Death

TW: suicide, death and generally morbid thoughts.

So covid 19, Coronavirus, or whatever you want to call it has now lead to a lockdown in the UK. That has made more and more people worried about death, and for me it has just brought it further to the forefront of my brain. I’ve been having thoughts about it with the whole nightmares I was having, thankfully abated, but the thoughts about locked in syndrome are still there.

I’ve been looking up assisted death (or assisted suicide) in the UK and it is illegal. There are countries and or States where this is legal, but there aren’t many in the scale of things. For me, I was looking into writing a living will as I know that if I was in that kind of state, I would want to die. I freaked out when I lucid dreamt and that was bad enough, I can’t be locked in my own body unable to control anything. Even if it wasn’t that, a horrific stroke, a car accident that left me paralysed, anything which could have killed me but has instead left me useless and unable to function, I do not want to be alive for that. I would rather be dead.

It looks like you can’t have a Do Not Resuscitate option in the UK, but that’s basically what I want. If I’m going to die, I want it to be on my terms. I don’t want to be brought back with huge brain damage and be trapped like that. I realise the more I write the more selfish it is, not me saying oh I don’t want to be a burden to my family, more that I’m scared of my own mind and what is in there. That’s not a great revelation either.

I better stop and go back to watching Modern Family, that seems safer that indulging my mind with the chaotic darkness which is in there right now.

MMS

20 Statements About the Last 10 Years Leading to 2020.

So I was thinking about this very early in the morning, and my initial plan was to write 20 negative things and 20 positive things in two separate posts (you know, we are in 2020 now and all that, a nice symmetry). The issue was I found it way easier to think of negative rather that positive, so I am just doing 10. Then I can say 10 things that happened in the last 10 years leading up to 2020. Maybe you will argue that it is sloth, but hey, my blog, my rules.

Let’s start with the negative

1. I am 30 years old and still live at home

2. In the last ten years I have not ended up where I would have expected at this point in my life.

3. Lately my mental health has deteriorated further than I would like.

4. I am basically bald now and I hate it.

5. To this day I still struggle with accepting who I am as a person.

6. I feel very much left behind compared to my friends socially, emotionally and career wise

7. My eating habits are volatile and I still eat like I’m back at university, but now have enough stomach acid to fill a swimming pool.

8. My income and intelligence will mean that it is highly unlikely I will be able to get onto the property ladder until I am in my late 30s.

9. I have been single the last 3 years or so (not massively negative but if you ask my mother… Woof)

10. I feel I have become even more socially awkward than I was before, unless I am under the influence of alcohol.

Wow. That isn’t great. Let’s try and address some of those in a more positive way and be happy.

1. I am 30 years old and still live at home, but I have given my parents alot of money so they can keep this house and the mortgage is nearly paid off. Granted the money could have been a big deposit on my own home, but you have to look after your parents.

2. I have graduated from university and hold a bachelors degree. It is ina good discipline, however the grade isn’t wonderful, but I still did it.

3. I am basically bald, but I do have a great shaped head which means I can carry it off quite well. I can grow a half decent beard too now as well, so that’s a positive as well.

4. In the last 10 years I have been to Italy, Spain, Holland, Kazakhstan, Mauritius, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, Greece and France.

5. My computer skills have grown a great deal and I am much better in spreadsheet software than I ever used to be, and feel much more confident in that ability.

6. My closest friends have done really well, gaining great jobs, starting their own families and owning property. I am incredibly proud of them and their achievements.

7. I have been put in/put myself in situations socially and emotionally outside of my comfort zone and come out of them in one piece, and maybe even learned about myself in the process.

8. I am still alive at the age of 30. In truth I didn’t think I’d make it this far, so I’m happy to have got here!

9. I would like to think I have been a positive influence on my younger sibling and cousins, helping support them in getting into the much better positions they are in today.

10. I haven’t given up completely. I’ve come close, I’ve really wanted just to sack it all in, but I haven’t. There is still a little hope left in me that things will get better. Eventually.

There we go Netty. Happy New Year to you.

PL&H

MMS

Another Tough Day

TW: Suicide, Self Harm, vomiting.

Today has been a tough day for me, but let me go back to Friday first before I get to today.

