sheldrake

I'm obsessively tagging all my old journal entries, and I'm up to November 2003. It reminded me that LJ exists, so I thought I'd come here and post. And then I remembered that I've got to get ready to go to work now. :(

Remember in my last post when I said I'd come back tomorrow but you might have moved in time like the fireplace in Doctor Who? That's what happened.

Bye! I'll come back tomorrow.

THINGS!

1. I am moving house out of my flat and into a real live house at the end of the month. Hoorah!
2. I am enjoying my four-day week.
3. I liked the new Star Trek film lots! Spock is adorable now he's not a serial killer.*
4. I went to see The Sixteen in Bury St Edmunds cathedral, singing Purcell and James McMillan -- they were really wonderful.
5. Ok, you win. I'm on Dreamwidth as tadorna (my Latin name dontcha know), but I haven't really bothered to do anything with it or seek people out or anything basically.

Ok, I think the numbers are intimidating me, and also I have been corrupted by Twitter. I keep wanting to express every thought in 140 characters. Ummmm, what else? I've been feeling pretty good lately. Work is still all a bit up in the air and not great. I need to do more exercise, eat more healthily and do more work. I'm trying to get back into the creative groove, to spend more time making and doing. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with reading and watching stuff and noodling around on the internet. But, just for myself, I could be doing more, and I feel it would be a shame if I didn't. I don't actually include knitting in the things I ought to be doing. It is creative, but in a different way -- I love doing it, but it's a hobby. That only applies to me, though. Singing is the same, and sewing. For me, these are hobbies, because I enjoy doing them, but they're not really my 'thing' -- I'm an extremely average knitter and singer. Writing and making... other stuff -- that's work. But work in the good way, not as in my job. That's work in the bad or at least necessary evil way. If you're somebody who 'makes work', sometimes you can allow 'going to work' to prevent you from doing your real work. *ties self in knots*

Sorry, that was really convoluted. So yes, mainly I'm concentrating on taking pleasure in small things, and making a start on doing more good stuff (although I've got distracted by this moving business now).

Anyway, have I ever mentioned my damn annoying social phobia? It trips me up sometimes, and makes me worry a lot more than I really need to. I had to go to a social event with work the other day, and it made me very anxious and left me feeling low, although I made my excuses and went home pretty early. I got my hair cut the other day too, and I always hate that -- I find small talk really difficult. I can't help subjecting myself to an in-depth analysis of my 'performance' as a human being, and the conclusion is always that I have failed miserably. I am of course aware that this is unnecessary and I am much better at all this than I used to be. I do try quite hard. I'm also aware that lots of other people feel shy or out of place at times -- but this is a particular problem for me, and affects my life hugely. It has done for as long as I can remember, and is probably at the root of my problems with depression in the past. It hasn't gone away, but I think what I've come to realise is that it can be battled with. It doesn't always have to force me under. Life's just too damn short, basically.

Er, yeah, anyway. Dunno why I felt the need to go on about that suddenly, it's just stuff I've been thinking about. Have some random photos!

*This is a casting reference. There is no Spock-is-an-ex-serial killer plotline in the film, don't worry.

( random photos )

I have reduced my hours down to four days a week, but I'm still in a job! The same goes for my colleague. :)

As is turned out, there wasn't quite a whole job to be lost, but only 22 hours. So seven of the other eight people in our team* rallied round and said that if we could drop a day each, they'd lose the rest of the time between them. My team, two team leaders, and immediate manager have all been really great trying to sort this out, and even the crappy union put our proposal forward without quibbling, so all in all I feel ok about it. It means a cut in salary, of course, but nothing I can't cope with, and I have to say the extra day for myself is extremely welcome!

Because everyone was in agreement with the proposal, the scary meetings got cancelled anyway. We did write a huge blistering masterwork in our own defence and emailed it to management and HR, but we decided it was better not to take it any further at this point. It's gone on too long already and I'm way tired. But writing the blistering masterwork made us feel better, and several colleagues came up and said very nice things about us, which also helped.

*The less said the better about the eighth person, whose constant refusal to even consider the loss of a precious £8.45 a week apparently nearly derailed the whole proposal. His reasoning, we hear, was that he's just got Sky Plus... It wasn't like anyone liked him much in the first place, but his consistent selfishness throughout the many months of this process has been truly astonishing.

***

Feeling a bit muzzy today. I had a funny turn last night while I was doing nothing more taxing than sitting in a chair and talking. It felt like somone had suddenly pushed the world on its axis and started it spinning violently round. After a while the spinning slowed, but I went on feeling odd and dizzyish. I don't think I've ever felt anything quite like it before. Hopefully it's nothing more than the stress of the last week catching up with me, and bad sleep.

