Cutting my Lifeline

I had my Lifeline session after work on Friday. After a busy week during which I'd failed to look after myself adequately, it was the last thing I wanted to do. In the session I said I was stressed with having far too much on my plate, and was told I should make a list and drop one or two items from it. I made this list (in my head) and there was a certain irony when I realised what I needed to cross off it. Lifeline. My stress levels would drop enormously if I didn't have to think about that. Last Friday I was told to attend an extra session on Tuesday to get up to speed (I'm slower to pick up concepts than the others in my group) and that was the last straw. Saturday's session lasts all day. I'm also supposed to do various homeworks and assignments. There just aren't enough hours in the week.

Lifeline is important; people's lives are at stake. Either you do the course properly or not at all. If I carry on with it I know only be doing it half-arsed. The other problem is that you have to deal with quite strong feelings. At the moment I don't have strong feelings. It's a real shame to have to give up at this stage, particularly as the course is so well run, but for my own sanity I have little choice.

I should mention that it did feel good to be working again, but I felt snowed under with all that other stuff that I'd really only taken on under the assumption that I'd remain unemployed. I'll have at least one more week in the job.

Yesterday we had the monthly autism get-together. Unlike last month, I was able to enjoy it this time. The topic for the initial discussion was energy-saving and sustainability. Some people spoke quite passionately and at length on this subject. I had my own views, but as someone who lives by himself and drives most places, I'm not sure how valid they were. At least I've been catching the ferry to work.

Mum has been up here on her 24-hour flying visit. It's been good to see her, though it's a shame the weather has forced us to stay inside most of the time. Mum spent some time last night picking out jobs for me on Seek. They nearly all had the word "analyst" in the job title. I find it hard to look at that word any more without thinking "anal". I feigned enthusiasm for the jobs (badly) and even applied for two of them.

What a day

Yesterday lunchtime the phone rang. It was Mum. Again. She rarely has any news, and neither do I, but that doesn't stop her ringing me. Only yesterday there was news. I hadn't seen the national news, so was totally unaware that a severe earthquake had struck Canterbury in the early hours of the morning. Dad somehow slept through virtually the whole thing, while I'm a bit envious of my brother for experiencing his first quake. I'm amazed that nobody died. That there was no loss of life was due to the timing of the quake, structural improvements made to buildings over the years, and simply good fortune. News of the earthquake somewhat overshadowed the other disaster to hit the South Island yesterday. Nine people were killed when their skydiving plane crashed at Fox Glacier; four of them were tourists including a 24-year-old Englishman. Reports of what actually happened there seem sketchy; there will surely be more to come. September 4th 2010 will live long in the memory for many people.

Lifeline on Friday night was a much more pleasant experience and I'll be carrying on with the course for the time being at least. I have an assignment to hand in on Friday; I'll make a start on that tomorrow. I've also made an appointment to see WINZ at midday and will be catching up with Andy in the afternoon. Then in the evening I'll have my Italian class.

My maths lesson on Wednesday was a definite change in pace from some of my previous ones. I tutored a 13-year-old boy from Browns Bay who came from a family very unlike what I described in my last blog post. I proceeded to give a lesson on fractions, or try to. I asked him what a half plus a third was, but he was all at sea. In my next lesson I'll have to get right back to the basics of what a fraction is - I've printed out a series of factsheets from the BBC website. Judging by the hour I spent with him, I'd say he was five years behind in maths. I really want to help him. As we cover fractions I'll try and get him to learn his times tables at the same time.

I heard nothing more about that job, so my chances must surely have dropped from 25% to under 10%.

It's all your fault

Last weekend wasn't an easy one for me. The Lifeline training took up two full days and when I got back home on Sunday I was so mentally drained that I headed straight for the wine and the badugi tables to relax. Yes I know, online gambling as relaxation. Over the weekend we had to share a lot of personal information amongst our group; this made me feel quite uncomfortable. I was perhaps a bit naive when I applied for the course. I think I'll take Richard's advice and attend this Friday's session before deciding whether or not to continue. It's not just that the course takes me well outside my comfort zone (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), it's also a big commitment. While there are so many aspects of my life that need sorting out, I'm not sure I'm ready to commit. If I did somehow see the course out to its conclusion, I think I'd do fine on the phones (I'm much, much better in a one-on-one situation than in a group).

I found out yesterday that I'm competing against an internal candidate for that job. He or she is being interviewed about now, and I'll know the outcome later in the week. The internal applicant would logically be the favourite here; it's even possible that by interviewing me they're simply going through the motions to make it look like the process was open and above board, when in fact this person had been earmarked for the job from the start. Assuming it's just a two-horse race, I'd put my chances at 25% (the other person at 60%, with a 15% chance that they don't take either of us).

Over the last two weeks I've been giving out maths tuition and have made some useful cash. I'm not sure how helpful I've really been. I'm rusty to say the least; I haven't had to solve a quadratic equation since some time last century. Both the girls I've "helped" so far are already at a reasonable standard. I'm not sure they need a maths tutor. But their parents can afford one (their Remuera properties must be worth a fortune) so they get one. There's a clear "overclass" here. Sometimes you hear talk of a classless or egalitarian society, but the inequalities are as great as they've ever been. In fact I think this pseudo-equality is largely to blame for the increased prevalence of depression. A century ago people knew their place; for most people their upbringing precluded the possibility of fortune and fame. Now, according to this myth of equality, anybody can achieve anything, and if you're not achieving, guess what? It's all your fault. It's no use blaming your upbringing because having the right parents or going to the right school doesn't matter any more. Yeah right. There's this constant pressure on us all to achieve, win, succeed, but by definition not all of us can; since underachievement is now officially all your fault, it's no wonder so many of us are depressed.

