My head is not right (Old Blog)

All this will become clear

I haven't actually died, but I continue to get weirder and weirder.  My inner life is a very interesting place to be right now.

Quick roundup of news before we get down to business:

Work is little better, but progress is being made, slowly but surely, and it looks like the whole place is going down the toilet anyway, so my concerns of having a bright career future at such a fine organisation are dwindling.  My new manager is a cowbag.  My old manager is properly wonderful.  My emails are evil.

A friend who goes by the name of Joanna came to visit.  Good chats, potable beers and general positivity all round.

Christmas looms.  I mostly have all the presents.  It should be a good one.

Now, down to business.  This is a long one, and it ends up in a very troubling place.  It was quite hard to write all this, but it's even harder trying to live with it.  Bear with me if you can, but this post carries a severe Weirdness Warning.  Credit should go to my therapist, who is really fucking good, but the results of his inquiries are pretty much as follows:

My head is not right...

That's the thing (Old Blog)

Some more information about what's currently going on with me:

I've been signed off work sick for two weeks, with the official diagnosis of 'anxiety with depression'.  I was surprised at how easy it was, but then, that's the thing.

Having the time off is brilliant, as I'm not having to put up any fronts or seem like I'm coping with anything.  That's something I've been doing for years, and getting dressed and going to work is one way that I can 'pass' as a functioning adult.  Now that I don't have to do that, I can simply deal with how I actually feel on a daily basis, which is:  anxious, but then, that's the thing.

I've also had time and space to talk to Furiosa about what's going on with me.  She's also been signed off work for a couple of weeks, due to work stress and the stress of the Chap starting school.  This has been brewing for 6 years now (he'll be 5 in January, that's a lot of brewing).  Her symptoms were panic, anxiety, hyperventilation and The Fear that came out of nowhere to paralyse her and screw up her morning.  It was when she was telling me about it that I realised that what she was describing was reasonably normal for me, and that's the thing.

The thing is, my normal is messed up.  My baseline level of background anxiety is mild to moderate.  Just existing on this planet is enough to make me nervous, and that's before you start adding in things like money, work, hoovering, talking to other people and having sex.  Furiosa's symptoms are fairly regular occurences for me when I'm at work, and have been for several years.  I've been existing at work-stress levels that can get you signed off sick for several years, and they've become normal for me.  I've normalised anxiety with depression.

Looking back to try and find out how I got this way, when it started and how it developed, I couldn't.  I can't think of a single time in my childhood, in my teens, or as an adult when I've actually felt relaxed.  Not at home, not at school, not on any holidays.  I've always been anxious about something, and I've never found anything that can make that go away.

"But Darling, your sexual fantasies make it all go away, don't we?"

But they don't, not really.  They keep it at bay for a time, they offer me a space where my anxieties simply aren't felt any more, they throw a towel over the poison parrot's cage.  But, like an alcoholic sobering up, which is a massively barbed analogy for me to draw, my anxieties are all still there in the morning, with an added layer of guilt on top, ready to be evaded all over again.

So, plan:  time off work, good, therapy, good, pills to quell my baseline anxiety, good, staying my version of sober, good, finding another outlet for my submissiveness, very very necessary.

This blog?  Not sure yet.

ȹ

Hiatus (Old Blog)

So anyways, I've been signed off work for the next couple of weeks.  Very very complicated issues involving work life, home life and family life, all three of which have had the bottom fall out in the past month or so.

It's all here on the blog, it's what the blog was supposed to be dealing with.  The blog wasn't dealing with it.

This will need some time away to sort out.  Patience is a card game.  It's at this point that the blog could take a dog-leg into something much more interesting, or it could stop altogether.  It's hard to say at the minute, but this minute is where I need to be right now.

Who knows.

ȹ

Normal service (Old Blog)

It looks like I've disappeared.  Work is back in full swing, and there are issues going on.  The labels for this post should allow you to triangulate (septangulate?) what's going on. I'll post more about it when I have the time, but for the moment I need to focus my attentions away from self-absorption and cross-addiction and onto things that actually matter.

Normal service might resume.

ȹ

And things are going... well... (Old Blog)

OMG, that's, like, so relatable...
Sigh...

Don't look now, but I've had a really good week at work.

Monday was wading through emails and getting little done.  Tuesday was mostly panic and hyperventilation (that's a coping strategy, right?).  Wednesday I had a massive headache and today was finally productive.  I hit my stride at 3pm this afternoon and contacted 25 prospective students in about 2 hours about the courses they might want to do.

And I think I've sussed the trick.  More details after the break.

Domestic Goddess (Old Blog)

Yep, that's actually me.  I need an apron.

It's been an interesting week.

I've been at home mostly, having taken the week off work in order to make sure that my son was okay at his new school.  See my post here for full details.  He was completely fine.  Not a single shit was given that day.