Friday afternoon I went with mum and dad (step) to go and get a CT scan.  While there my dad had an X-ray on his knee (he needed one anyway and they said drop in when you are free for this).  The reason for my mums CT scan was a shadow across her chest which came up in another scan.  They have more or less written off Lung Cancer (thankfully) but it was a nervous time for us all, especially so close to Christmas time.

After the scan I went home and got ready to my work Christmas Do.  This had been weeks in planning by the work teams, but I was not going to go.  It was only 48 hours before that I ended up being convinced to go, after a few people dropping out and several people haranguing me to do so.   I met my colleagues at the pub, had a few drinks beforehand with them, and then we went onto the venue, where the company card was behind the bar and even more drinks were had.

All said, I left at around quarter past midnight, well socially lubricated, having danced most of the night and had a great time all in all.  I got home by Uber, and was only sick once from all the Jack and Coke I had, the acid was brutal though.

That same day (Friday) I also found out that my colleagues sister had tried to kill herself.  She had taken medication, slashed her wrists and was found somewhere by a stranger who took her to hospital.  The same girl also has recently found out that her fathers new partner (to be wife) has skin cancer and had to have a large portion of her leg removed.  She told me these things and I tried to support her and talk to her where I can, but I know that she has a strong support structure to help her out when she needs it.

Back to Saturday I did not do very much at the weekend, being that I was hungover and in truth I like to not do much on the weekends because I work all the time during the week and want to relax.  Which is a nice transition into today.

Today I got back to work and found out that while I was off “Bombshell Friday” had struck again.  Fridays are the day where something comes out where there is a problem and there is a scrabble to try and resolve it, but more often than not it can’t be done immediately and so there is a chaotic start to the week which can potentially drag on weeks or months depending on the issue.  Guess what, this time it was my fault.

I made a mistake, the mistake came back to bite me, and now I had to work to resolve it.  Unfortunately this mistake is on a project that I have made mistakes on previously, which only fed into making me feel worse about the issue.  I have spent the whole day trying to fix the issue, and speaking to the relevant internal teams and externally affected individuals to get things back on track.  It is not a one day fix, but it has ended up consuming my time, on something I am a little lost in trying to resolve and struggling with.

That word, struggling, is basically what is I feel at work.  I speak for myself here, but I know that the other people on my team feel it, but we are all trying to balance too many jobs.  I feel I am doing this the worst out of everyone as I keep having to resolve issues and fix things as part of the work I am doing, and they should have been spotted a long time ago but weren’t.  Before you ask who should have spotted them, I should have.

I spoke to one of my colleagues about the fact I am going to call a meeting with my manager, because I am doing too much.  Last year I had one job, and one job only at this time of year.  This year I am trying to juggle 3 and smattering of smaller jobs.  I feel like I have too much work to do, and because of this I am letting things slip.  Too many jobs means I am making mistakes in all three of them, and there is just too much for me to handle in one go.  When discussing how many issues we should be dealing with at a time, it was mentioned in someones previous job they handled 2 each maximum.  My team is 4FT and 1 PT, and we currently dealing with 76.  That is just not OK.

Work is really dragging me down mentally, because I don’t stop thinking about it.  I think about it when I wake up, I dream about it, I am even writing about it now (for good reason, I can justify this).  I work 8-6 Monday to Friday, but this has been known to be until 7 and come in at the weekend, pushing my hours to high 40s or 50s at bad times.  Now for some, that is not a big deal; your doctors and lawyers and nurses of the world, but for someone paid my level, this is not great.  I am working those hours to try and get everything done, and then it turns out that I still cant.  Between April and the end of November this year it worked out that I have done 270 hours of overtime that I billed for.  That works out at 38.5 hours per month, which to me doesnt seem so terrible, but it kinda is.  Every month I work the equivalent of 1 FT employee for a week (standard contract is 35 hours PW).

I am struggling to keep up with all of this, and it is making me more and more stressed.  Add on top my friends who I am helping out (the one above, another was at a funeral today who I was trying to support, my family, and the whole real dad and his partner situation which I don’t know if I have talked about) and I am feeling like there is just too much going on.

Circling back, I wanted to tell my manager that I would like to have some of the work taken off my plate, because I am struggling to cope with all of it.  I even wanted to tell him to take away the promotion that I have had, because if I am a lower level, then they can’t make me do the things that they are asking at the moment.  I ran this past my colleague and he agreed that we all do too much, but that I shouldn’t give the company the opportunity to pay me less.  The work would still be the same, and in his opinion (he has 8 years experience on me) the work we are doing alot of the time should not be signed off by someone of our level, but rather someone one or two levels above us.

