Tag Archives: mental health

2020

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I’ve been thinking about posting a list of goals for 2020 but then I look back at my goals for 2019, think about how I failed at them and figure there is no point in making up new goals.

I said I would keep my yearly goal of reading 100 books for the year and didn’t even make 85. I set my Goodreads goal at 100 again. Maybe I will get back on track this year.

I said I would do more stuff out of the house and then spent more time at home instead.

I said I would go outside more. I did make an effort to read on the deck more when the weather was nice but could do better.

I said I would take more short trips to KY to see family. I went once and not until November.

I didn’t succeed much with my 2019 goals. A good bit of that can be attributed to my spiraling into a depression. That depression can in a large part be attributed to a very bad daily environment once I leave my house. I don’t see my daily life changing in 2020 so I can’t imagine I would be extremely successful in doing better in 2020.

I will try to do better in dealing with my stress and anxiety. I will try not to let my stress and anxiety follow me home. I will try to figure out how to change my daily life without negatively affecting my long term plans.

I guess my 2020 goal will be getting better mentally and emotionally. Many of my leftover goals from 2019 would help with that. Here’s hoping for a happier, healthier 2020 for Tater.

One final goal – to have happier, funnier posts here in 2020. No one wants me to post daily about being stuck in an unhappy situation.

In Search of the Christmas Spirit

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It’s a dark and dreary night. I’m spending my second night home alone. My wife is out of town for work. It’s still one week away from my daughter coming home from college. My son is at his house. I’ve done nothing really Christmasy this year. Last year at this time we were at Zoo Lights at the National Zoo and then went out for dinner. This year, as mentioned above, I’m alone. The dark and dreary weather matches my mood. I can’t seem to get in the Christmas spirit this year.

I dressed up as Santa for work yesterday and had multiple kids get their picture taken with me. It still didn’t get me in the mood to celebrate.

We have our work holiday party tomorrow. Usually, I would be looking forward to some time with coworkers having fun instead of working. I’d rather have a snow day and stay at home alone.

Our Christmas tree is up and next to the couch where I’m writing this. Still not helping.

It might help if all this rain was snow.

It might help if I didn’t feel ill about leaving the house every day.

It might help if I wasn’t alone so much.

It will help when we get in the car and head toward Kentucky.

Only 9 days to go…

 

 

Why I’m Not Writing…I Think

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You’ve probably noticed that not been writing a lot lately. You might be happy that I’ve not been writing a lot lately. Maybe you didn’t notice. I don’t know what you do with your time. In case you missed it – I have not been writing a lot lately. Lorna over and Gin & Lemonade asked on Facebook who was up for a blog a day challenge and I decided to join in. The problem is – I still don’t really feel like writing. So, I decided to use the first post to try to write about why I’m not writing.

Part of the problem is as simple as a change in schedule. Not my schedule. My wife’s schedule. I was in a groove of writing after work instead of in the morning. I would come home, change clothes, take the dog for a walk and then watch a TV show while vomiting up a blog post. The last few weeks my wife has been home on Monday and Tuesday so I didn’t come home to an empty house. That’s a positive for the most part, but it is not conducive to writing. I find it hard to write when others are here. She’s here now, but she was on a call, so I had time to start this. Now it sounds like she is done, so who knows when I will write the rest.

The bigger problem is frame of mind. My days can be mentally and emotionally draining. Part of it is the public. Most of it is a particular person who makes my days more stressful and toxic than should be allowed. It’s hard to come home and do anything after dealing with a toxic person who has control over your days. I just want to watch TV and not think. This is also a hard time of year for me. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my mom’s death. This time of year was when I was driving home a lot to see here when I knew my time with her was limited. I still struggle with my decision to not go home to be there at the end. I wanted my last memories to be better and I’ve always felt bad about that. Like I failed her. So, depression, grief, and mental exhaustion makes it hard to feel like vomiting words on a blog.

Finally, I’m boring. I don’t have the type of life that gives me a lot of stories for a blog.  It’s hard to be a blogger when you’re boring.

So, that’s why I’m struggling to write. Who knows if the blog a day challenge will work. We will see,

Stuck

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I’ve written and deleted three sentences so far. I either don’t like the sentence or I can’t decide if I want to write about what I start to write about. I just deleted the rest of the paragraph I wrote after these two sentences. I feel like I want to write about the mental state that I think is responsible for causing me to be stuck, but then I delete it all when I type it.  The downside of most of my readers being people I know and see in real life. The question of how much I want to open up about things like my mental state. It seems today I’m struggling with not wanting to say much at all.

I will just say in general terms – I’m stressed, I’m sad, I feel alone, I have a general sense of impending doom. All of this has made it hard for me to write anything lately. It’s made it hard for me to focus on my Chinese sci-fi book(or is it the book?) for my book club. It’s made it hard for me to do much at all lately.

Hopefully, this mood will break soon and I will be back to my old self. If it doesn’t maybe I will finally do what I should have done a long time ago and find a therapist to help me through the stress, anxiety and occasional depression.

Here’s hoping a less depressing post is coming tomorrow.

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.