Hurry up and wait.

I am both exceptionally lazy, and really bad at waiting. I don't quite understand how those two things square up, but there you have it.

I just can't seem to do anything these days. I'm constantly tired and lazy and never want to really do anything but lie around and nap. But at the same time, I'm incredibly impatient about some things. Especially anything in my head. I know that I just need to give it time to get past certain things, to move on. But I don't want to wait. I want things to be how I want them to be right now. This very minute. All this waiting and being patient crap does not sit well with me. It seems that anything outside of my control cannot happen soon enough, but the things inside my control can wait as long as I feel like it. Which isn't the most logical or sensible approach to these things.

I'm not entirely sure what's at the bottom of all this. Is it just a general laziness, that's come about from years of low energy, low mood, low everything? Or is it something more inherent in my personality? Do I have some sense of entitlement, that I deserve everything I want right now, without having to work for it? Is it some sort of need for instant gratification that's a worrying and depressing sign of our times? I dunno, but it's bloody stupid and annoying. I don't think I was always like this. I don't remember feeling like this when I was at school or university. But then maybe the structure of those sort of systems kept me afloat. Always things to have to do, by a certain time, and they were mostly things that I liked and enjoyed doing, so motivation wasn't as big a problem.

I really wish that I could get those things back - the energy, motivation, sense of purpose that I had from academia. I had dinner with an old friend from university recently, and she said that she doesn't think I've changed at all from our uni days. I don't know about that. Obviously, she doesn't know about my problems so I guess she doesn't have a lot of data to go off of. But it's nice to know that I still seem like myself to her, whatever that is. I guess my personality, my sense of humour, all that sort of stuff maybe hasn't changed that much. And in some ways, as much as it's draining to have to hide my problems from so many people so much of the time, there's almost something refreshing about being around someone who hasn't got a clue about them - it's like I can almost pretend that I don't have these problems and just be myself. Obviously that's only a temporary thing, and hardly a long-term approach to depression, but still. Gotta see the upsides where I can, I guess.

Ironically I think I'm a bit more confident now that I was at uni. I think that's partly just the effect of going out into the working world, being in increasingly more situations where I need confidence and such. And I think it's also partly because of the depression. It's weird, the sort of strength that you get from it. It doesn't feel like it a lot of the time - you feel so tired, so low, so afraid and lonely and unworthy so often. But somewhere there's some kind of 'well fuck the world' sort of thing that comes out of it. A feeling of 'what the hell can the world do to me now, things are already pretty bad' that gives you some sort of weird, quiet strength. And just knowing that I've had these problems for so long now, but they haven't done me in. Not quite yet, anyway. But I know that that means there's some sort of strength and energy in there. Somewhere. I just need to unearth it and put it to good use.

I have no idea how I got to this from the start of this post. It's weird, the way my train of thought can go, especially when I'm writing. I think that's why I need to do this more. Sometimes I do just get sick of thinking and talking about things, and I do feel a bit self-indulgent doing this, like I think my problems are so important that they should be aired to the world. But that's not my intention. Writing seems to help me get things straight more than just going over and over and over them in my head. So it seems like an actual productive thing. As well as kinda cathartic. And for some reason, writing vaguely publicly like this helps with that - when I would write just for myself, like a private diary or whatever, I would go down the rabbit hole of self-hatred far too often. I used it to torture myself for some odd reason. I don't know quite why that is - maybe I thought I had to play up to the idea of a victim or something.

I have to keep reminding myself of this - something has changed for me. Even though I've been feeling quite down and stuck and lost of late, it's still different than it used to me. Only a little bit different, at times, but still. I have to hold onto that and keep reminding myself. I very often don't want to - I want to sink into that pit of despair sometimes. It's perversely pleasant and comforting to drown in the negative. But I try not to let myself do it for long - just enough to realise that that is not how I want to be anymore. And yeah, maybe it's all a lot harder than it seemed at first when I had my 'revelation' or whatever the hell it was. I had so much energy then, it seems, that I don't now. But I'm still trying. Maybe I need to tone down my expectations a bit, but I'm trying. I think. I hope. And I guess that's the main thing. To have hope.

Addicted to misery?

