Pause for thought
I’ve got a light layer of depression resting on my head right now. Nothing is wrong with my life, nothing has changed recently, perhaps I just get the opposite of SAD and summer just gets me down.
The children both have stinking colds which are making the miserable, grumpy and they don’t particularly want to do anything. This rubs off onto the wife, and I guess it has rubbed onto me.
I’m also particularly tired this morning, not having recovered from a wedding I went to on Saturday, but I felt exactly the same last Monday, and also on Friday. Due to my own stupid fault, the wedding clashed with a blog meet for UK people which I would have dearly liked to have gone to.
However.
I doubt I’d have enjoyed myself at the blog meet. I expect it would have been much fun, and had I been my normal, relaxed self would have enjoyed it at lot. But the ennui has me, and perhaps I would have sat there, slightly apart, slightly sour. People may have tried to engage me in conversation, but being slightly depressed, I wouldn’t have responded in equal enthusiasm, and perhaps, then the conversation would have moved on to someone else, somewhere different. The depression (I so hesitate to use such a word, because it can’t really be “real” depression; I can get up, go to work, live normally etc) slows me down a bit. On the way home, I might have thought, “You stupid fool, if you’d just made a bit more effort, joined in more. Now they just thing, that bloke was a bit boring. Polite, but boring. Didn’t join in at all”
But I did go to the wedding, and you can just guess from above how well that went. The guy getting married is in fact my oldest friend. I calculated that we have known each other for 21 years. But since about 1990 we have kind of moved apart somewhat. Anyway, that is a story for another day. The wedding was good, I just was slightly out of sync with the day.
Work is just boring, full stop. Same old shit. I do it. It is easy. The way I am managed is just woeful, and that makes it easy for me to slack. It is easy, but they have no idea what I can do, so I’m not challenged to do better. So I waste my day, reading blogs and crap like that. It doesn’t help that I get a week’s holiday in two weeks time, and half my team seem to get 8 months holiday a year, so my manager is on holiday now, and will still be on holiday when I get back from my holiday. Git.
I think I’ll use this holiday and the time from now until the holiday as a break. See you later.
August 15th, 2003 at 7:18
I know how you feel, if it makes you feel any better… well, it probably won’t now, but maybe it would have back in July. Unfortunately I don’t have any magic fixes. The lacking challenge at work is probably the one thing that’s causing it all. We dedicate so much of our lives to work, it should be the one thing that challenges us. But when you go to work, you accomplish everything, you lack motivation and get no real reward for it- 8 hours out of every day, half your waking time, add another couple of hours for the time you spend getting ready for work, travelling to and from work, worrying or thinking about work at home….. well, it’s not surprising it gets you down. Look for a new job- it’s not giving up, it’s career progression!
August 19th, 2003 at 16:32
It’s all true.
Whilst on holiday, I was really having fun and was happy, and felt refreshed.
I made a mental note not to let work get me down, and if the work doesn’t challenge it is time for a change.
Until then, I’ll set myself personal goals (be it work related or not) to self provide my sense of acheivement.