Tag Archives: mental health

What’s the Point?

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It’s been another “what’s the point” period for me. The only change from this post is that I was offered another job, but turned it down for various reasons. Now I spend a lot of time wondering if that was a mistake.

The World's Common Tater

I almost didn’t write this one. I almost went back to find a happy post to reblog, but then I decided to just go ahead and do it. I’m very much in a “What’s the point?” mood these days.

I’m writing this knowing that on a good day 20 or so people will read it. I sometimes think that someday I will be one of those people with thousands of followers without worry about people actually reading what I write. In reality, I know that I will never have the time nor the talent to write stuff that thousands of people will want to read. So, I wonder this morning “What’s the point?” Why do this if I know no one cares? Why not spend the time I spend doing this reading a book or watching TV?

I still spend time looking at job opportunities in my field.  If the…

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Too Monday to Write

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I had decided to write something this morning about the reaction to Andrew Luck’s retirement. I have thoughts about that. I just can’t get motivated to actually put them into a coherent post.

I have some thoughts about the reaction to Joe Walsh entering the Republican primary. Again, no motivation to put them into a coherent post.

I have to go to work this morning. I have no motivation to get off the couch and do that either, but mot going to work is not an option, so I will have to get over that.

I’ve been up since 5:30am. I read the paper. I watched two half-hour TV shows. I ate breakfast. I did a little bit of exercise. I took a shower. I should be ready to go. I’m not.

I think it is just a reaction to the time of the year. My daughter is back in school. Days are getting shorter. Summer is basically over. I think no matter how old I get and how little summer ending really changes my life it will still be a down time for me. I think after years of being on school and then having kids in school that end of summer feeling is just ingrained in you and will never go away.

It also doesn’t help that I’m aware of the fact that no one cares if I post or not. It’s not like more than 20 people will read what I write. It’s hard to get motivated to do something that no one cares about. Same goes for work. I could quit today and it wouldn’t matter to anyone. It would probably make a lot of people happy. I’m just a replaceable cog in a machine. I’m not sure cogs are every really motivated. They just work until they wear down and then they are replaced and thrown away.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better morning.

More Of Tater is Done

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Here are some other things I’m done with.

People who don’t do much but spend a lot of time talking about how much they do.

People who don’t know how to do things telling those who do them how they are doing them wrong.

People who ignore you until they need something from you.

People who make their own rules and use those rules to not do things until such time they want to do those things and then say the rules don’t matter.

Being an afterthought, forgotten and ignored(again until they want something from you or what to tell you how you’ve done something wrong).

Not getting enough sleep due to a combination of stress, anxiety, and pets that need to go outside way too early.

Multiple days a week when the thought of leaving the house makes you sad.

The inability to do anything to change the fact that leaving the house makes you sad.

Lack of respect for the work you do or have done.

Summer heat and humidity.

Distracted drivers.

Bad drivers.

Driving in general.

People who write whiny lists about what they are done with.

People who end a sentence with the word with.

 

Unsettled

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I’ve had a series of unsettling dreams lately making for mornings with an unsettled mind. Most of the time, I forget the details of the dream before I am coherent enough to make note of what the dream was about. A couple I do remember:

A Pet Sematary inspired dream where all the people around me had changed into Pet Sematary type people.

Me promising to resign from my job because they won’t let me hire the person I want for my vacant position and realizing they probably wanted that to happen.

The rest I can’t remember at all. I just remember waking up and feeling stressed and unsettled. Some ideas on what is causing the stress:

The first person I hired as a new supervisor resigned and moved to Florida. I lost a friend and employee, work is harder because we are short-staffed and I will have to hire someone new soon. As you can see from the above dream I seem to be more concerned about being allowed to hire who I want.

I have applied to two different jobs. One a promotion at my current place of employment and one a position at a different place. I think the stress of possible upcoming interviews has started seeping in.

A paranoid thought yesterday brought on by an email that made me think that perhaps I can’t trust people I thought I could trust.

My daughter going back to school soon leaving me once again with hours alone to fill.

My son getting close to starting his first real job after college and considering where to go to grad school.