Well. That was a slightly longer hiatus than I intended. It seems that my body chose almost the exact moment that I handed in my final assignment (well, the exact day anyway) to have me come down with the mother of all colds. And of course I've been way too busy at work to even contemplate taking proper time off to get better, so I've been shuffling and snivelling along as best as I could. Finally starting to feel a bit better, but still really tired. Which has been fairly fatal for my motivation and energy levels. I was so looking forward to getting my course over with so that I could get started on the million of other things I want to do, then I have to take to my sick bed. Typical!

What's also typical is that I'm writing this when I should be working. In fairness, it's after 9pm at night and I'm at home so I really shouldn't *have* to be working, but there you go. It's just one of those weeks and my lack of productivity due to this lovely lurgy I've had has gotten me really far behind.

But anyway. None of that is remotely interesting or informative, unless you had a desperate desire to know what's up with my work schedule and immune system. And frankly, if that is the case, I think you might need a little more help than reading this blog can possibly give you.

I've had a post floating around my mind for the past week or so. I'm still not sure if I'm ready to write it, but I guess we'll see by the end of this.

It's occurred to me lately that my depression and anxiety issues have a lot in common with addiction, for me at least. I've been thinking about how come I've changed now; how come I've had this revelation, this clarity now and not before? Or later? And is it just sheer luck - do you just have to sit around waiting for this revelation to hit? It seems to me that it's a lot like when addicts reach that last straw, their rock bottom or whichever other cliche you choose to use, that finally makes them want to change and gives them the strength to be more successful with change than they were before.

But the problem with that is that it suggests that it's up to the fates to decide when that moment is. That doesn't seem quite right.  Or fair. But I honestly don't know why I came to my sense now instead of years ago. I know that I had a bigger wake up call than I've had in a long time - someone was incredibly honest with me and (after hours of crying and wailing) that somehow finally made me see things more clearly. It made me realise how much of my life I was wasting, how many opportunities were being ruined and how this would never change if I didn't change.

But I have no idea how anyone else is supposed to get to that moment. Part of the reason that this has been floating around my head was that I was wondering if maybe I should consider doing some sort of voluntary work within the mental health/counselling sector. I have no idea if I'd be any good at it, as I'm not generally a very touchy feely sort of person, but I feel like I'd like to make my experiences count for something. But if having this sort of moment of clarity is so arbitrary, what could I really do for someone?

And whilst I'm talking about this in terms of addiction, it brings up the whole idea of balance. I've never been very good with balance - always been all or nothing. That's part of the perfectionist trait in me, I suppose - that it's completely perfect, or it's completely shit. No in betweens. But this is more like an eating disorder than an alcohol or drug addiction - I may have gotten addicted to misery to some degree, but I can't avoid negative emotions anymore than an anorexic can avoid food. So I have to find some way to balance things. To know when it's ok to be upset, and let myself feel that, and when enough is enough.

I've been struggling a little with that lately. Being sick but having so much to do at work wiped me out, and now I'm finding it hard to get out of that 'just make it home and crawl into bed' phase, even though I'm mostly better by now. It's been too easy to slip back into old habits of spending the entire night in various states of consciousness in front of a tv and/or computer screen.

And there's lots of other things where I find it hard to find some acceptable balance. I shan't go into all of that now, because I don't have the time (and this post has been in my drafts folder for far too long), and I don't really have the mental energy for it either. I'm finding less impetus to think or write about what's going on in my head. I can't quite figure out if that's part of the post-cold laziness, or if I'm getting sick of talking about it, and whether either of those is a good thing or a bad thing.

All in all, that's a rather meandering, pointless post, for which I apologise. I have funner posts in the works but I apparently now have a slightly busy weekend ahead of me involving hyperactive children, so it may be a while before those come to complete fruition. In the meantime, I'm thanking the big spaghetti monster in the sky that it's Friday and I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of this Wispa that's been in my office drawer for two days. It's the little things, y'know?

Heartbroken, but not broken.

I've not really written anything about my head or anything head-adjacent for a few days, so I thought maybe it was time to have a quick check in. Writing here seems to help me to figure stuff out a bit more, moreso than just sitting around thinking about things.

It's been...an odd few days, to say the least. I've not really been sure if I wanted to talk about this here or not, but I figure it might help. My relationship issues have finally been resolved, in that we broke up. He said it was nothing to do with me, that he just isn't in the right place to be in a relationship right now. Which completely and utterly sucks. But there's not much I can do about that. Which is the really frustrating thing sometimes - I think when I was concerned that things weren't going well because of me and my issues and the way I had been behaving of late, I thought it was under my control at least a little bit. That if I could just convince him of how I'd figured so much stuff out and was determined to change, that things would be ok. But that's not the case.

The hardest thing is that we're best friends. Best, best friends. We were so close before we started going out, and meant so much to each other that neither of us wants to lose that. But it's difficult to figure out how to get used to not being a couple but still being close. I know it will be hard, but as I see it I just don't have an option. I need my best friend. So we'll just have to figure out a way to make it work.

I think I've been doing sort of ok with it, though. Which I am a bit proud of, to be honest. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm still in the spontaneously-bursting-into-tears-at-any-moment stage, and I'm utterly heartbroken. But I think it helps that I'm not mad at him - it was just really bad timing. And I really do believe him when he says that he still wants us to be close friends. I know that our friendship is important to him, and I suppose it probably says a lot about how far I've come that I can believe that even when I'm upset - that I'm not jumping to the worst conclusions and beating myself up. And I've been doing my best to get on with work stuff and work for my course (which will be over in less than 6 days, thank the lord!).

But it's still really, really crappy. I'm just doing what I can to get through each day. If I feel sad and need to cry a little, then I do, but I try to keep a bit of a lid on it so it doesn't get out of hand. I think I always had trouble with that before - knowing what was ok to be upset about, and how upset was reasonable before I started being self-destructive with it. I seem to be making some sort of progress on that front.

It helps a lot that people have been really supportive of me with the stuff that I've been figuring out over the last few weeks since I started posting here again. My friends are proud of me - and he is too, when I explained everything that I've been working through recently - and I feel proud of me too. That helps keep me going. I like this version of me a lot more, and I want to hang onto her and not let her go. I just keep trying to hold onto this vision of the person I most want to be, and not let any "buts" get in the way.

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now. Everything is still hard, and takes work. Especially with things like motivation to do stuff that bores the ass off me (namely most of my job and this course at the minute). But I'm getting there.

Busy

Hmm. It seems I haven't written anything in the last day or two. That wasn't intentional, I just somehow was too busy. Well, sort of.

I've been reasonably productive at work this week, which is nice. It's rather satisfying to feel like I'm getting things done and achieving things. Of course, there's still tons left to do, but I've decided that's not my problem anymore. I'm working as best I can in the hours I get paid for - there is literally nothing else that can be expected of me.

I've not been all that productive in other areas, though. I've been coming home and collapsing under the strain of an hour or two spent shopping in town and not really getting much done. This evening I did manage to do some ironing for the first time in I don't even know how long, and put away my grocery delivery. Doesn't sound like much, but it was something.

Still have to get my CV and application form, and my presentation for my course done. I'll get there, though. It's a bit difficult to find the balance between doing absolutely nothing all the time, and trying to be productive. Going from one extreme to the other is obviously not going to work, but I still feel like I'm being rather lazy. But I'm keeping at it and trying to do some things, which has to be better than the nothing I've done every other evening for months.

I also met up with an old friend from university, who I haven't seen for probably a couple of years, this week. Which was really nice. I didn't feel as frustrated as I often have before when trying to catch up with uni friends. I'm not sure exactly why that is. I think it's partly because I'm seeing my life and myself less as something that is to be judged, and more as a work in progress.

This has got to be my dullest blog post yet - I do apologise! It seems like the more I try to think of something interesting to write about, the more my mind resembles a rabbit in headlights. All suggestions gratefully received!

Lost weekend

I'd like to say it was a lost weekend due to partying hard or something like that, but unfortunately it was just my being lazy and a bit crap. I slept far too much (partly thanks to my neighbours keeping me up till at least 5 or 6am on Friday night/Saturday morning) and just lay around watching tv instead of doing any of the things that I intended to. I'm giving myself a by ball for that one, and I'll get back on track today. Things to do include working on my CV, an application form, and completing my next CBT session.

I think I did slip a little this weekend. The devil makes work for idle hands indeed - all that time spent alone, with my own thoughts, and little else to engage my mind was not that good for me. I was either getting worried about things, or off daydreaming about everything being ok. Neither of those activities are particularly productive. But the important thing is to just accept that, and move on. No point beating myself up for slipping a bit, and getting mad at myself. I'm only human, of course I'm going to slip occasionally. But so long as I don't let it overwhelm me and start to define me again, I think I'm still moving in the right direction.

In other news, it's flipping cold here, thanks to gale force winds courtesy of the tail end of Hurricane Katia. Summer is definitely over, then. I've finally given up hope of us getting a brief blast of summery weather so that I can wear my summer clothes, and I'm embracing the boots, jumpers and coats of autumn and winter. Thankfully, I love winter clothes (especially coats - I think I have an actual problem with coats). And with winter comes Christmas, which I also completely love and get super excited and hyperactive about. Although I'm a tad apprehensive about it this year - all the plans I had for it in my head are now rapidly dissolving alongside my relationship, so it won't be quite what I had hoped. I'm trying not to dwell on that too much, though. Instead, I'm just thinking of the awesome floppy felt hat I saw in New Look recently that I must have. And the one I bought a little while ago that I've not had a chance to wear yet. Apparently hats make me happy.

Anyway, this has been a decidedly random post, for which I apologise. I've got a lot of work ahead of me over the next couple of weeks as my course (finally!) comes to an end, so hopefully after that I'll have a lot more time for proper writing and actually getting into some of the ideas that I've had recently. That should give me October to plan, and November to do NaNoWriMo. If the wind hasn't whisked me away to Oz before then.

Today, I'm so-so. Increasingly nervous, as I mentioned last night, but still determined to not let it get the best of me. I used to think before that I had to act like I was depressed, to justify the condition or something. I realise now that none of that matters. I don't care who does or does not believe that I genuinely have problems with depression or anxiety or whatever, so I don't need to spend the whole day in tears, or try to fit into some notion of what a sufferer is supposed to look or act like. All that matters now is that I try my damnedest to get better.

I think going to sleep is the most difficult part of the day for me. It's always been when things would play on my mind a lot, and when I would employ the daydreaming tactic the most, to try to comfort me and get the things I didn't want to think about out of my head. It's a struggle not to do that. Hence, it took me hours to get to sleep last night, even though I was up late and had been working most of that time. I tried my best to get my mind onto other things though - listing stuff, coming up with ideas to write about, what time I'd get up at in the morning. Anything at all, so long as it wasn't likely to cause me any kind of consternation to stop me sleeping.

I did come up with an idea that I really want to pursue for a writing project, so that's something. I'm finding I'm starting to have more ideas now. Even if they're shit ones, at least there are ideas - there were none before. My mind just felt so blank and vacent. It's nice to feel like I'm getting my imagination (the productive one, not the one where I imagine that everything will be ok without me doing anything to make it so) and my sense of humour back. I feel a bit more like myself again, and even though I've said I'm trying not to make my feelings of self worth the focus of this, I think those feelings are improving. A little bit, anyway, for today. And that's good enough for right now, I guess.

I'm really curious about how this all comes across to other people who suffer from any kind of depression or anxiety issues - especially anyone who's battled through it. I know it's different for everyone, of course, but I'm just kinda curious to know if what I'm describing seems familiar to other people, or if it's all a bunch of shit.

It might also be evident that my nerves are making me post and write a lot. I just keep feeling like I need to *do* something and work isn't quite keeping my attention. However, I have a lot to get done today, so back to the coalface I go....

To do:

I've been talking about all the things that I need to do to change, to make myself the person I want to be, blah blah blah, but it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to actually list them out so that I can better work on them, and make myself a bit more accountable when it comes to the things I want to achieve. Again, probably of absolutely no interest to anyone else - I really am going to try to come up with something non-head related to write about very soon - but this seems to be keeping me together at the minute, so I'm just going to crack on with it.

