Tag: life

Memories and triggers

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I was listening at work today to some music by Meg Bowles. It’s not really ‘music’ as you think of music, it’s more a very ambient sequence of sounds. In theory it’s soft and relaxing, but music can be a powerful trigger of memories and it put me back to where I was in January, when I first started listening to it… because I really needed something soft and relaxing.

Back in January I was anaemic, I had just come back to work after quite a few weeks off sick because I’d had a breakdown (and was anaemic) and I was trying very, very hard to block out any kind of negative stimulus at work. But that was all pretty much inconsequential next to the legal stress I had hanging over me, which I’m fairly sure would have ended my life (literally) if it had gone anywhere (it didn’t). Life wasn’t good back in January, and Meg Bowles’s soothing ambience was just part of my coping strategy to get through life one day at a time.

Listening to it again today was strange. It instantly took me back to where I was in January. In some ways it’s a good thing to realise how far I’ve come since then, and although some days I still feel like I’m struggling, it’s good to put that in context. But it’s a bit sad that I’ll probably never be able to enjoy Meg Bowles’s music.

Lazy

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Today was a working from home day and I have ‘only’ covered 5km on foot (walking to and from the orthodontist). As bizarre as it sounds, I feel like I’ve been very inactive today. Last week, I covered an average of 20km a day on foot; 5km feels like nothing.

Today is the first day in about two weeks that I haven’t been running. Unfortunately I have been having some slight discomfort in my hip flexor or lower abs – not really sure which. It was getting better last week after some stretching, but then pushing it too much for Parkrun on Saturday seemed to upset my progress and even a slow run on Sunday was uncomfortable. So I decided to take a rest day today. I also won’t be running tomorrow as it’s a counsellor visit after work so I don’t really have time.

It’s surprising how different it feels to have just one easy day. I feel: a lot less tired and a lot less hungry. According to my watch I’m usually burning 3000-3500 calories a day, and it’s quite unusual tonight that it’s 9:40 and I’m not asleep yet!

I started doing so much exercise as a means to manage my mental health, and the distances just kept increasing as I got fitter. I wonder if I’m doing a bit too much though.

One week to go

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I have my leaving date finalised now for next Friday. So I actually get a two week break (and I’m paid for four days of it) before starting my next job.

I feel very strange about leaving. Essentially I am leaving because someone has been emotionally abusive to me and I feel very unwelcome and out of place. I have let her bully me out of my job, and I am frustrated with myself for that*. But leaving will be very beneficial to my mental health, and it’s the right thing to do for my career. If I stayed, the best case is that I’d still be bored, underpaid and undervalued. My employer doesn’t deserve me, and I deserve better. So I’m right to leave. But…

Maybe it’s because I’ve been here for seven years. I’m 32, and seven years is most of my working life. My previous job lasted for seven months. This company feels like my home. It’s where I learnt to be a professional adult. It’s going to be weird to leave it. It will be healthy, but it’s waaay out of my comfort zone, not that I find my current workplace comfortable(!).

I don’t think I’ve emotionally accepted that you can fire your employer. I know it intellectually and I’ve done it, but I don’t feel it. My boss still seems very important to me even though as of this time next week we’ll probably never see each other again.

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*Well, maybe I should reframe that and say my employer let it happen.

It’s getting closer

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Hmm. I asked HR lady on Monday about the holiday situation, and she replied quite promptly and told me I had four days, but then she asked me to confirm my leaving date. So she has calculated it at four days, but doesn’t know my leaving date. Where’s the confused emoji…

I replied with my leaving date, and expected her to come back and confirm or adjust the number, but actually she’s just ignored me. I should be happy – it would be quite disappointing if she started behaving normally now. I need to chase this up tomorrow.

It’s so tempting to CC my and her boss and add a sarcastic sentence saying how disappointed I am that we are still having trouble communicating even after I’d previously expressed my dissatisfaction over our communication problems, but I need to not do that. Even though it would make me feel better. Temporarily. It’s not about being the bigger person. It’s about not investing my own energy in solving the company’s problems just as I’m leaving.