Furiosa less so, but that's a story for another time.

As for me, I had 3 hours alone in the house every morning and a hankering for taking responsibility for as much household management as I could...  manage...  That's some pretty rubbish writing right there.

Interested in what I got up to for three hours each morning?  Then read on!

Fingers crossed (Old Blog)

This is my greatest fear

Well, it had to happen sooner or later, and now is as good a time as any to take a voyage around my father.

TL;DR:  My father is one of my triggers, and one of the main reasons that I'm so panicked by my own addictive behaviours.  He's also the reason Furiosa and I are so intimately familiar with our own psychologies (and each other's), and also why we're both so literate in self-reflection and therapeutic verbalisation.

My father's addiction is alcohol, and for the past 30 years I've watched him slowly slide from functional human being into almost complete obsolescence.  I have no idea how he's even alive, and this week it looks like he's beginning to gear up for one of his trademark stunts.

He's been such a dick about not having his bank card that the decision has been taken to let him have it back, knowing full well that he'll be drunk for several weeks, possibly months, with worsening health problems, trips and falls which will have him in and out of the Sad Old Man ward at the hospital.  I have my fingers crossed that this time round it will be different, so that's where the post title comes from.  I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the whole thing, but be warned:  you might be more than a little surprised by the time I'm done.

So, let's take some time to explore how I'm currently feeling about my alcoholic father, shall we?

Work avoidance begins in earnest (Old Blog)

Yes, I have chosen the shittest picture I can find.
It's a supposed to be a desktop background, but who the hell
runs on 1024x768 any more?  Plus, I found it on Angelfire.
Remember Angelfire?

A quick post to demonstrate how easy it is to fall prey to my addiction.  UPDATE:  I've discovered something about what my addictive behaviours are doing.  Read on for more information.

I had a lovely weekend.  It started with babysitting for my neice and nephew, two adorable 5-month-old twins.  I love babies, and I love these babies.

Then followed 3 days of DIY around the house, pulling up carpets, buying rugs and painting dining room furniture.  Hard work, but good times with my family.

No fantasy stuff for a good 4 days.  Built up some momentum with real life, in the hope that some of it would carry over into work this morning.

I've managed about an hour's work before starting to drift off into work-avoidance.  I realise that this blog counts as work-avoidance, but I feel as if I'm on the edge of a precipice.  Perhaps if I blog about it, that would be sort of like peering over the edge, then I'll be able to get on with my day.  Let's find out!

Inferiority complex (Old Blog)

I think it's fairly easy to spot my inferiority complex.  It's all over this blog and all over my psychology.  It's worth bringing up at this point because I've been dancing round a crucial factor in my fantasy creations, and exploring this factor could be a very useful tool in keeping my fantasies from interfering with my reality.

My inferiority complex probably comes from a range of different places, and serves mostly to frustrate me and those around me.  It's a big thing in my life, and it's part and parcel of my addictive behaviours and the cycles and spirals that I get myself into.  Let's have a look, shall we?

I think it might be working (Old Blog)

I feel so cheap

I think this blog might actually be working.

It still takes up my time, and I count it as one of my projects that distracts me from my work and my family life, but I think I may be having some success at keeping a lid on things.

I've had two flare-ups over the past week, here and here, and while the second one did involve a textbook Flickr rabbit-hole, my temporary obsession pretty much ended with my funky little ligature that I've started to use to sign off.  I like ligatures.

Having a place to vent, and I do think that vent is the right word for what I'm doing, is proving useful.  Also, I've found a couple of blogs by people who are in much the same position, that of trying to find a useful and practical way of incorporating their submission, both sexual and non-sexual, into their daily lives.  I'll be linking to a few useful posts as soon as the person gets back to me.  It's always polite to ask, and as you will hopefully see, asking nicely is one of the ways that submission can be expressed.  Stay tuned.

But yes, this morning I've woken up well-rested, well-vented and reasonably able to get on and do some actual work, which is what I'm supposed to actually do.  I'll post more about the thinking behind it at a later stage, when I have more time.  Check it out, I just put off a project until I have more time.  That hardly ever happens.

Time to celebrate with a cup of tea...

Damn...

ȹ

My Women Thing (Old Blog)

I think it's fairly safe to say that I have a thing for women.

This particular post has been a long time in the making.  About a week, on and off, with large chunks of earlier drafts saved for later.  Helen Mirren and Victoria Coren will have to wait.  Fourth and final draft as follows.

The Conundrum (Old Blog)

There is a conundrum faced by anyone whose internal life does not match up with their external reality, and I've concocted this handy graphic to illustrate it.  It's a scale between Real and Not Real, but the arrows between the bits are slightly misleading, as the relationship in every case is bidirectional.

Also, it's worth pointing out my belief that stock photography exists in its own special universe.  It only starts to make sense when viewed in terms of speculative fiction and world-building.  Moving on.