From a poly website
Made me stop and think, although I’m not sure about taking advice from a therapist who name-drops.
I remember one night, after Atlas was published, she [Ayn Rand] was sitting on the sofa, crying, protesting the state of the world and her place in it, and then she said how much she would hate for John Galt to see her this way, how much she would hate for him to see her miserable or in tears. I said, “Why? Wasn’t this part of the battle? Wasn’t feeling like hell and then picking yourself up and carrying on part of what made the struggle heroic? What was there to be ashamed of? Why did one have to pretend that there were never moments of utter despair? Wasn’t the challenge to experience them, own them, admit them, without denial or pretense ‹ and then go on fighting?” I said we should be proudly willing to let people see us in our darkest moments because in the end it was not going to be our darkest moments that would define us.
– Nathaniel Branden
Crash
Been two and a half weeks since they sacked me, and two weeks since they maybe-unsacked me.
Maybe-unsacking me was a good move in terms of keeping a useful employee around (if you’re paying someone you want them to work, even if they suck at it). I definitely wouldn’t have been able to work out my notice in my fully-sacked status.
Being maybe-sacked has been unsurprisingly confusing. The first week I entertained giddy ideas that I would start the new project, be amazing at it and find a place within the company where I was meant to be. The second week the metronome swung the other way. I started applying for jobs, regained my confidence and was finally able to say ‘fuck you’ and mean it.
Neither situation has been particularly pleasant, but there’s been optimism undercutting both. I either stay and do something awesome, or I leave and do something even better.
Then yesterday I crashed. Got a bit of a head cold anyway, so been shivering and run-down, and this morning I just couldn’t do it. Every time I tried to make myself go to work I felt nauseous and started to cry. In the end I called in sick. That way I managed to get enough of a grip on myself to stop crying, but I’m still shaking and scared.
I’m not sure where I go from here. I can’t be off-sick every day until mid-August. If I can make it through to Friday I have two weeks in the UK where I can forget about it (although that’s two weeks not spent job hunting), but I still need to work this week.
I am hoping that maybe I can get further with the job hunt today and that will give me enough confidence to go back into work tomorrow, but there’s no fight left in me right now. I am just small and scared and sick.
Safe, sane and consensual
Cos nothing completes a complicated working week like a spot of non-consensual sex.
The plot coagulates and curdles slightly
Wednesday afternoon – got sacked. Wednesday evening – sought solace in alcohol. Thursday – talked it through with my boss (while trying not to puke or faint, see Wednesday evening). Went into a weird grieving phase while trying to come to terms with this unpleasant but unchangeable situation. Friday afternoon – got offered a job dong something else at the company.
What. The. Fuck?
Constructive dismissal
So it seems I’ve been sacked.
Except they’re not calling it that. The boss had a chat with me and suggested I wasn’t in the right company and perhaps I’d like to hand my notice in. I’m fairly certain I don’t have a choice though.
Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary-Jane
Life without drugs… I haven’t missed things like pills or psychedelics because I took them so rarely.
At least I don’t seem to have insomnia anymore
Ack, sleep gone very weird. Only had one proper lucid dream in the past four months but last week I had an odd two days of something like anti-lucid dreaming – knowing I was awake (sensing the bed, hearing the room around me) but not being able to control the free-flow of my thoughts, resulting in something very dreamlike.
Turning Japanese
I am classically Freudian when it comes to masturbation. I started doing it aged four, and I haven’t stopped yet.
Be the change… yada, yada… Ghandi… yawn
Life has been disrupted by work training and pitches recently, adding to the displaced feeling.
Yesterday, besides getting some thoughts on paper, for the first time in three weeks I was able to:
• Get up and do weights
• Have porridge instead of hot dogs for breakfast! (At least the training included food)
• Go out and get fresh fruit and salad for lunch
• Leave work by 7pm
• Catch up on emails
• Have a healthy dinner
I also drank more than half a bottle of wine, which usually guarantees I’ll feel depressed the next morning. Yet today I woke up without the dread, fretfulness or sinking feeling that have grown to herald in each new day.
Positive mental attitude, self-fulfilling prophesy, extra vitamins? I don’t know, but it feels good.
Displaced
I’m having trouble wrapping words around my thoughts, which means I’m not sure I understand what I feel.
In simple terms, it’s half homesickness, half performance anxiety. The more I pull at those ideas though, the more they unravel.
Every expatriate I know says that months three to six are pretty hard. Quite a few of them talked about randomly bursting into tears. I haven’t been doing that, but I did sob all the way through The Book Thief, which is perhaps equivalent.
I haven’t been feeling depressed or manic, or any of the things I know how to identify. Just bemused resignation. “This is my life now.”
I am beset by overly romantic memories of London and the occasional, “Why would I give that up?” but I still want to know the world, even if doing so takes me away from people and places I love.
So, pretty confused on that front.
But come what may, we’re here until March. And fuck knows what the next 10 months will bring. When I think of my first six months out of uni, or the first six months in my last job, it’s hard to believe those times segued into the ones that followed, so different were they.
I am impatient though, even if I am better equipped to deal with change (or waiting for change) than I have been before.
Work has been a strange merry-go-round these past months. In brief, got job, hated job, temporarily lost mind, got new job, got counter-offer from old job, moved from Health to Creative.
This is perfect because it’s a great agency and ‘proper’ creative is what I really, really want to be doing.
But it is terrifying because it’s a great agency and ‘proper’ creative is what I really, really want to be doing.
What if I’m no good? I have more than two years’ experience, so I am expected to know my stuff, but I came from a small agency that didn’t focus much on teaching so I don’t feel like I measure up to the creatives here.
I know the whole point is that I’ll learn and get better, but now I have the opportunity I’ve been waiting for, I’m scared of finding out that I’m not as good in real life as I’ve imagined being.
It’s another part of growing up I guess. Watching our imagined lives stumble and get left behind as we embrace the median.
I haven’t accepted an imaginary Nobel prize since I was 17. Maybe I’ll be ok.
