possibly unwind a bit. By the time I am in a fit state of mind and a full state of tummy, it is time to have a bath and go to bed. What little sewing I get done during the week is essentially negligible. So, I sew on the weekends, in between errand running, and frankly, dealing with the errands sometimes eats up the entire freakin’ weekend. I am just spinning my wheels where my business is concerned, and this is stressing me out. I cannot wait for my furlough from my day job, so I can get some actual work done. Sewing, advertising, buying stock, working on my webpage. All the shit I NEED to get done before I quit from my day job in March.
I hate stress so much, because for me stress almost always leads up to depression. Just add a lack of sleep, a dash of hormones, guilt, nervousness, and uncertainty to the mix, and I am ready to curl up in the bathtub weeping violently.
Todd’s been having trouble at his work, too, lately, mostly from bad corporate/management decisions that end up putting the work force into a real crunch. In this case, the crunch involves over half of the team he works on being sent home early in the shift, leaving only he and his manager to deal with literal tons of packages. Supposedly, this is FedEx’s slow season, and therefore they can’t promote any of their part-timers to full time, cannot hire any more service managers, and the part-timers can only get 25 hours. So the part timers work 4 or 5 hour shifts, when they are really needed for 5-7 hours. Then, the few full-timers and managers left after the part-time crew gets sent home are left to deal with a massive volume of shit to ship. You see, FedEx’s corporate offices feel this is the slow season, but in actuality, they’re back up to pre-Christmas volume.
And what this all means when it is at home is that my husband is dead tired all the time, in a consant state of minor physical injury, and wanting to look for a different job, but being too exhausted to do so. He doesn’t want to just up and quit, because the economy is bad, I’m quitting, and he’d lose his education credit fund, and so on.
And I, being who I am, have subconsciously taken up worrying on my husband’s behalf, and that’s just one more ingredient into my Misery Stew.
I’m trying to keep on top of it, and so far I am doing a pretty good job. I haven’t cried in a good two months, and I am still getting things accomplished, though not as quickly as would satisfy me. I can hear the demons of malcontent chattering away in the background, but I am hoping, when they bust loose, I can do a Buffy on them, and lay their asses out. I haven’t broken down, seriously broken down in quite a long time. I think the last time I really, really freaked out was just before I figured out the household budget and what I MUST earn each month to keep us solvent. This is good, because, as we all know, depression sucks. It is a scandalous waste of time and life force. Do you know that I cannot remember most of the year 2001 and certain parts of 2000. I can’t remember what I did on the New Year’s Eve that separated those two years, and that is not because I spend said holiday in a drunken haze. I know on the NYE from 2001 to 2002, Todd and I spent partying with Julie and co in Lawrence. 1999/2000 we were partying with the SciFi group in York. Anyway, my point is that I effectively lost a year of my life becauc
se I was feeling too wretched to participate, because I could not shake a bad patch of the blues. I’ve been largely okay since November 2001, since I quit my job at Sadistic Mutual Funds, and I fully intend to keep on being largely okay, and probably even better after I become self employed.
There will be a lot more pressure and uncertainty, since I am the sole proprietor, the sole worker, the scapegoat, and the fulcrum upon which success and failure balance. However, I think my quality of life will improve because I won’t be at the disposal of whatever cracked-up MBA who wants to call herself my boss. Any bad management decisions I can change at a moment’s notice, and if I have a migrane, I can just be sick, and don’t have to grovel for sick-leave or bring in a doctor’s note. There will be no commute, no crusty co-workers, no lunchroom fridge bandit and no cubicles.
Okay, so now I have vented, and can get back to writing charming, nostalgic entries, like the three I have on disc, just waiting to upload. Look for them SOON!