Cheating

I started writing this as an email response to Janet’s comment on my post.  And it got really long and I thought that it’s something I’d want to blog about eventually, so here it is. After I went to bed last night I was thinking about it some more.  I think I feel so frustrated because, for example, I get upset one day because I find something that reminds me of my dad (the serial code inside a computer game, the writing inside a christmas present book, something to do with astronomy).  So I get upset, and I process it and maybe I blog, and I feel heaps better.  Then the next week, the same thing happens.  Because of the way I’m built (I have a Meyers Briggs test to prove it!  But I didn’t need it to tell me…) I really hate going over the little stuff all the time.  I get frustrated.  So I just stop doing it.  But it’s not the same thing coming back.  It’s a new thing, even though it looks the same.  So then it all backs up and it’s like a cupboard full of old broken things and after a while I don’t even want to open the door because it’s all going to fall on my head.   So, yes.  Like Janet said.  Movement is good.  Movement makes it feel like something that I’m doing, not something that is happening to me.  It makes it feel like something that has, if not an end, then at least a purpose.  And essentially the blog is for me, not for you guys, although you’re an awesome bonus.  So I will write what I damn well want.  The thing is, I don’t want to write about it because I think essentially I want to be done now.  Which, when I think about it with my actual brain is ridiculous.  It’s not even been a year!  But I’m tired.  And we’ve hit the bit now where people sort of assume I’m over it, fixed, ok again.  I am pretty sure I am never going to be ok again.  That’s just not on the cards.   That said, I am also totally ok.  I know that I’m doing ok, and really, most days are frustrating but fine.  But I just feel a bit like if I put something out there that isn’t fine, people won’t have a context to put it into.  Which is silly because my blog readers/commenters have consistently proved to be the people with the best context.  You are people who know about grief, about life, about how easy things can be hard from the inside sometimes.  And I know that when you blog about the hard bits of life, even if that’s all you blog about for a while, I don’t hear it as whining or complaining or being gloomy.  That’s what life is like sometimes and it makes me want to hear from you more because that way I know when you say something is good, today was good, you mean it. I had a long talk with my oldest friend last night, who also works with me.  She had a modified version of the ‘I’m worried about you’ talk.  (I really hate that – then I feel bad because obviously I wasn’t doing a good enough job pretending to be normal and now other people are put out!  Oh no!  I failed as a human being!  Which, again: stupid, but tell my social conditioning that.)  We both agreed that something has to change.  I feel like my workplace – specifically a few of the people and the general culture – is draining my life force.  Which is upsetting because I love it there, and while I’m not crazy about all the people, I love the culture.  But I just don’t have the energy, and there’s not really a ‘turn up, do your job, go home’ option.  Everything is about being involved and part of the community.  Which is lovely.  Except then my community requires me to listen to long speils on social justice and then gives me typing to do about suicide prevention.  It isn’t feeling very supportive.  And since the pay is… not great, and a bunch of the awesome people have left recently, it doesn’t feel like there’s that much to stick around for. I had a job interview a week ago for an admin job in one of our unis.  I was apprehensive about even going because I’m not keen to be in admin forever.  Then again, there’s nothing else I specifically want to do so… why not?  Anyway, it turned out to be a really good situation (more money too), but on the next Monday I sent them an email to ask them to take me out of the running because there’s an internal job that is not admin that I have applied for.  The person whose job it is is super keen and talking to me like I already have it, but she’s not the one making the decision.  Also I think she just kind of wants not to feel guilty about it.  At the time I was all excited about it, although there won’t even be a shortlist for it until next week, but now I’m not sure.  How much would change?  Would the things that are making me want to crawl under my desk and yell at everyone to go away change?  Or just shift to the new job?  I’m pretty sure a change, any change, even the weather getting nicer, will help.  Currently in my job I am both bored and irritated.  So being engaged and irritated might be a step up.  And maybe I wouldn’t be irritated.  Who knows!  All I know is, after last week, I wish I hadn’t sent that email.  I wish I was starting a new job soon.  I wish I was working in that nice clean office on the eighth floor of a building right in the city with new people whose hangups and foibles I don’t know yet, who presumably manage to unjam the photocopier by themselves most of the time.  I don’t regret it much, but I regret it.  Enough to be considering sending the contact person an email saying ‘I changed my mind again!’ even though I’m almost positive they’ve already hired someone.  That would be silly, right?

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