Tag: work

Owning The Day

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It was the first day back at work for me today. The start of another week, where it takes every piece of energy you have to get out of your bed. I know that if I had the choice, I would just stay at home all the time, and do what I want. And if everyone was to act honestly, most of them would admit the same. But, we need to work, to get the money, to live a life.

Today was one of those days. I must have put my alarm to sleep at least 10 times, and I was still in my bed. But, I got to the stage where if I didn’t get up, I would have been late for work. I just didn’t know how to get motivated.

So once I started moving, I tried to give myself a bit of a pep talk. The idea was to try and make the day my bitch. Take charge, for a change. And as silly as it seems, now I am reading it back, it worked. I got the energy I needed to get up and go to work. I even ended up being quite happy most of the day, and was super productive.

Now, there are times where talking to yourself won’t make things better. I know that from experience. But sometimes, it is good to be able to give yourself the required kick up the arse to get stuff done. One person who inspires me to get moving is Superwoman. Not the superhero, the youtuber. She has a channel on Youtube, which she has talked a lot about ‘hustling’, and just being her own cheerleader and how it is not as shameful as you may think.

Deep Breathing

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Uh oh!

Something has gone wrong, and I can feel the panic starting to rise in my stomach. What have I done wrong? How could I let this happen? I’ve let people down? And when this happens, there is not one iota of possiblity that can focus on anything else. 

How do I react? I start getting cranky. If my work is stressing me, giving me more work doesn’t help my stress. I just go into a spiral where I just make myself feel worse and worse. So I take it out on the people around me. Which is unfair, because it isn’t their fault I am panicking. And then, I feel worse because I took it out on an innocent bystander. 

Yep, quite a mental hole to get yourself out of, if I say so myself. 

But I do sometimes get myself out of these blocks, which does make me feel better. A lot of the time, I don’t actually do anything. It is just the ‘state of utmost panic’ passes. No reason why it comes and goes, it sometimes works like that. Very unhelpful. Most of the time though, I have to actively seek to get myself going again. 

I do that with a lot of effort and patience. I may take a ‘time out’ and go for a walk somewhere, away from where I am working. Being away from my work area, does automatically relax me. Sometimes I just close my eyes and try to breathe. I know it’s a cliche, but it is repeated so much because it’s true. 

But the best thing to calm me down, is to try and talk to those around me. It’s probably just the distraction, but when I am in work, and I can’t just run off, it does help a lot. I work with some funny and great people, and I can always find someone who will make me laugh. It helps so much. Just a few minutes of light-hearted conversation can completely change my mood, and I can return to work with a completely fresh mind. 

It’s nice sometimes, to find a way around the blocks your brain puts in the way. And the more solutions you find, the easier it gets to get on top of those mental health issues that so many of us deal with. 

Computer Says No

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I have spent the last 10 minutes getting my iPhone to charge using a cable with a loose connection. Again, I curse at technology as my phone dies, and I have to search around for another cable, of which I have came into ownership of a ton. And only about half of them actually work.

This hasn’t been my only issue with technology recently. I have had to use a lot of computers at work, which are shared. Like sometimes more than one account can be logged into the PC at a time. Which is handy when there is limited computers available, but not very good when you rely on the PC being fast. To do the job I do, I need multiple programmes open at once, and I must be able to jump between them all seemlessly. This does happen, when someone on another profile jams the print queue, and just logs out. And it happens a lot, and the only way to fix is to restart everything. Which takes way too long. 

So, to humour myself the other day whilst my PC was resetting, I thought of a few things that could be done whilst waiting for a work PC to load.

1) Have a cup of tea, even watching the kettle boil would be quicker than the PC. 

2) Do the Metro crossword. And that includes colouring in boxes so that my words fit. 

3) Annoy several colleagues by singing Christmas songs. 

4) Attend a First Aid incident. It’s okay, I am trained.

5) Go for a walk and see how other colleagues are doing. 

6) Sweep the floor and tidy up. At a push. 

7) Cry at the pile of work getting bigger, that you can do nothing about. 

8) Try to give ‘new starts’ directions, and confusing them when I say ‘right’ and point left.

9) Go to stores and refill all the paper and pen supplies.

10) Realise that I would be quicker doing everything manually.

Just Get On With It

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

I always try to a person who plods along, no matter what happens. If I feel a duty to get something done, I have to be dying for me not to at least attempt it. It’s how I have always been, since I was wee girl. Never excelled, but also never really gave up. I fail, but I bloody well try hard no matter what. 

Well, feeling under the weather, as I have, has put that ideal to the test. I have been working 6 days a week, in the run up to Christmas, making the best of the opportunity and all that. Which is great, it will pay for a fair bit of Christmas. But it is so hard to do when you are not quite 100%. My temper is short, I am a walking snot factory, and I constantly want to be wrapped up watching Netflix. But the show must go on.