So. In no particular order, things I need to stop or start doing:

• Write. I need to write more. About everything and anything. This sort of stuff about myself so that I can try to benchmark what I'm doing (I'm in the middle of a management practices course, can you tell?), and since they do tell you to write about what you know. But I want to write about other stuff too, whether it be short stories, random articles, reviews of music, tv, movies - whatever. I just need to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard in this instance). But I do want to set myself a target of doing the NaNoWriMo thing in November. I want to complete a whole something. Probably not a novel, more likely to be a screenplay or something, but I want to do actually finish something. Doesn't matter if it's crap, just need to finish it. 

• Recruitment stuff. I need to sort out my CV, talk to recruitment agencies and careers guidance people and get a better plan (or even, a plan) for how to get a new job.

• Put my foot down at work. I need to stop giving into everything at work and bending over backwards, doing stupid hours and taking on far too much because I feel it's expected of me or that there's no other option. I have to make it clear that there are limits, and that we have to find another solution. No exception. 

• Re-connect with people. I've drifted away from so many friends over the years. I put it down to them not making the effort to keep in touch with me, and taken it very personally, but I can't know any of that for sure so I really ought to just put it behind me. I don't have to be suddenly best friends with these people, but it would be nice to get in touch again, occasionally talk to and see each other and enjoy each other's company again. I guess under this heading also comes spending more time around my flatmates. I've become so good at avoiding them and keeping a low profile at home that I'm practically a domestic ninja (note to self: write treatment for sitcom called Ninjaz In Da House). All that time spent alone isn't good for me - too much time to day dream and dwell on things. 

• Stop daydreaming. It's sort of an odd thing to say, I suppose, but it's a big problem for me. I spend so much time daydreaming and fantasizing about how I want things to go that I become convinced that that's how they actually will go, making it well nigh impossible to deal with anything that diverges from the fantasy. 

• Treatment. I need to get serious about treatment for this depression/anxiety stuff. I've upped my meds already, so I'll be keeping an eye on that with my doctor, and I've started the Beating the Blues thing. I think I quite like it so far. It's Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which I've never had much luck with before, but I understand more than ever now that I need to have certain things to each day, and to hold myself accountable for doing or not doing them. It's a session every week conducted online, and it gives you weekly projects to complete. I've only done the first session so far, so I'll see how it goes. But I think it could be a good support.

• Lose weight/get healthy. I'm not setting myself specific targets for this just yet. I've basically not been eating much for over a week or so because I'd gotten myself into such a state that I was nauseous and completely devoid of appetite. That is slowly starting to return, but I don't want to just jump back into my bad habits of eating junk all the time, I want to start eating healthily again. But (and apologies for the TMI nature of this, but...) healthy food when you've not been eating can have a bit of a fight with your innards, so I'm trying to do it all gradually. I've lost a little bit of weight thanks to the nausea so I want to make sure I keep that off, and it's been a good motivation for me to avoid junk food and comfort eating. The exercise portion of this will need to wait a little bit till I feel physically a bit stronger and have work a bit more sorted out so I can plan out when I'll do things. 

• Do the things I love again. I used to love music and movies. LOVE. I lived for them, they were the only things that kept me going sometimes, and touched and moved me in ways I can't put words to. But lately, I've just been using them as vague distractions, if even. I've found that I couldn't watch or listen to anything 'serious' (for want of a better word) - anything that encouraged much of an emotional reaction in me. Because I was trying to avoid emotional reactions, I guess. I'm a bit wary still of putting myself through the wringer with anything like that, but I want to get into a place again where I live and breathe this stuff like I used to.

• Stop procrastinating. I realise there's a great irony in me saying this, as I often take to this blog when there's something else I want to not do or distract myself from, but I need to just get off my arse and do things when they need doing. It's the only way to build momentum and thus energy. I've had huge problems with it lately, but I think I'm making some tiny inroads with it. 

• Finish and pass my course. I had, of course, wanted to pass my course with a distinction (I'm  a perfectionist, which I will write about at some point in the future), and did well on the first couple of assignments, but since everything sort of fell apart a bit after that I'm just going for a pass now. I was pretty close to throwing in the towel with the whole thing recently, so I just want to get it over and done with, pass it and put it on my CV. Thankfully I've less than a month to go with it, so hopefully I can cross that one off the list soon!

And so, back to work for me.