A lot of little things adding up to my mind obviously being unsettled and affecting my dreams.

The Summertime Blues

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I’ve got them and according to song, there ain’t no cure for them. My vacations are over. I don’t have anything else planned until Christmas. I mean nothing. No day trips. No fun activities. Nothing. Well, book club, but that’s regular enough I don’t really count it. I’m looking toward months of going to work and then going home and doing nothing.

Work is still in summer mode. Busier during the day, slower at night. People are on vacation, so staff is short. One person still on maternity leave. The first person I hired as a new supervisor has resigned and only has a week left. Staffing will be even shorter. Work will be less fun. I’ve hit a roadblock in my career. I can’t seem to move up. I can’t seem to move on. It’s a little depressing.

We are a month away from my daughter going back to school. That means I am a month away from being home alone for a couple of hours every day after work. I will fill the time with the TV shows I watch alone. I will try to spend more time on the deck reading when it is cooler, but I will probably spend it on the couch in front of the TV. Also, a little depressing I need a new hobby.

This is my Monday morning mood. I want to go back to bed.

Self Doubt

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If you have followed this blog(or my personal Facebook page) you will know that I have long contemplated my future career-wise. I have applied for promotions where I currently work. I have been turned down for promotions where I currently work. I think we are close to 20 times now that I have been turned down for a new job with my current employer. I have applied for multiple jobs at other organizations. I have been offered one job. You can read here about my decision to turn down the job offer. In that post, I talked about upcoming opportunities for change. Those opportunities did not pan out and now I am back to where I was before, contemplating my future.

There is a job opening right now that seems to be a good fit for me. It is a change, but not a major change. I would be doing a job similar to what I’m doing now. The commute would be manageable. It would not mess up my long term plans(I don’t think). It would rest my vacation, but I could deal with that. I’m still hesitating, though, before completing the application. Why? Various reasons. Various questions. Is 50 too old to make a major change like this? Do I really want to start all over at a new place? Do I want to give up the vacation I’ve accrued and start over? And the big one – Am I good enough?

Maybe the reason I’ve been turned down for so many jobs where I work is that they know me and know that I’m not good enough. Maybe I’ve been fooling myself all these years and I’m not actually good at what I do. Maybe they see all of my faults and they all add up to someone who would not succeed at these jobs. Maybe I’m better off staying where I am. What if I go somewhere else and they realize all of this and then I end up with no job? Maybe I should have stayed in my old position where I was basically invisible and it was less likely people would realize all of this. Maybe it’s time to admit to myself that it’s not them, it’s me and I should stop wasting my time.

I should approach the job thing like high school me approached dating. You can avoid all the inevitable rejection by not trying at all.

Midweek Blues

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It’s been a long week and it is only Wednesday. I have to go to work soon, but I really don’t want to have to deal with the world. I need to find a job that will allow me to work from home and have limited contact with other people. At the very least, I wish I had an office job where I have limited contact with other people. I’m sure the other people would be happy to be rid of me.

I get in this type of mood on occasion. I just get worn down by dealing with people and need a break. Luckily, this week I will have limited time I am dealing with others. I took the afternoon off tomorrow so I can relax and enjoy March Madness. Friday is my normal day off and there is more basketball. I have no reason to leave my couch after 1:30 tomorrow afternoon until Saturday morning when I have to go back to work. I won’t have a reason to care about what anyone else is doing with their time. My day won’t depend upon anyone else but myself. Hopefully, the two days of basketball and relaxation gets me back in the right frame of mind to deal with other people.

It’s too bad I’m not good enough at the writing thing to make money. It would be great to be able to make money without ever leaving the house. Maybe I should stop on the way to work to buy a Powerball ticket. Being a multi-millionaire would be a good reason to have an excuse not to work outside of the house. In the meantime, if you enjoy my blog and would like to support my blogging habit or buy me a cup of coffee you can click here

This is the end of my whiny post. Maybe tomorrow’s post will be more fun. Maybe I will attempt to GIF the news again.