I go to work and do my best. Which isn’t terrible, I can get my work done in an above average speed and accuracy, so it’s okay. But my fuse is short. I bite at people for no reason. It just means I spend half the day nipping at folk, and the other half appologising for it. It annoys me because I am such a patient person normally. 

I can’t wait till this cold/cough thing finally goes away, and I can be myself again. In the meantime, I just need to keep making sure I am doing the best I can. Keep myself right. 

I hope anyone else going through the ‘winter cold bug’ gets rid of it quickly. Nobody wants to be sick at this time of year. 

Risk It For A Biscuit?

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Yesterday I was asked why I never ‘put myself forward’ for different roles at work. It was awkward, because I couldn’t find an answer. But it was more, that I couldn’t work out how to say stuff, rather than there being no reasons.

I have spoken on here about having anxiety and depression before. It would be easier if those two things occurred together. But they don’t. Like now, I am very content at work, and I am enjoying what I do. And because I like helping people, I have been asked a few times about stepping up to a different role for the upcoming busy period. Which there is a chance I’d do okay, but my brain doesn’t seem to understand that.

The ‘fear of the Unknown’ is the problem, which seems daft. But it is one that I can’t get passed. I have encountered my fair share of failure in life, and the way I reacted to that has made my anxiety worse. Whenever something goes wrong, I square the blame fully on myself. Which is okay, only if you use the experience to learn from. I don’t seem to do that. I hate on myself for failing something, and I make myself so miserable that I don’t want to try anything else again. That developed to the stage where I had panic attacks when I would get the oppertunity to do something new. 

But things are a bit better. I still don’t put myself forward for things yet, although I do think about it. But I will try something new if it is put in front of me, and by focusing on whatever it is, I don’t panic. It is something I need to keep working on, so that one day, soon, I will be able to apply for new stuff, without the panic attacks.

Ball Of Sunshine

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am happy.

For the first time in a long time, I am enjoying a period where I am experiencing a few more ups than downs. It is great, and not something I am used to. I am singing and laughing every day, instead of moping and crying. It is rather freeing being upbeat, it is like I am bouncing around without a care in the world. Nothing is getting to me, and it is a strange feeling.

The issue is. When you build your whole ‘internet life’ on helping you de-stress, what do you do when you don’t need to? I don’t feel the need to rant about things that have went wrong, because for some reason it doesn’t seem to be bothering me. Talking about it, may end up jinxing it all, but I feel that I should try to talk about it. No matter how much of a struggle it is, just because I want this blog to show an honest portrayal of me, and I need to show that people with depression and anxiety do have periods of happiness. It may not happen often, but it does happen.

So where did this feeling of happiness come from?

Recently I have been doing a job that I enjoy at work. I feel like I have a purpose. I feel like I can share my experience of the last few years in the business helping those less experienced. I am also taking an engineering course through a collaboration between my work and a local college, which is interesting. And then I have signed up for a Creative Coding class, through FutureLearn, which also looks exciting. It is the most ‘forward thinking’ I have been in a long time, and the way I am feeling shows that. Nothing may come of all that is going on, but my mental health is glad for the break. So forgive me, as I revel in being genuinely happy.

Hello?

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Posting has stopped being such a priority. Nothing has taken the place of the many hours I used to spend on the Internet. I now check a few websites, and that’s about it. 

It’s not that I am bored. It is more that I don’t know what to say. I am in a mental black hole right now, and I don’t know what to do about it. I used to be able to upload any anxieties to a blog post, and feel better. Now, I’ve had to many comments to stop, because all I do is complain. I have always used the Internet to vent, and I feel like that has been taken away. And I have always struggled talking to people, so I don’t know what to do. 

Just feeling a bit lost.

Feeling Small (BEDA)

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am still feeling very sorry for myself, with allergies combining with a cold. I am grumpy, tired and have very little time for the bad attitude of others. Two different people spoke to me, and the spoke to me in a manner which made me think of a child being scolding by it’s mother. I felt small and stupid, and both times I just wanted to find somewhere to cry. Which is what I want to do when I am sickly, anyway, so feeling attacked by people around me was never going to help.

Actually, it wasn’t like I was being attacked, it was how things were said to me. Like that certain tone a person gets in their voice when someone isn’t worth their time. That tone that tells you a person is irritated. Add to that, the eye rolling/ staring daggers, I felt super uncomfortable and just wanted the ground to swallow me up. I really should have spoke back, stood up for myself. But, considering I only got 2 hours sleep last night and I felt so ill, it took all my energy to simply not cry. It made me feel worse that one of these people was a manager, who is not even in my department. Like, I have been doing the same job for a while, and as usual, I am finding myself stressing about how I can do my own job. I get awful panicky, and do stupid things, like going in when I am sick. And when someone speaks down to you, as if you know nothing, anxiety levels start to rise.

