Don't give me that shirt

Today's work day was my worst in a while: my motivation and concentration started off bad and only got worse. I was still some way above head-banging level however.

Mum and Dad came up on Thursday. We met at New World in town; they were chatting with my cousin (the one who got married a year ago) and his wife, having bumped into them. The way I was feeling, my cousin was just about the last person I wanted to see.

On Friday we ate at a surprisingly inexpensive Malaysian restaurant on Courtenay Place. Good value for money. On Saturday we went to the market, then had a drive around the coast to Eastbourne. We were unprepared for such high temperatures as we walked part of the track that leads to Pencarrow lighthouse. Dad took quite a few snaps - he found the big Optimist sailing regatta to be a real goldmine. We stopped for an ice cream on the way home, then had fish and chips from Fish Fins in Newtown (I go there about once a month). That evening we had a game of Scrabble. The luck factor in the two-player game is high enough but with three players it's even bigger. There are three good reasons for that: (a) everyone gets fewer turns; (b) the order in which you play makes a difference - if there's a player who doesn't know (or care) about defence, the player who goes next has an advantage at the expense of the third player; (c) the outcome is more likely to be determined by which player goes out at the end of the game because the point swing is greater, in both absolute and (even more so) relative terms, and who goes out is largely down to luck. Of course when I'm playing with my parents, none of this stuff really matters but I like thinking about it and I can't help that. This time, as it happened, luck was on my side: late in the game I drew both a blank and an S, put down COOLESt for 66, and even though I got stranded with the Q, I won with a score of 217.

All in all, Saturday was a good day. As a family it's nice to enjoy basic things like sunshine, a walk, food and a game. Sunday wasn't so great as Dad and I did our best to fall out with each other. I did the 6.8 km Round the Bays in the morning. It was a good walk (apart from the last bit which I ran) but now I almost wish I hadn't bothered: at work they've been comparing times and photos - especially my ultra-competitive boss - and it feels like I didn't really participate. I often feel that way about things.

Mum just bought me some more bloody shirts. She's always buying me shirts. I've now got embarrassingly many shirts in my wardrobe. Until the weekend about half of them were in a large bag in the spare room, washed but obviously unironed. Mum fished them out and ironed them. When Mum starts ironing, there's no stopping her. Dad then had a go at me for leaving my surplus shirts unironed. It seems ridiculous now, but the way he said it was quite cutting and I took offence. I couldn't understand why he even cared what I did with my shirt mountain, and how he dared criticise me when I've spent many more hours ironing than he ever has. Dad made a few other digs in my direction: he obviously thinks I should be far more interested in interior design.

Luckily our falling-out didn't completely wreck the weekend. Dad lent me another Nick Hornby book - High Fidelity. The first chapter of the book was all about teenage relationships, so I found that quite a hard read, even if it was funny. I'm hoping the rest of the story will be less of an "inadequacy trigger" for me.

Since I last posted, the Blade Runner (Oscar Pistorius) was charged with murdering his girlfriend, while a meteor exploded in Russia injuring 1500 people. Frankly, with news like that, who needs books or films? Real life is plenty dramatic enough.

What's HR?

On Thursday (one of my sick days) I popped over to see Julie in Hataitai. I told her that everything had kicked off at work and that I'd soon be having an HR meeting on Monday. She asked me what HR was. I wished I didn't know what HR was either. In her day it would have been called Personnel I suppose. I wasn't particularly chatty; all I wanted to do was fall asleep.

I went to work yesterday; the meeting (HR manager, head of department and myself) was brought forward to then, so I didn't get much chance to prepare or make a case for myself. I did mention the chronic depression but their reaction was more "so why did you apply for this job?" than "so that must be hard for you." I'll be moved out of my role pretty soon, maybe into something else, maybe into nothing else. They put out an advert for a replacement a fortnight ago. This feels like 2009 all over again but it's actually quite a bit worse.

I had dinner last night at my cousin's place. Friday is their takeaway night so it was Big Macs all round. It was ten years since my previous McDonald's (although I've had a fair few Burger Kings and Wendy's in that time) and now I know why I avoided it. Soggy bread and just not enough food - I'd feel hungrier after a McDonalds than before.

Tomorrow morning Wellington has its Round the Bays run. I put my name down as part of the work team - I thought I should participate in something at work - and I'll still do it tomorrow, even though I'm feeling like crap, but I'll probably just walk it.

I still haven't got over my cold. I've still got a sore throat and I'm coughing up thick chesty gunk in a variety of greens, yellows and browns. My skin complaint isn't going away in a hurry either. It feels like I'm falling apart.

I played my last complimentary games of Countdown today. I had an interesting chat during my game with an Irishman whose show(s) had just been filmed and who would be appearing on TV next month. My last game was against another previous TV contestant. In a mad scramble I got the final numbers game to take the lead for the only time but she then untangled PEAVERING in a very swift three seconds to beat me. Overall I had 15 wins and 10 losses. Two of my wins needed two tie-break rounds, although I did have my fair share of close losses.