Why don’t I change position?  I have thought about it and looked and applied in some cases, but in truth every specification I read I don’t feel I even come close to being able to do the things they say.  Christ, I read my own job specification online and feel like I can’t do the things on that.  A friend on another team has suggested I go for a junior coding position on her team and has put my name forward for the potential role (depending on the budget) next year, but even that I feel I will be bad at.

I know I have problems with feeling inadequate (Insert Coach Carter Speech here (which is amazing by the way)), but I just feel confused and not good enough and like every single day I am just battling to keep my head afloat at work.  Today was an 8-6 and quite frankly I am sure that tomorrow will be the same and it is Christmas Eve.

If I didn’t need the money so badly I would take a job where I could just turn off and have minimum responsibilities.  That would be the dream right now, but the reality is I have to have money to help my family, to try and move out of my parents home and to try and make something of myself.  I am 30 years old, I should not be living here, but that’s a whole other rant which ends up in another hole altogether.

It has been a long time since I wrote this much in one post, or even in one go at all.  This is really going back to the streams of consciousness recollection that this blog was founded on over 5 years ago, and I have just broken 1500 words to get to this point.  In truth, the people who used to read this years ago no longer do, and anyone who stumbles across this now will view this as a dated form of expression in a world of YouTube and short form, fast consumption content.  I just find this cathartic and getting this out of my head will hopefully make it easier to process and hopefully mean I can sleep and tackle tomorrow in a healthier and more balanced way.

I hope that I do not fall into the “likes and views are verification of my self worth” hole that I used to have, because I do know I do that sometimes, checking my stats.  Truthfully, if I have more than 2 views a day I think I am doing amazingly.  I think I got one of those notifications that my blog was “on fire” when it hit 30 in a day.  How pathetic really, but if anyone has ready this far (highly doubtful) then I commend you on reading the ramblings of an idiot like me.

I think it is time for me to stop now and watch some Brooklyn 99 or something light hearted to keep me distracted and away from sliding further down.  I think carrying on with The Witcher (which is brilliant so far) would be bad because it has some darker themes.  Same applies to most of the shows I would like to watch now, so I will stick to this for now and see how I feel.

To anyone who has read this far, thank you.  For Netty, thank you once again for being a chronicle of my mental state, for listening to my ramblings and for continuing to be a source of knowledge, pain and growth.

PL&H

MMS

Sleep related anxiety part 2

Forewarning: this gets dark.

After a week or so I stopped having the dreams with the messed up claustrophobia, but I think I have an idea as to what is causing it.

I think I am scared to be blind. The idea that I would lose my sight completely and not be able to see scares the hell out of me, to the point I think I’d rather not be alive than be blind. Sorry for that, but I think that is genuinely how I feel about it. Living in eternal darkness like that would be like a waking claustrophobia session and I think that sounds like the worst thing out there, other than my buried alive fear which is really not fun to think about either.

I just thought about having locked in syndrome as well now, and that is horrible also, I think I am freaking myself out now and this is going to mess with my sleeping again.

The reason I am writing now is becuase I had a weird, I wouldn’t even call it a dream, a sort of semi dream where I was looking through a telescope and then I ended up being sucked into the telescope and I jolted awake. The idea of that messed with me and now I’m struggling with closing my eyes again. That’s not great at all.

Even closing my eyes now is making me nervous, I don’t want to have to deal with this again, why is this bugging me?! I was asleep by half 9 last night I was so tired and today I am struggling and it’s 11pm. That might not be that late for some, but I need sleep to deal with all the work I have to do when I go back to work in the morning!

I apologised to my boss today as well saying one day I will bring him good news rathe than bad, as all I do is create or find problems. I don’t know whether that second part makes me good or bad at my job, but thr first part certainly isn’t great! I’m a bit lost and confused with this all right now, disillusioned with both work and life. Not sure what’s the next move, but right now all I’m doing is trying to save for my own home and not eat terribly every day. That’s a struggle enough without work stressing me to the max and attempting a social life.

Makes me question the point of it all and the futility of it. Such a waste.

MMS

Sleep related anxiety

So I am having a weird thing.

