Problems

Something isn’t right at the moment, and I simply do not know how to change it.

I’m literally typing this at the desk of my new job; a secondment position with the Safeguarding Adults team, a job given to me for a few months to escape the extremities of an inpatient ward environment. It’s for a few months, but I’m not even an hour in to my second day yet and I’m bored witless. Hence I’m hiding in the corner writing this.

You see, I’ve had a lot of time off recently. I’ve been having stages of quite extreme sadness at where my life is at the moment and it’s time to admit that I may be struggling again, with the day to day working life and how it just seems to drag on without much excitement happening. The last few weeks especially, I’ve started to think how there must be more to life than this…

For the last 7 months, I’ve been on Keats Ward, an acute inpatient psychiatric ward. Being the admin guy is monotonous and waking up in the morning for another 8 hours of monotony wears you down eventually. I find it staggering how people can do the same office job for years on end. Some call it dedication, but I call it a lack of fight. I need excitement. I need to be kept busy. And despite my vested interest in mental health, the actual physical job I am doing is boring. It’s getting me down.

So I moved. I met with my manager to discuss why I was off so much, and she decided herself really that the ward environment wasn’t helping me. It’s not the environment as such, but the job itself, but I didn’t say that. So I went along with it, agreeing to this secondment position.

“Who knows? It may be different?”

I tried to be enthusiastic about it, but it is simply the same here. If not worse. It’s got nothing to do with safeguarding at all, as it’s basically shifting details of alerts on to the database and forwarding those details to the correct team. As far as I can tell, (and I have asked this morning), that is the job. That is it. How can anyone survive that? I thought at least I’d get to know a bit about the process, typing up reports and finding out how decisions are made etcetera, but no. Far from it.

So now I’m stuck. Unless I convince my manager to scrap this, telling the people who are covering me at Keats that it’s scrapped, I’m stuck here. First, I’ve got to pluck up the courage to tell them in the first place, knowing I’ve been far from the ideal employee in recent months. But even if I do make it back to Keats, (for it is a little bit more interesting), the monotony of it all will continue to beat me down.

I spent a lot of last night thinking, albeit on the verge of a meltdown as I dreaded what today would bring. I thought about what I could change and what I’ve tried already. I am one of those people who simply does not know what to do with their lives, (past the delusions of grandeur about being a successful author anyway), but where could I possibly go from here? I might have the potential to write a novel, but it’s not exactly something you can do ad-hoc. Plus, I know the road towards being a novelist is a long, long road with potentially no reward. And that doesn’t pay the electric bill.

So, thinking about the jobs I’ve had in the past…

Any sort of responsibility, I’ve either caved under the pressure of, or abused altogether. Flexible hours play havoc with my sleep, which I am learning this morning is vital to any sort of happiness for me. Any job that doesn’t fall into that category is arduous and makes me feel useless.

I’m starting to think it’s me being precious. But why do something if it doesn’t make you happy? There has to be something out there…

Other options include university, and we all know what happened last time. I do think I’d be able to deal with the whole thing better now, but there is the added weight of currently having a place of my own, meaning I would effectively be homeless in non-term time. I have put genuine thought into what course I’d do. Mental health nursing? Something sport based? It matters not, as the practicalities of going back to university remain almost impossible.

I even tried moving to the other side of the world. I won’t be doing that again.

So here I sit, on a rather warm Tuesday morning, trying desperately not to be noticed in the corner. Staring directly ahead at yet another crossroads wondering if it’s all worth it. I’ll be honest; I was on the verge of tears last night as I thought about another long and worthless day. It’s not how one wants to live their life, is it?

I'm Annoyed

Something quite concerning is happening and I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

I'd like to think that I'm quite a mild mannered, understanding guy. I'd also like to think that didn't sound too big-headed of me, but it probably was. I've had my moments of frustration or standing up for what I believe in, but this past couple of weeks have provided constant moments of pure and utter annoyance.