Just wanted to say thanks so much to everyone who commented on my last post -- it's really lovely to have your support in times of strife. :)

Still seeing how things go at the moment and hoping for a resolution. We'll see. Mostly I'm knackered. Lack of sleep led to me forgetting the words for things like paper towels, and exploding a bottle of Coke over myself (hence necessity for paper towels). Hoping tomorrow will be better...

I have been made 'provisionally redundant'.

What this means in reality is that they couldn't decide between me and my friend who sits next to me, who works with me on a lot of the same stuff, and who I've known for years and worked with in two different jobs. So they've invited us both to a meeting on Friday where we will fight for their entertainment. Or something. We're supposed to think of alternative solutions and 'discuss how to decide'.

We are the only designers who've been affected, by the looks of it. I think management wanted to choose four (higher-paid) subeditors, but they threw us to the lions to appease the union (who couldn't give a stuff about us and have resented us for months).

Fuckheads. I can't think how they could have made it worse.

I think I might just start using random numbers for the subject line, since I can never actually think of anything to put there.

So. I have gone into major lurk-mode lately, no particular reason. Just don't feel like posting, or something. Dunno. I'm still here though, reading and stuff. Things may well continue in this vein for a while.

So, remember when I posted saying my job was safe? Yeah, not so much. On Thursday, my fellow designers and I found out we were back in the redundancy pool (this has been such a great process, seriously), on Friday we were all scored on our performance, and tomorrow we find out who's made the grade. Yay.

Today was spent in hardcore escapist activities, which took the form of working on my Neverending Quilt, and a BSG catch-up marathon. Yesterday, I went on a jaunt round town with my friend C to look at some flats, because I'm thinking of moving (not sure how the job thing will affect that really). And that's all been quite fun. And tomorrow... will no doubt be awful, to some degree or other. But first I will have some dinner.

And that was my post. Sorry it was so lacking in elegance, wit and style. Don't know what I've done with my elegance, wit and style, know I left it round here somewhere...

Hmm, bit of a stressful week, what with one thing and another. I think we're about to go to war with the subeditors. Hooray for the weekend!

I should never go on the internet really. Now I'm actively aware that some people think the film of The Neverending Story is better than the book, and that makes me sad. Maybe you do too. If so, do me a favour and don't tell me about it? I'm tired of arguing. (Er, not about that, about some other things. There has been a huge debate raging all week about whether we should go to a meeting or not. We even had a meeting to discuss it. In the end, the decision was reached not to go to the meeting.)

Ok, I haven't actually seen the film and never intend to, but I don't care. The book is still better. So there.

When I feel fed up at work, I have a picture of a mole rising up out of the soil that I keep in a folder on my desktop, and I look at it and cheer up.* Other things that work - koala, skunk, hedgehog, armadillo, echidna. Rabbits, sometimes - the one in my icon is a case in point. I would want a pet mole, but moles really don't like being pets. Also, I don't really do pets. Plants cause me enough angst as it is.

I'm wondering whether to have proper dinner, but I can't be bothered really. This is most unusual for me. Dinner is generally the high point of my day.

I am going away now.


* I realise this is a badly-constructed sentence, but you should be aware that the picture is on my desktop, not the soil.

A quick note to say I'm still alive, I get to keep my job (woohoo) and therefore keep paying my rent and being alive, and am generally feeling ok about stuff and being alive and stuff, mainly. On the whole.

AND THAT IS ALL FOR NOW.

ps. except for my knees, which hurt.

... except it's not news.

1. Work is depressing me. The atmosphere is terrible. My motivation is utterly non-existent. Sometimes I honestly can't decide whether it would be worse to be kept on or made redundant. On the up side, when I'm in a lighter mood I can't decide which is better.

2. Twitter is starting to scare me. A lot of people are really interested in marketing strategy, aren't they?

3. Constant rain. Cold rain.

4. All I really want to do is wrap myself up in blankets, eat, and read books.

I may go to bed now. Ho hum.

I haven't been posting much lately. Normally I would start off with lots of excuses and apologies for my appalling behaviour, but I'm trying to cut down on that sort of thing.

Nothing to report about the job stuff at present. Nothing much to report about anything, really.

I've said it before, but I need to stop wasting vast swathes of time reading the comments posted to blogs and online news articles. It's like I'm deliberately poisoning myself with other people's stupidity. There are lots of other things I could be doing: knitting, practising the piano, writing... hoovering.

That said, I have been somewhat preoccupied of late by the Carol Thatcher affair. Honestly, I don't even how to begin talking about it. ( but I shall give it my best shot )

Ok, just had to get that off my chest. I'm definitely going to do my ironing now.