I think part of the problems, that in companies where there are many different departments, the departments can be operating against one another. As if the working day is one big competition. But the thing is, all departments have the same goal. They are there to serve a customer. But nobody seems to see that in large companies, its all competition between different departments. Which could be good, in some ways, like competition in targets and things. But sometimes, people refuse to help people from other departments. And that can be anyone from general associates, up to department managers. It is a really awful way to work, and the bad attitude to people ‘outwith your team’, can also be applied outwith work. People hate those who come from different backgrounds, believe different things or look different to them.

By making people feel small and insignificant, it can make people feel taller and more powerful in comparison. It happens everywhere in life, really. The truth is, that if someone is doing something, who is anyone to tear them down. I got up today and I was sore, puffy and struggling to catch my breath, I went into work. Something I am glad I did, something I did because of willpower, because I don’t want to beaten. But when I used so much energy, just being able to function, I had nothing left for when I encountered a problematic person. But maybe being made to feel insignificant isn’t my problem, it’s the problem of the manager who feels he is better than me. I know, after thinking about it, that I have changed a lot over the years for me to even think about going into work today. I have a motivation that I never had, one that I had lost when I started getting problems with depression.

I am sitting here in a very different mood to what I was in when I started writing this blog. I was feeling very sorry for myself, because I feel like crap, physically. But, the more I rambled on, the less sorry for myself I felt. I feel like I have achieved something today, even if it was just a few hours at work. Though that might be helped by the fact that I am out of work, and don’t have to see that manager when I am feeling so bad. I guess, it is looking for your successes, rather than focusing on what others see as failures.

Working Life

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I always remember being told when I was younger that it was ‘better to work to live, rather than live to work’. As if to say that a job isn’t the ‘be all and end all’. And that working is just one small part of our lives. 

But in reality, I have never found it so straight forward. 

That job which takes up a ‘small part of our lives’ actually takes up a lot of hour time. In fact other than sleeping, I would say that work is what people spend most of their time doing. But that job is only there so that we can afford the life we want. Because you spend so much time at work, it is essential that you should find joy from it, or at least part of it. Whether it’s the actual job you do or the people you work with that makes you get up in the morning, it’s important that there is something. It helps work become more bearable. 

Everyone has had that one job they hated. Where there was no joy, and work seemed to be all that you could focus on. Sometimes it happens, whether it a crappy medial job, or your dream job.  Where work becomes stressful and your focus seems to be on what is making you stressed. And that makes things seem so much work. It’s times like this, that you need a bit of scope. You need to take a step back, and realise that work isn’t everything. Your life is not just work. And if it is, maybe you need to invest some time in you. Go out for a movie, or have a pamper session. Make you feel special.

For a long time, in a previous job, all I worried about was my work. It wasn’t that my job was hard, I just got real anxiety about it. And it brought me so far down, and at that point it seemed everything in my life was about work. I couldn’t switch off at the end of the day, and that made me so stressed. I work somewhere else now, and my attitude is so different. I work there, so that I can go out with friends and buy what I want. I finish work for the weekend, and I can just relax for a few days. And I am so much more relaxed and happy. 

Whether you love or hate your job, you have to be able to ‘switch off’ when you aren’t working. If you can’t relax a little, work could become a bigger issue than it really is. The most important thing to remember is to look after you. Make sure you see the benifits of all your hard work. Because you deserve it.

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**Sorry this is a ramble, again. I am still not 100%. I haven’t been sleeping and have an awful cough. Here’s hoping it goes away soon**

Hard Done By

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes people get different opportunities to you. Be it at work or school, if someone gets to do something you’ve had your eye on, it can be hard to accept. It can sometimes feel like you are getting overlooked and certain people are being favoured. We all know the type of person who sucks up to teachers and managers with an aim to get what they want. The people who act best pals with those higher than them, because they think it gives them opportunities. 

I have been thinking about this recently, most because I feel overlooked at work. And when I know I am working hard, it can be difficult to acknowledge that I am not good enough for something. It seems to make it even harder to acknowledge when someone else seems to get everything I am looking for. It just makes me feel sorry for myself, because I am not getting the opertunity to do what I want. And it seems to make work a drag, as I feel under appreciated. And this person, getting what I want, doesn’t seem to be doing anything different to me. So I assume it has to be favouritism that has got this person to where they are. A sense that most people will feel at some time of their lives, usually where there is competition for roles. 

I was working away one day, and was thinking about ‘favouritism’ at work. It is highly likely that it is not a thing that is actually happening, just something in my mind. Because I feel I am working hard I feel I deserve recognition. It’s almost as if someone is getting to do what I want, there must be a reason for it. It’s like my brain won’t accept that I am not suited to a role or that someone else may be better at it than me. I always seem to take things too personal, and think it’s just because a person is friendly with a manager.

This makes me feel guilty, because I don’t want to feel against someone who is just doing their job well. Maybe all I need to do is change the goals I see in front of me. If I can’t get what I want, I should change what I wan to something more achievable for me. And I guess that’s my advice for anyone who ever finds themselves in that situation. You spend a large portion of your life in school or work, and it is a lot of time if you spend your time feeling sorry for yourself because of what others are doing.