I'm annoyed. And I'm not just annoyed at the same thing everyone else is annoyed about. Like the Labour leadership contest or train strikes or everything that comes out of the mouth of Donald Trump. I'm not just annoyed at one thing; I'm annoyed at EVERYTHING. Sometimes it's mild annoyance over something completely trivial, but sometimes I'm genuinely pissed off at something I wouldn't have been pissed off at before. Without trying to sound like a lyric from a West End musical, something has changed within me and something has got to change.

I just don't know how.

I feel I should offer some examples. First, the ones that personally affect me.

I'm not going to stray into the world of work, for obvious reasons, but there's enough reasons to be annoyed to fill a whole book there. To be honest, that's probably the origin of my annoyance streak but... You know... I'd get fired.

Being a cricket captain is providing it's own challenges as everyone has seemingly given up now there's nothing to play for, not knowing the potential for future ramifications. I'm then being pressured into picking junior players for senior games, with parents pressuring me into picking their child over someone else's. They all seem to forget that I AM the captain, and I will pick who I WANT to be in MY SIDE. I feel odd saying "my side", as if I own it, but if they want me to run it, then they can put up or shut up. Or find someone else, which from next season, they'll have to because I'm not doing it.

This past week, I have been the contact point for a cricket school of excellence in India who were going to play a couple of games at our club. As the week progressed, and the games got closer, it was obvious that they were not going to make it in time because of visa issues. The guy who runs the school of excellence was giving me "tentative" flight times, and "reassurances" that it would be sorted, but no. I was annoyed when it was obvious it wouldn't happen and they tried to string it along so I told him the deal was off. I have no patience at the moment for this. Then I got told off for not telling people it was off before I even knew it was off myself.

That annoyed me a lot.

I'm currently annoyed at how slow my phone is taking to charge because I'm sure it's quicker than this usually.

Then the stuff that affects me, but not directly. Like people who want politicians to be "authentic" and "attached" and "like us" and then get annoyed when Jeremy Corbyn sits on the floor of a train because there's no seats.

People who want to know if they can claim off a dead guy's insurance after he drove his car off a multi-storey car park and "disrupted my day making me miss meetings". I mean... What the actual fuck? What has got into people's heads?

I'm annoyed at the complete lack of understanding when it comes to mental health, both in general and closer to home, as if it's a complete whirlwind to get your head around. Why don't people pick up a book?

Then we get on to the more trivial stuff, and this is where the fun starts.

Guys who cry out for attention by posting shirtless selfies with the caption about "how much the world around them is so beautiful" as they pull off the standard arm-behind-head pose for the camera. Before doing exactly the same two hours later. I don't mind a shirtless selfie itself, if you don't cover it up with a load of bullshit. Take a shirtless selfie and caption it with, "Shameless selfie" instead of utter crap to cover up your thirst for attention.

People on Twitter who are "offended", (which is a whole other minefield by the way*) when you unfollow them. A complete stranger I (used to) follow messaged me a while back asking me why I unfollowed him. Maybe if he hadn't have shared the video of people dying on the streets of Nice, I'd have stuck with him. More attention seeking.

I even found myself getting mildly annoyed at how Conor Maynard was holding his microphone as he advertised the V Festival on a Channel 5 ad break earlier. What the hell is that about?

So yeah. That was a little therapeutic but I need to find a way of calming down before my head explodes here. I think in general, I'm just frustrated with how life works as an adult. A man the same age as me inherited a £9billion estate from his Father, the late Duke of Westminster the other day while I walked the ten-minute journey home from work earlier, past three people begging for change. How is that fair?

One other thing, that's possibly linked. I've actually found myself crying at the Olympics. Now, I'm not much of a crier myself. I don't really understand how people can cry at movies and TV shows, but this past week or so I've cried TWICE. When the two lads won gold in the diving, Mears & Laugher, I cried. And when Max Whitlock won an unexpected gymnastics gold, I cried as well. Maybe it was the realisation that none of them will become my boyfriend, who knows. But they were magic moments.

I used to be pretty good at leaving things alone. Let it be, and it'll pass. I definitely need to consciously think about that again, otherwise I'll drive myself mad.

*Check out this video from comedian Steve Hughes about being "offended" and tell me you don't agree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs