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?