Nothingness

In the last few days I've felt partly strange, partly stupid, but mostly I've felt nothing at all. Yesterday, and so far today, I've just wanted to crawl into a hole.

On Thursday I saw a recruitment agency in town. I drove up and down Symonds Street several times looking for somewhere to park. When I did find a park, miles away, I was past caring. I arrived at the agency (located on the twelfth floor of a building that clearly didn't have twelve floors) half an hour late. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd been two hours late or even if I hadn't turned up at all; it was obvious they had no work for me. That evening Richard came round for dinner. I made some pasta dish - I guess you could call it a carbonara - and an apple crumble. We sat around talking for a while. It was good to see him.

On Friday I had that job interview I mentioned briefly last time. It was for a data analyst role for a large non-profit organisation. I couldn't motivate myself for the interview at all. I'd got my suit dry-cleaned and I'd polished my shoes but I was totally unprepared for any questions that might be thrown my way. Keen not to repeat my error of the previous day, I arrived at the interview in Penrose with more than an hour to spare. I tried to read the extensive job-description bumph as last-minute preparation, but none of it was going in. I saw the word "parameters" and stared vacantly at it. It was a word I'd encountered several times in my last job. Sometimes it was used as a poncy word for "limits", as in "this is outside our business parameters", and sometimes it meant "variables". I didn't know which definition was being used in the job description and I didn't care. The interview started OK I guess but I fell apart in the middle; when I was asked what I knew about the role I was hopelessly tongue-tied and confused. I redeemed myself slightly towards the end, but surely not enough that they would want to see me again. I was kicking myself because it looked like the sort of place I wouldn't mind working in. It came as a surprise, therefore, when later that afternoon I was told I'd be having a second interview (of a possible three) on Thursday. I think I was lucky that my interviewer was an HR person - although she was a good interviewer she wasn't all that clued up about the ins and outs of the role.

Also on Friday I got confirmation that I'd been accepted on to the Lifeline course. I suppose this is good news. Right now there is no such thing as good or bad news.

Yesterday I attended the monthly autism group. Unlike in previous months, I didn't enjoy the session one bit and was glad to get out of there. Too many people, too much noise. People often spoke very passionately about a particular subject, as you might expect, whereas I didn't give a damn about anything. I had to turn the radio off in the car on the way home; any noise had become too much for me.

This afternoon I really had to force myself to play tennis. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I'm glad I did it even if some of my play was atrocious. The exercise lifted my mood to an almost bearable level. After tennis I rang Julie who gave me a very useful piece of advice. I've tried to fill my calendar with stuff (Italian, French, looking for jobs, tennis, the autism group, poker, making puzzles, Lifeline, maths tuition, mental health groups and so on) but I've been all over the place, unable to give any one of these things its full attention. She said it's time I ditched a couple of them.

Latest news I (can't think of a proper title)

Today would have been Emma's 29th birthday. Richard is spending the weekend with her family in Kaitaia. It will be a sad time for them all, obviously, but also an opportunity to remember an amazing person.

Richard and I had quite a long chat on the phone yesterday. We're now seriously considering the possibility of flatting together. Since we get on well, and he has too many people in his living arrangement while I have too few, it would make logical sense. We might have to wait until we get our work situations sorted, whenever that happens. Richard decided that the BNZ job wasn't for him; from what I know of him, and given how I would feel in that environment, I'm almost certain he made the right decision.

When I told my counsellor that I was thinking of working in mental health, she suggested that I become a volunteer counsellor for Lifeline. They recruit a new bunch of volunteers every six months, and the deadline to apply for the latest course happened to be only a couple of days away. I filled in their application form, giving various gory details of my experiences with depression and isolation, and had to physically hand the form in at their office in Greenlane to avoid missing the deadline. At 3pm yesterday I got a surprise phone call from one of the Lifeline managers; I would have my interview that evening. Although the interview would only last twenty minutes, for some reason I had to be there all evening, so thinking I might be hanging around for hours, I took a book with me.

My book remained well and truly unopened throughout what was an intense evening. I was rarely in my comfort zone, not that my comfort zone is particularly large. The gender imbalance was as I had expected; us men were outnumbered five to one. We were split into groups and did a variety of team activities. The first of these involved building a structure together using plastic straws without talking. I made a huge effort to participate fully in all the activities, knowing that if I didn't I'd have no chance of being accepted on the course. To my surprise there were considerably more applicants than places; I guessed about half of us would miss out. I was pretty sure the woman in my group who looked like she was at a PWC interview from the way she dressed would be fine. My interview came right at the end of the evening (this was purely by chance) and it wasn't easy. "You've got no job, no family and very few friends, and now you want to help other people? You must be joking! Sort your own mess out first." Well my two interviewers didn't actually say this but some of their comments almost implied it. "We admire your frankness on your application form, but you seem rather fragile." I actually think I coped with the interview, and the whole evening, as well as I possibly could, but I couldn't help feeling they wanted someone a bit more (let's face it) normal than myself. I'll have to wait and see.