Saturday night I had pizza for dinner, which isn’t abnornal. However I think becuase I ate it so late (8pm isn’t even that late in my opinion) it stayed on my stomach and I think contributed to my dreams.

I had 2 nightmares.

The first one was around 2 am. I snuck into the kitchen at my dad’s old house to eat cake, then decided not to, but saw someone with a torch shine a light in. They then called the police and they came in the house and shot me. Think there was a news article similar to this with less cake. This is not the dream which bugs me.

The second dream is super brief. I was trapped in what felt like a large vase which constricted my movements and there was only a little oval of light above me which I reached towards. I woke up from this (I think I managed to wake myself up from it) but this dream has now bugged me last night (Sunday) and now tonight (Monday), to the point I’m only getting a few hours sleep, and I have to sleep sitting up.

I have claustrophobia, especially when it comes to dark small spaces. I have managed to brave lifts before, and I have a friend who lives on a 23rd floor apartment, so I use the lift for that, but otherwise I avoid small spaces. The reason this is affecting my sleep is that every time I close my eyes I see that small gap and I feel that everything is closing in on me. Closing my eyes makes me feel like the walls are coming in on me and I really don’t like that, obviously.

Recently there was an episode of Riverdale (spoilers) where Jughead is buried alive in a coffin. That is my worst nightmare. It is the reason I don’t want to be buried, but rather cremated. That episode messed with my head.

Then tonight, completely out of the blue while watching the new season of The Crown (spoilers) there is an episode about a giant diet mound avalanching and burying a school full of children and other people. I literally got 10 minutes into the episode and skipped to the next one as thankfully the episodes are self contained and you don’t really need to watch the previous one for the next one to make sense.

Closing my eyes means I can’t see (obviously). This in my head means that the walls are closing in on me and that I’m going to be buried. Even just being in the dark, in a bedroom I have had effectively 23 years is still not a safe space, which is really weird to me.

Just now before I wrote this currently (00.55 right now) I turned off my phone and even just looking into the darkness and seeing nothing in my room made me nervous. That’s messed up and really not me.

Is one dream really enough to get me this wound up. I think not when it’s daylight, I think not as I chill in bed watching things. I think not as it gets late and I turn off my devices and go to lay down and sleep. Then I close my eyes and it starts again. Maybe I am being too dramatic. It has only been two nights, but I didn’t expect this to go beyond just a normal nightmare. This is not ideal.

I’m a 30 hear old man and I think I need a nightlight. For now OK going to try sleeping sitting up again, hopefully that will help a little, otherwise I hope I am not developing some sort of tick now. It is so stupid and irrational and idiotic it shouldn’t even be a thing. But it is right now, and it’s not a thing I like.

PL&H

MMS

World Mental Health Day 2019

I put this up today for the people who need to hear it. That includes me.

Today has been another rough day and I’m struggling again. But today I remembered to breathe.

Breathe.

Sometimes a couple of deep breaths with your eyes closed just helps to recentre yourself and get on with what you need to do.

If today isn’t your day, hopefully tomorrow will be. If that isn’t, then I hope the next one is. Keep your head up, keep your heart full, and don’t you ever, ever give in to those dark urges. Don’t go back there again, never go back there again.

MMS

Same Same

Guess what, shits still the same.

It’s been a few weeks and you would think that things would have eased up a little, but they haven’t.

I just actually thought about it and it isn’t a few weeks. The last few weeks have been hard but this pressure level hasn’t eased since basically February. It has been months of under resourcing and overworking. I think I’m reaching the point where I’m losing the will. Even the simplest of reports is shaking out problems which should not exist, and as I find them they normally end up with me to fix. That absolutely should not be the case, as that is not how the process is, but a combination of key man dependencies mixed with lack of experience in the wider team leaves me in both a privileged and burdened position.

God I sound like a dick in that paragraph, but I’m not going to delete it. Stream of consciousness, that’s what this is and that is what this shall be. Work is my life and I have no progress in it. And as I have nothing else, nothing else is worth talking or can be talked about. My DnD group are struggling right now as our DM is going through some hardships. My closest friends from school have just had twins and another is newly married so they aren’t up for hanging out lately. I’m becoming more and more isolated from everything and with work being my focus and that going wrong, there is a distinct and real possibility of me spiralling. I can’t do that again. I don’t want to go back to that place again.

