Month: August 2019

Medical stuff

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Today was a bit different because I had some medical appointments. The blood test I had done in July showed my haemoglobin level at 140, which is the highest I’ve ever seen it. I noted to the GP that I’ve had two instances of bleeding since then so that reading might be out of date. She decided to repeat it, and, amazingly, the results are already available – it’s now 137, which is good. Not as good as 140, but it means I didn’t lose much blood.

I feel kind of insecure about it though. Even as I’m writing this, I’m thinking “it was 137 this afternoon… but I could easily find out tomorrow morning that I’ve been bleeding more”.

I have been referred to a dietitian for my weight loss, but she told me it was probably my anxiety and spent quite a while trying to convince me I should be on anti-depressants. Well. Maybe.

I went through the food side of things a bit with my counsellor this week. I said to her that if anyone else ate nearly as much as me, they’d put on a huge amount of weight very quickly, whereas I’m really struggling to keep my BMI above 19. She had me keep a list of what I was eating every day (because I don’t think she really believed that I ate much). She looked at it and her reaction was “hmm, that is a lot of food”.

Work

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So it turns out that my company has funded another five counselling sessions.

I decided on Friday afternoon that come Monday morning I’d just hand in my notice and be done with the ridiculous situation, but over the weekend I softened a bit and decided to just write an email to HR lady expressing my ‘surprise’ at support being withdrawn without discussion.

So we had a meeting. HR explained that The Boss had just decided to withdraw funding and that was that. Reasons stated were brexit, currency devaluation, and the fact we have a lot of costs in external currencies. I wasn’t very impressed with this, as you can imagine.

But HR lady and I had a long chat about mental health and how I was doing (answer: not great). She is actually quite good at this stuff; she has recently completed a qualification in mental health and has struggled with it herself – she told me she had been on anti-depressants for a few years because she was suicidal. She offered to go back to The Boss and ask again.

Which she did. And then five more sessions opened up.

So on the one hand, I’m grateful for that. On the other, it just seems ridiculous to me that The Boss caused resentment over such a trivial amount of money. The company lost far more than £150 between my time, HR lady’s time, and The Boss’s time just discussing the matter. The brexit argument was hard to sympathise with; I didn’t benefit when the currency was stronger, and there are plenty of other local companies who don’t have high costs in foreign currencies, so it’s unclear why I should accept that.

So I don’t know how I feel. I was close to quitting, and now I regard this as a temporary counter-offer. But it still damages trust, which is hard to rebuild. The last year at work seems to have been a sequence of people damaging my trust and then being surprised when that causes problems.

94d

I’m still struggling with job seeking. I am getting so much low-effort spam from recruiters that it’s overwhelming. I am getting emails from recruitment agencies saying “thank you for your application, please phone me on this number” when I haven’t submitted any applications, and “I tried to phone you but couldn’t get through” when they don’t even have my phone number. I’m not dealing with recruiters who are dishonest right from the start, but separating spammers from possible leads is energy and time consuming, which is demotivating.

I don’t get it. If there’s a strong market for my skills then make it easy for me. If there isn’t, then why are you spamming me?

I did get one from an in-house recruiter which looked a bit more promising but the location isn’t great.

Weight

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I received the letter summarising the gastroenterology appointment…

The main thing he noted is that I’ve lost 10% of my weight over the past year. Some people would be happy with this, but I’m at the other end of that scale, and it’s a bit concerning.

He noted that I’d asked him about anti-depressants and speculated that maybe it was dietary due to my depression (I didn’t explain they were for anxiety, not depression, but that’s probably not important).

Actually I don’t think my diet is restricted at all. I think I eat a ridiculous amount and my body just refuses to hold on to much of it. I think if most people ate the amount I eat, they’d become morbidly obese quite quickly. I eat three large meals a day, I eat quite a lot between meals and I still feel hungry all the time. I am very active, but even so… there are faster people than me at Parkrun with more air resistance.

My anxiety does give me what seems to be medically termed “GI distress” though, so maybe that affects digestion.

Anyway, he has asked my GP to refer me to a dietitian, which I think could be educational.

I think, realistically, my weight is verging on unhealthy and might be affecting how I feel in general now. My BMI is hovering around 19.

Unsent letters

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To: HR Lady
CC: My boss (and yours)

Dear HR lady,

My counsellor has informed me that the company has decided against funding additional sessions, and that you would speak to me about this matter this week. I am disappointed that you have not done this, and have instead allowed a third party to deliver news to me which should have come directly from the company.

I was extremely surprised by the decision to discontinue funding counselling. In May, you wrote that my mental health and well-being was important to the company and that you would review whether I needed further support after the 5 sessions were consumed. The decision not to continue was made without consulting me, so I am therefore extremely disappointed that the company no longer considers my mental health and well-being important.

Furthermore, I have received no explanation or communication in general regarding your cancellation of the ‘late June’ follow-up meeting, which we had scheduled. I consider it a recurring problem that the company is not communicating with me to an acceptable standard on matters of professional importance.

About six months ago I would have sent this without too much deliberation.

Now…

I have a growing suspicion she might be a bit autistic. But I can’t take on responsibility for her mental health as well as my own, on the basis of a vague suspicion.

Knowing when to walk away

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HR lady was not at work today so nobody has yet spoken to me about things. My counsellor informed me she had stated she would speak to me “later this week”, which would now be surprising as she is extremely rarely in the office on Fridays. It’s not impossible, but it’s not likely.

I actually think it’s somewhat unlikely that she’ll successfully speak to me on the first day she is in the office anyway – I think she’ll try to arrange a meeting around the time I’m leaving (because that’s her style) and this time I’ll reject it and tell her to fit it into my working hours instead.

I have been thinking about things.

I am torn, but something that keeps coming up in my mind is that I quit my previous job after less than a year because I was frustrated by poor management which didn’t treat me very respectfully in a professional capacity.

At no point since have I ever thought “I wish I hadn’t quit that shitty job”, or “if only I’d stuck it out for another six months”.

I quit and my life improved. It felt risky and scary at the time, but with hindsight it’s obvious that there was no way my life could have improved without quitting, because it wasn’t under my control. Only the company had the power to fix it, and they weren’t interested.

And so once again, here we are.

Apparently though it’s emotionally easier to quit a job after 7 months than 7 years.