So anyway. If I have four days of holiday then that means I leave on a Monday, which seems a bit silly, so I will ask if I can just leave on the Friday.

Life and tablets

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I had my doctor’s appointment today for my next citalopram prescription. She gave me another 8 weeks worth of tablets. She mentioned putting it on repeat next time; it’s a bit surprising they are so reluctant to do so especially since I’m not supposed to come off it without supervision, but OK. There’s not much else to report on that front. Except that I still get nervous sat in doctors’ waiting rooms. Apparently not even citalopram can stop that. It was the simplest appointment ever – I go in, I say “hello, I’ve been on citalopram for a few months and I’d like some more please”, she says “OK, here’s your prescription” and I leave. There wasn’t any uncertainty – it’s not like the doctor was going to say “nope, sorry”. But still I felt anxious about it? I was sat in the waiting room trying to breathe nice and slowly to turn off the physical anxiety response, and it kind of worked, but it’s sad that I still need to try so hard with this.

Today was a nice day though. I’ve come to quite enjoy the doctor appointment days I’ve had over the past few months. I always book the appointments mid day to use them as a work from home excuse, and then have a detour back with a long walk through the park. I’ve been lucky with the weather. I was still mostly productive with work today, so nobody can complain. Then as soon as I finished, I went for a long run just as it was getting dark.

Over the last few days I’ve been watching Fleabag, which I finished this evening (only 12 episodes). I binge watched the whole of series 2 this evening, and I never binge watch TV. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting. I feel like I’ve been on a journey. A journey involving priests, guinea pigs and vibrators, but a journey nonetheless.

Counting down…

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I’ve carefully arranged a doctor’s appointment AND an orthodontist appointment on different days to get two working from home days over the next few weeks.

The orthodontist is because I have a fixed retainer on the back of my teeth, but the glue has broken in quite a few places. In the past whenever this has happened I’ve always been on top of getting it sorted out quickly (in case the teeth start shifting), but when it happened last year I had bigger things going on and just ignored it. Teeth being out of alignment hardly seems important when you’re actually suicidal (also: they don’t seem to have moved). Anyway, it broke in another place a few weeks ago, so I felt it was time to get it re-done and it gives me a working from home excuse.

I don’t actually know how many days I have left in the office. My notice period runs until the 15th, so that’s 14 days minus the two above. I have been told I can take my remaining days of holiday during my notice (which I will do), but I haven’t been given a definite number on what this is. I think I have 3.3 days using the simple approach of saying we’ll be x% through the year so I am entitled to x% of my annual holiday allowance. But I need to get HR lady to confirm the number. I’ve been putting it off because I expect her to be difficult. She is always difficult. I emailed her before I left today and asked her to give me a holiday balance statement (or rather: I said I’d been told she would give me one and queried when I could expect it).

So… I think I have 9 days left in the office, or maybe only 8 if they round up the 0.3? I’m not sure how they will handle that since I’m legally entitled to the 0.3, aren’t I? I don’t know, I’m not a solicitor.

Time dilation

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It’s been amazing since I handed in my notice last week just how slowly time is passing. It’s Thursday today but it seems like it should be Friday.

My new employer contacted me on Tuesday to ask for reference contact details, which unsettled me a bit. I omitted the exact dates on my CV of my employments, so my previous job said 2011-2012 which made it look slightly more impressive than November-June, and it also hid the gap between that and my current employer. I don’t see why it would be a problem, but I didn’t actually expect them to pursue a reference from 7 years ago. I pretty much catastrophised this into thinking they’d withdraw the offer, but then I realised I was catastrophising and felt a lot better. And I also realised that the likely worst case scenario is I get a few months ‘holiday’ instead of working.

