Struggling again

It was a bad week to have a bad week. We have a roster at work for handling all the email queries and last week it was my turn. It's part of my job I struggle with at the best of times, but when my head is like mush and my feet are shaking it's like you're running through treacle. I tried to keep the emails down to one scrollbar-free page. After work on Wednesday I read my book in the sun (so I couldn't have been that bad - there have been times when I couldn't even do that) before going to the depression meet-up at 6:30. There was a woman in her late thirties who I hadn't seen since before Christmas. What a Christmas she had. She lost her father and broke up with her husband of twelve years, all within a week, and ended up in a psychiatric ward. In comparison my Christmas was an absolute breeze. I had to leave the meet-up at 7:30 to go to the tramping club and sign up for a trip or two. They had a meet-and-greet session; the guy from the autism group was there which was a bugger because the place stank and was too hot and I didn't want to be there any longer than absolutely necessary. A woman gave a shortish slide-show presentation which, as it happened, was hilarious. It was her deadpan delivery. The autism guy and I chatted for ten minutes; we agreed to catch up at my flat on Sunday.

Work has just started doing health checks on its staff and on Thursday I had mine. She checked my blood pressure, cholesterol, height and weight, then asked me a few lifestyle questions to come up with a rather crude measure of my risk of heart disease. I got one black mark just for being male (!) and another for my cholesterol: my reading was 6.14. I eat less dairy products and fried food than I ever used to, but my damn cholesterol is still up there. Someone suggested porridge as a virtually guaranteed cholesterol buster. I like porridge, and have it every day in winter, so maybe I need to make that a permanent fixture in my diet. I wish they'd given me a breakdown of my cholesterol into the large fluffy (good) stuff and small dense (bad) stuff: the previous time they said I had oodles of both.

I had a long chat on the phone on Thursday night, mostly to Mum. She tried to make me feel better: "Other people have problems, you're not alone." Well yeah, I guess. Like the woman who was back at work last week after breaking her arm in early November. She now goes to the depression group. I think her arm was the least of her worries. The woman who sits right next to her turned up to work two weeks ago with a completely new face. Well that's what it looks like. I'm guessing it's Botox.
On Friday (I was feeling a bit better by then) I joined the French society, like the one on the North Shore but bigger. I don't know whether that was a good idea. The more things I do and clubs I join, the less involved I am in any of them, and the more I find myself going through the motions.

For at least the fifth weekend running it's an absolute cracker here in Wellington. This can't last.

No text please, I'm British

My mobile phone is stuffed. Water got into it, and now the writing on the screen comes up upside down, backwards and very faint. I'm not making this up. I had no idea the digital brain of a cell phone was fiendish enough to produce upside-down back-to-front text. If anyone who has my cell phone number is reading this, please don't text me. Not until I've got a new phone anyway. At a push (and if I've got a mirror handy) I might be able to read your text but you won't get a reply.

Luckily I'm not one of those people whose cell phone is a fifth limb. Yesterday at the tennis club someone wanted to know what time it was. Nobody in her vicinity had a watch. I remarked on this, and the consensus was that people don't need watches any more because they've all got phones. Well I disagree. I feel semi-naked without my watch, which my aunt bought me for my 18th birthday. Admittedly I'm obsessive about the passage of time - I always know what time it is: it's one minute since I last looked at my watch - but a "proper" analogue watch gives you a better picture of its passage. Time is a gradual, cyclical process, not a series of digits that clicks over every minute. There are a variety of jewellery shops close to my current work. My favourite analogue watch on show has a dial showing the year. It goes up to 2299 - I might have added a couple more centuries myself - but it's still a nice touch. Unfortunately it sells for about forty grand. Continuing the same theme, the clocks went back overnight. The extra hour has proved very useful - it's a shame we can't put our clocks back every weekend.

Wednesday's tennis never happened, but then on Thursday at 6:15 the phone rang and I had to drop everything and immediately drive to Albany to play. Great. We carried on our previously rain-drenched doubles match where we left off at one set all. The super tie-break rule was waived and we played a normal third set, but we didn't last long, going down by the final score of 6-7 (1-7), 7-5, 6-2. When we played a very solid - and quick - game on my serve to close to 4-2, I thought that might send out a message to our opponents, but whatever the message was it fell on deaf ears: we only won one more point. A couple of stats from that match: It was my ninth night-time doubles loss in a row. Also it was only the second time in my life I'd won a tie-break but lost the match. The other time was a singles match in 1996. The score: 7-5, 6-7 (1-7), 6-2. How I remember that I've no idea.