Monday Morning Blues

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It’s Monday. It’s Monday and it’s dreary and rainy. It’s Monday after my alone weekend with no obligations. It’s Monday and I’m working 1-9 instead of my normal 9-5 so I have more time to dread rejoining the real world. It also gives me more time to decide to write about some personal struggles of late.

The real world has not been great lately. It’s been a tough couple of years. Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of my mom’s death. A month after my mom’s death I accepted a transfer to a new job and left the place I had worked for 15 years. Changing jobs that soon after was probably not a great idea. I wonder if my mental health would be better if I had done my mourning in the more comfortable confines of my old job and with my friends there. The good thing about the change was and is the shorter commute. The shorter commute gave me more time with my daughter before she left for college. Now, less than two years after the other major life changes, my youngest kid has gone to college and we are empty nesters.

So, in two years – death of a loved one, job change and our youngest kid moved away. A lot of sadness and stress coupled with more time home alone. Unfortunately, more time home aloe means more time to dwell on the stress and the sadness.  I have trouble leaving the stress of work at work. So, I end up at home alone for two hours with the stress of work added to the loneliness of having no one at home to talk to.  I should probably find reasons to leave the house and occupy my brain to distract myself from the stress, but it’s easier to sit on the couch and watch TV.

So, what do I do?  Leave the house when I get home, even if it is just to take the dog for a walk. Figure out a way to leave work at work. Decide if the stress is enough to consider another change. If so, be willing to do what it takes to make that change happen. Consider taking the step of finding a therapist to talk through my issues. Win the lottery so I never have to go to work again.

 

Dreary Weather, Dreary Mood

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We were in India during monsoon season. It rained a little there, but most of the days were dry. It did flood in Mumbai and Delhi while we were there, but we were spared the really bad rains. We are making u for that now that we are home. We are on our 5th straight day of heavy rain in the forecast. It hasn’t rained for 5 straight days.  Saturday was a total washout. It started raining in the morning and rained all day. I don’t have a rain gauge, so I don’t know what the totals were,  but I know were probably got at least 5 inches of rain in the one day. The rest of the days have had some dry points and occasional sun, but the threat of heavy rain has been there. After a break on Monday where my house barely got any rain, we had a deluge yesterday morning. Some areas have reported over a foot of rain since Saturday. I think even people who love rain have to be sick of it by now. I’m ready to go back to our typical hot and sunny summer.

This constant dreary weather has not been good for someone who is already in a dreary mood. My daughter has her housing assignment and we are now officially less than a month away from her moving in to her dorm. I have less than a month before I start spending many hours alone and no one would want to spend many hours alone with me. Couple that with career and job dissatisfaction. Add in the aforementioned weather and it does not make for the best of moods.

I can’t change the empty nest thing, but I can make it easier by finding ways to fill the time besides sitting on the couch watching TV.  I may not be able to change the job, but I can try either find some good or at the very least not take the bad home with me. I can’t change the weather and I can’t find any way to find good in constant rain, so I’m going to need the sun to come back so I can at least enjoy some time reading on my deck.

A Cluttered Mind

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For the past week I have been dealing with a mind cluttered with pessimistic and negative thoughts. I can’t seem to shake them. The first couple of days of this they kept me awake at night. I’m finally sleeping again, but I’m still in a spiral. Since I can’t declutter my brain I have tried decluttering other things.

My email inbox at work is empty. I finally went through and deleted old emails I no longer need and sorted the ones I need to save in to folders. Now I just need to remember what folders I used. That might be a challenge. My goal is to continue to keep control of my inbox so emails I haven’t answered don’t get pushed down to the point that I forget they exist. I think I will be successful for about a month and then it will get out of control again.

I did the same for my desk. I went through all of the stuff on my desk and got rod of everything I didn’t need. I put papers in appropriate files and stored them away. I am enjoying my cleaner work environment and hope I can keep it this way.  I will likely be as successful at this as I am at the clean inbox task.

I’m hoping the uncluttered work environment will inspire my brain to unclutter itself. So far, that is not happening.  Until then I will keep listening to my really loud music to drown out the thoughts in my head.

Do you ever get in one of these funks? How do you deal with it? Any tips?