Work is tedious. The time is dragging so much. It’s not helping that I’m essentially trying to solve artificial problems caused by a lack of appropriate equipment. When you read about productivity in the UK being low there is always an explanation saying that managers in the UK are unusually resistant to investing in equipment or technology. Look no further than my office, where we try to develop and deploy iPhone apps without a Mac, because they’re “too expensive”.

I’m spending most of my time listening to music to block out the office. I’ve mostly been listening to black metal, which apparently works really well sonically to mask sounds while also not being distracting. It’s basically white noise with rhythm and occasional melody. I’ve really been enjoying Darkspace and Batushka and Drudkh. It’s weird how it’s very harsh and extreme music, but it also has a calming softness to it. Drudkh especially is hypnotic.

Sunday

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So actually I still feel really stressed about work. Even though I have only four weeks left to work, I keep thinking “I don’t think I can go to work tomorrow”.

One of the things that stands out from last week is that neither my boss nor HR lady asked why I am leaving. I’ve asked a few people if they think this is strange and everyone so far has agreed that it is. I suppose it makes sense – they’ve never shown much interest in my opinions, why start now? It shows that leaving is the right thing to do, but it is also frustrating because it reinforces my perception that my feelings and well-being just aren’t important at work, which makes it harder to control the panicky feelings I get about work.

I have to go back to my GP in the next couple of weeks to get my citalopram prescription renewed, and part of me thinks I should just ask to be signed off for the remainder of my notice period.

Expectations

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I expected after handing in my notice that work would get a lot easier. What I’ve actually found is that I’m suddenly extremely unmotivated, and, so far, I resent still being in a toxic environment for the next four weeks. I think I was upset I didn’t get a counter offer. I had started to feel very unvalued here and this just seemed to confirm my opinion was accurate. I think I resent being here slightly more now, because I see it as a one-sided relationship that needs terminating. As the meditations tell me, I deserve better.

I’ve been very confused about my emotions over the past few days. They have been a lot stronger than I thought they would be. As usual I have too many things going on at once and I don’t know what’s causing what. Finalising the offer and arranging my start date with my new employer felt a bit stressful (just because), handing in my notice felt extremely stressful, anticipating a counter offer and trying to figure out my terms was stressful (and unnecessary), and… I ran a half-marathon on Sunday which has definitely increased the stress my body is under (recovery) – my resting heart rate still isn’t back to normal! I don’t know what’s causing me to feel what.

Anyway. I have set my finish date to 15th November and my start date is the 25th, so that’s all sorted, I get a week off between the two jobs, and I can just sit and wait now.

So far nobody knows I’m leaving except my boss, my project manager and HR lady. Boss might have told Becky too, I’m not sure. I’m curious to see if Becky tries to make things up with me before I leave. It’s a lose/lose situation, because I’ve always been of the opinion that she’s not actually a nasty person, she’s just a bit broken in her own way and I’ve just been an unfortunate victim of her own problems. So if she doesn’t try to part on better terms then I’ll feel I was wrong on that. On the other hand, if she does try to make up with me, I’ll probably tell her to fuck off, because… too little, too late, you know?

I don’t know what I’ll tell people when it becomes public knowledge. I’m leaving because I got a better offer?

Actually, I went and got a better offer because I’m leaving.

Whimpers rather than bangs

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Boss and HR lady had a meeting this morning. HR lady was very animated. I was with someone else at the time and commented that I’d never seen her animated before. She’s usually very stoic. I think my resignation took her by surprise and she took it a bit personally. Which shows some self-awareness, I suppose…

Then my boss spoke to me. He was quite conciliatory, but he didn’t ask why I was leaving (probably sensible), and didn’t make a counter-offer. He was feeling his way around it a bit though, but when I said I had accepted the other offer, he seemed to consider the matter closed.

I feel like… my boss seemed disappointed, HR lady was surprised… this was not an outcome any of the three of us wanted…

…therefore I should have done more to avoid it…

No no no. This is me all over. I can’t feel guilty when other people treat me badly. I can’t think “if only I’d given them more opportunities to treat me well”, especially when I did give them opportunities! This is not healthy.