In the singles I put together a steady performance to win 6-3 6-1. The first set could have gone either way - a couple of net-cords towards the end of the set proved crucial. The rallies were long as we both tried to work each other around the court. I was able to stay in a lot of points and was more consistent, and I guess that's why I won. As a team we lost by four matches to two.

On to Saturday. For April it was a scorcher, but there was no escaping the tennis court. I would play my last ever match with Bazza - we're both leaving the club. Unfortunately we couldn't finish on a high note, going down 1-6, 6-2, 7-6 (7-3). The score in the first set was highly deceptive - they had points for just about every game. We led 3-1 in the third and were tantalisingly close to victory at 6-5 and 30-all, but it wasn't to be. It was some time since I'd last played with Bazza but he hadn't changed one bit. Dodgy line calls which I sometimes had to overrule and calls of "yours!" when it was far too late. I thought we both played fine given our limitations, which are pretty severe on the doubles court: we're both hopeless at the net. He can be infuriating to play with (even more so if you don't "get" him) but we've had some very good matches over the years - it was perhaps fitting that our last match would go all the way to a deciding tie-break.

We played another tie-break in the first set of the mixed. This we won, 7-2, but there was still a sense of inevitability about the final outcome. Their man had a very tricky slice serve and a strong net game, both of which brought them numerous cheap points. All of our points required far more work. Things just didn't add up. Despite our best efforts we duly lost the last two sets 6-2, 6-3. For the second time in three days, but 15 years after the only other time, I'd won a tie-break in a losing cause. A disco started up as our match was finishing. It was to celebrate the club's 75th anniversary and was mainly for the kids' benefit although adults were invited too. It was a themed disco: you had to dress up as something beginning with B. I saw a banana, a ballerina and Bob Marley (which given the number of kids present, might not have been appropriate). I could have had an absolute field day dressing up as Bazza but I wouldn't have dared.

But that's not all! Tomorrow night I've got more tennis. My last pair of matches for the club.

This morning I went to the French club for the last time. I spoke perhaps more French there than ever before. My imminent move got me some attention I suppose. After that I met up with Richard in Mt Eden for lunch. We had a long and enjoyable chat as always. That's something I'm going to miss for sure.

The rest of my weekend (and last night's tennis)

After the maths tuition on Saturday I joined up with some of the Asperger’s group for a picnic in Cornwall Park. It was a very enjoyable afternoon (we were lucky with the weather) and the turnout was impressive. They were such a nice bunch of people; I had no problem relaxing. We even played a few ends of pétanque – perhaps useful practice for me before this weekend’s Waiheke tournament. Richard did a marvellous job of organising it all, especially as he sat an exam the previous morning. He has a knack of organising events; I have a hard enough time organising myself. We’ll have to do something similar again over the summer.

On Sunday (we were blessed with even better weather that day) I went to the monthly morning tea at the French club. I met up with Phil, who still doesn’t know when (or if) he’ll be returning to Denmark. We had a presentation from a bloke who speaks fluent French and Italian, giving us some entertaining tips on pronunciation. I played tennis in the afternoon – nothing serious, but just enough to get my eye in for the following evening’s interclub.

We played at Albany last night. First up was the doubles; I played with a young gun this time. His game oozed raw power but he didn’t quite have the accuracy to match. My play was a bit scratchy and we went down to a 6-4 6-2 loss. If we’d taken more of our chances it could have been closer, but really we were well beaten by a partnership who knew what they were doing on the doubles court. In contrast my singles opponent (half of the doubles team that beat us) was a good match-up for me. He was overweight and lacked mobility (forwards and backwards in particular), so I was able to work him around the court. The match started off close but I ran out a comfortable 6-3 6-0 winner. Overall our team won by four matches to two.

This is a busy week for me. I’ve got two lots of maths tuition as well as the men’s group on Wednesday. Then more tennis (at Whangaparaoa) on Saturday, followed by the pétanque on Waiheke Island on Sunday.