Will see how the run/walk/ramble goes tomorrow.

Battling the brain

I did it. It was hard work, perhaps even harder than I predicted, and my time of just under 53 minutes was a full five minutes slower than my 2006 effort. It was probably only because I was dragged along by a heaving mass of humanity that I finished it at all. As you can see if you click on the link, a good chunk of those 53 minutes were spent getting to the start line, and for the first couple of hundred yards you couldn't run even if you wanted to. Plenty of people didn't want to, and walked the whole way - I think they had the right idea. There was one runner with a huge brain attached to his head. I got close to him - close enough to read the slogan on the back of his T-shirt: "I'm joggin' for my noggin" - and I was determined I would beat the brain. But unlike last time I had no sprint finish and the brain powered to the finish line, leaving me for dust.

After the run and some much-needed calorie replenishment, I watched our doubles tennis team win comfortably without me, seven matches to one. I went for a dip in the sea and that was pretty much my weekend over.

Monday at work was uneventful though my legs were aching from the previous day's exertions. I probably wasn't in the best shape to play tennis that night, but really it made little difference. Though I didn't play at all badly, my opponent was tactically very astute and I found his game almost impossible to combat. I lost my singles 6-2 6-3 and the doubles 6-4 6-2. The team we played are top of the league, a position attained by consistency and guile rather than scorching winners.

Everything kicked off yesterday. I used to worry that my boss wasn't speaking to me. Not any more. I now get to meet with her every day! The last few months, when I haven't performed at all, have finally caught up with me. I haven't done anything right at work since heaven knows when, and even in a large company where you can slip under the radar a bit, you can't go on like that for ever. Hopefully these one-on-one meetings, which will involve daily work lists, might bring some much-needed structure to my work - most of the time I don't know whether I'm coming or going - but the fact that I need these meetings at all is an idea of how far things have slipped of late. After yesterday's meeting I was in a daze and couldn't think straight. I couldn't find what drive or directory anything was saved in, and spent the rest of the morning wondering how I was going to get myself out of this mess. I was pleasantly interrupted by a phone call from my dad who was about to hop on a plane to the UK - I wished I could join him. In the afternoon I actually got some work done.

Took ages getting to sleep last night - my mind was racing away - but today I worked my butt off. Got in maybe ten minutes late but stayed an extra hour and didn't take a lunch break. Just popped out for a sushi which I ate at my desk. Since the last time I had sushi, the price had risen from $7.00 to $7.90, a deceptively large increase of 12%. No wait, 14%. Hang on a minute, it's 17%! God, I really am losing it, I thought. I can't even work out a percentage any more. In the end I settled on 14%. This afternoon I was introduced to a new spreadsheet, which was fun in a funny sort of way. You had to change a few cells to make some other cell as close as possible to zero without going under, a bit like blackjack in reverse. It behaved unpredictably, and just when you thought you'd got it, bust! and you'd have to start again. If and when I do this task again I'm sure I'll have forgotten most of it, but I'll still remember the reverse blackjack spreadsheet. When I got home I realised the sushi price hike was in fact 13%. Man I'm going crazy.

Tomorrow I'll be seeing my doctor about possibly getting my medication changed - I've been on citalopram almost non-stop since 2001, though I did increase my dose a couple of years back. I'll also be seeing Andy. He informs me that it's not CBT, but it's very useful all the same. It's great just having someone to talk to because so often I don't.

My mum will be coming up to see me next Wednesday. I'm very much looking forward to that. This place is a complete and utter mess - I'll have to give it a serious clean at the weekend and get all my washing done. I don't think I can face my previous experiences of my mum hanging undies from my phone wire or my CD rack! I should probably try and make some inroads into my piles of unopened mail as well.

Fun run - the world's greatest oxymoron

Another utterly frustrating day at work. I've been a lame duck there for quite some time, but now I'm heading into "dead duck" territory. I sit at my desk with that same sinking feeling. I've got tasks to achieve and deadlines to meet but I don't know where to start. I feel embarrassed and stupid. I wonder what the hell I'm doing there. Wanting to put a fist through my computer monitor I instead gnaw on my pen. I pluck up enough courage to send (or "flick off" as they say here) a couple of emails asking questions that I hope aren't ridiculously basic. I take a phone call about a subject I know something about and for the only time that day I'm able to help somebody. I stare at the screen which is full of bizarre alphanumeric codes. I get distracted by palindromes or combinations that spell things forwards or backwards or in another language. I look at my watch - only five minutes have passed in what seems like half an hour. And so it goes on. Every day is the same.

I've spent hours trying to organise this weekend's tennis, though I won't be playing. That's because I'll be one of the 70,000-odd people doing Round the Bays. It's Auckland's annual fun run, which must be the world's greatest oxymoron. The distance is 8.4 kilometres or a smidgen over five miles. Just like for my two previous attempts (in '05 and '06) I've done no training, so just like it was then, it's bound to be hell.