I don’t know fo writing this will help at all I truth. I don’t think it has really done much at all but at least I am putting this somewhere. Not that it is read anymore by any of the people who used to, and that is a good thing. That means they have either got better in their lives or moved past this POS situation.

This is whiney shit like I said last time, but this is my little carved out space to vent rather than go do this at a person who probably doesn’t understand and has more important shit to deal with than a full grown adult unable to handle life and the state that it is in right now.

Fuck it. Fuck it all.

MMS

Another one….

I forget that this is a place I use as a release. Let’s try this and see if if helps.

Work is a little manic at this point in time. In my team of 5 at my level, one is signed off, one is on maternity, one is leaving and one has loads of experience, but only 8 months in my company so lacking the knowledge of the system and specificity of our work.

My brain feels overworked right now and it’s only Tuesday. I had 7 Danish pastries, because I still eat my feelings and I had a kebab for dinner, because I still eat my feelings.

My workload is too high, but there is no one else to support. My manager, who I have alot of respect for, but don’t necessarily agree with in many personal opinions, is about to leave too for an internal transfer which is good for him but bad for me.

People close to me at work are all leaving for new jobs or transferring, and all this change and new work pressure is getting in my head. I need to accept I can’t change these things and I can’t do everything, but I still keep trying to. Everything is not on me. Everything is not my fault. Everything is not doable.

All I can think of is work, and that’s not good. That’s also a lie, I think about my ex partner alot recently which is really bad, as we haven’t been together for a good few years now. I need to not do that as well.

What is the best thing for me to do? Sleep probably. Not drink, definitely not smoke, and definitely not text a few people who are inappropriate to contact socially. Keep work at work, not social or anything else. Oh and I’m getting sick, think I might be pushing a little too hard.

God I sound whiny. That is terrible. But this is my space to whine with my first world problems. I’ll do just that and go for it.

Thanks Netty, you’re awesome

PL&H

MMS

Feelings of Inadequacy

Today I’ve been struggling at work. I’ve been having some problems at work with senior management where I was basically publicly slut shamed, but that is another story for another time.

Today I have had my work checked by my seniors and they found so many mistakes. Some of them were big ones, but there were lots of smaller ones which was what annoyed me more. Small, simple, stupid mistakes. Not linking the formula to the right cell so the data pulled through is incorrect. Not checking simple little things. Things I should check but I didn’t.

I was planning to put my name forward for the senior position which will be becoming available on my team soon. My peers have been encouraging me, both externally and internally, but when I keep making mistakes like these, how can I justify it? How can I go to my manager and say I deserve this chance, when I’m making simple rookie errors that should not be made at all.

Also found out my ex has a new boyfriend which is wonderful for her, but leaves me once again feeling like I’m coming up short. Granted I have not put myself out there looking, but the last two relationships I have had weren’t with me looking, they just happened organically; friends becoming more than friends.

Am I good enough professionally? Probably not right now, but maybe in the future. Am I good enough personally? Probably not, because if you can’t love yourself, how can you give anything to anyone else?

On the plus side, the new Panic! At the Disco album is brilliant. Big fan of it, if you haven’t given it a spin, you should do so post haste.

MMS

Confused and angry

Don’t ask me why I did it, because I don’t know myself but I decided to look up an ex girlfriend of mine online. I don’t have social media applications so I searched her in a search engine and she popped up.

She is living where I had heard rumours of her moving to a few years back, and still works in the same capacity as she did before but for someone else. I searched her rough salary and she is earning a very good wage, but that isn’t want confused and annoyed me.

She is taking a training course in mental health to champion it. Whether that be in thr workplace or elsewhere. This is the same woman who broke up with me after I told her that I was going to go on medication to help my mental health. She was one of the reasons I started this blog back in 2012. I needed an outlet and I had lost the biggest support structure I had.

I had graduated University and was struggling with work. I then got broken up with and a week later got let go from my job. The week after that was Christmas and it was one of the worst I ever had, I was an absolute wreck of a human.

I’m still dealing with my mind now. I’m more withdrawn than I have ever been in my life and I’m considerably older. I am working as hard as I can to try and progress in my job, trying to support my parents and trying to get myself into a position where I can be a role model for my younger family. Yes, that is pressure, but it is what I have always done.

I just feel a little shocked and down right now. Sorry to put this on you Netty. Hope you are OK too.

PL&H

MMS