Some good news from a couple of weeks back that I neglected to mention: I did manage to get off that parking ticket. That's a relief.

Rats!

It's been an interesting week I guess. On Tuesday I applied for a job online - a three-month temporary position at one of the finance companies that hasn't gone under yet - and the next morning I got a phone call from someone wanting to interview me that afternoon. They weren't hanging around. As it happened, this bloke knew some of the people at my last job, including my most recent boss. This is nothing out of the ordinary in New Zealand, where everybody knows everybody, but even so I figured my chances were boosted by this, to maybe 30% or so. Also helping my cause was that I really did want this job; that hasn't always been the case. At the interview itself he wanted rather a lot of information for just a temporary role. "So where do you see myself in five years' time?" He commented on my CV, saying I was underselling my achievements in my last job. I could see where he was coming from: I'd put down six bullet points - roughly one for every year I'd worked there - but in reality I'd had to scrape the barrel even to come up with those. On Friday I found out I didn't get the job - I think I'd have been perfectly fine but as always there was someone else who had more experience of this or that.

Yesterday I saw a movie at St Lukes mall with some of the Aspergers bunch. There must have been nine or ten of us - quite a turnout. Before the movie I ate downstairs in the food court with Adam, who would be one of the older regulars at the monthly Aspergers group. He's 49 (though he looks a few years older) and sports a bushy beard and a pony-tail. He's a font of knowledge on all kinds of subjects. One of his favourite topics is chess, which isn't something I know a whole lot about. I did play a chess tournament in Peterborough when I was eight. I didn't win a single game, but in my very last match I was thrashing the other kid, only for time to run out and our game to be scored a draw. I went home in tears and I haven't played since. Several years later my brother for some reason also attempted a chess competition. If memory serves, it was played at the Perse, a private school in Cambridge. My "little" brother was already a six-foot brute by then, and he'd never been an academic, or someone particularly interested in subtle strategies or subtle anything. By contrast his opponents were mostly bespectacled, bookish boys, and I'm pretty sure he never won a game either. Anyway I digress. As we ate our curries, Adam bemoaned the current trend for playing chess by the book; it appeared that style and flair were frowned upon. I suggested he take up poker, where all that really matters is your bottom line. If that's positive, any style will do. Our conversation then moved from chess to Adam's living arrangements. "I've had a bit of a pong in my fridge for a while," he said. "I kind of ignored it - I thought it was just rotting vegetables - but eventually I had a look and there were dead rats in there." He then explained that some of the rats had been eaten by other rats. Meanwhile I was trying to eat my chicken tikka masala, or was it rat rogan josh? With all this talk of cannibalistic rats, I was no longer sure.

We didn't all see the same film, but I went with the majority and saw Inception which starred Leonardo DiCaprio. I liked the concept and was looking forward to it, but I was tired and I found it all too weird, too loud and too long. That I sat next to Adam probably didn't enhance my enjoyment of the film. His fridge isn't the only thing that pongs: he has what you might call a Bravo Oscar problem. Towards the end Adam saw me looking at my watch, and he said (out loud), "yeah, I wanna know when's this bullshit gonna end."

It was good to catch up with so many people from the group. Hats off to Richard for organising it all. Hopefully we can do something similar in the near future. I dropped one of the guys off in the city and all I wanted to do was get home (I don't know why I was so tired), but instead I drove to Browns Bay where the French Society were running a quiz. The real reason I made the trek up there wasn't for the quiz (though that was interesting in itself) but for a prize draw where you could win a trip for two to New Caledonia. In other words quite a big prize and not bad odds. However, when the draw was made I was glad someone with a partner and a family won it. If I'd won who would I take with me?

Today I met up with Julie for a coffee. She recently came off Efexor and has been suffering withdrawal symptoms. We also bumped into a woman who bought a shop in Devonport a few months ago. She was clearly going through a very severe bout of depression. To see her in such a state was quite upsetting; there was little Julie or I could do to help her. I'm hoping I can be in a position to help one day.

Positive chi, man

I didn't get a lot of sleep after writing my last blog post. The next morning I felt terrible, so after some deliberation I decided to stay at home. For some reason we can carry over sick days from one year to the next, so I've still got 46½ of them up my sleeve.

Mum thinks I should move out of my hermit pad. She's right. Spending so much time alone isn't good for me so I'm now seriously thinking of flatting. A lot of our shop windows here are covered in ads, some of them were for flatmates so I jotted down some details, but I was distracted by the number of ads for tarot card readings. Personally I think all that stuff is a load of baloney, but so many people here are into tarot (isn't the hermit one of the cards?), astrology, numerology, palmistry, feng shui, you name it. And what's more, go into any bookstore now and you'll find a whole aisle devoted to "mind, body, spirit" with titles along the lines of "Seven Steps to Eternal Happiness". Do people really think it's that simple? And why is seven always the magic number?

I got quite a bit done on Friday, far more than I would have at work. But that didn't stop me from being depressed. Yesterday was also fairly productive (I found ten recruitment agencies that I hope to contact over the next week), but again I was on my own all day. Today on the other hand was one of the most sociable days I've had for some time. I spoke to my gran first thing, then went to the French club. At lunchtime I saw Brendan who's certainly an interesting character. He even offered me a room at his place to rent. I won't take him up on that offer for a variety of reasons. He's a bit older than me for a start - I need to find people of my own age. Secondly, though I really like his house, living in that area with all its cul de sacs and funny little roundabouts and streets all named after birds would do my head in after a while. Thirdly, Brendan is big on his communications equipment and he likes putting up signs all over his house. I'd feel I was being watched.

This afternoon I played tennis, or tried to. It was a lovely day for it, but for me it wasn't much fun at all. They had seven games of doubles going on at once; all that sunlight and noise and all those flying fuzzy yellow objects were more than I could cope with. We played sudden death deuce - I lost nine of those deciding points in a row, but really I didn't care. I just wanted to get off the court and go home. It wasn't that long ago that I used to enjoy tennis; now it's as enjoyable as going to the dentist.

I've got tomorrow night's Italian class to look forward to, but Tuesday is a potentially scary day at work. I'll find out who's being restructured, streamlined and downsized, so I'll be on full tsunami alert.

What's a proper job anyway?

This morning I was managing OK, but at lunchtime I saw Andy and I declined sharply from there. Almost vertically in fact. Somehow, after seeing Andy the outlook seemed even more bleak than it did before. By mid-afternoon I'd totally given up trying to make head or tail of one of our many Alice-in-Wonderland data systems, while by 5pm I had a headache from digging my fingers into my skull all afternoon. I was supposed to go to a French Society meeting tonight. I couldn't work out whether going to the meeting would be good for me or not, so I used the random number function in Excel to decide. It came out a "yes" so off I went. The meeting was relatively painless and I think I benefited from getting some human contact. When I got back though my parents rang and I was too far gone to disguise my depression. We ended up on the subject of jobs, which simply made me even more depressed. I should know by now never to talk about work with Mum and Dad; they have completely different priorities to me. Apparently if I do leave my current job I have to get a proper job, whatever that means. I guess that means a career. But I really don't care about career paths any more than I care about garden paths. I just want to get rid of this depression.

I saw the doctor yesterday. Tomorrow I'll be getting a supply of 37.5 mg Efexor tablets, which will allow me to go from my current 150 mg to either 187.5 or 225. I usually like to change my dose by small increments if I can, but after today I don't think I'll be messing around.

Le Trésorier

When I woke up this morning I felt shattered, despite getting about nine hours sleep. I couldn't feel my arms and legs at all. I got up eventually, then checked my email. Dammit, the AGM at the Alliance Française was at 10, not in the afternoon as I thought. Made my way over to Browns Bay and got there just in time for the meeting to start. The turnout, mostly of people twice my age, was surprisingly high (the meeting had originally been held just before Christmas but we didn't get a quorum). I really did not want to be Treasurer for another year. I'm way too disorganised for that kind of thing and I joined the club to speak French (even if I am too timid to speak it most of the time), not to write out cheques and receipts. It looks like I might escape the Treasurer role but will probably still be on the committee in some capacity. People hung around for coffees and nibbles after the meeting; I spent most of the time staring out the window. Apparently the Community Centre is also used by the "Elite Table Tennis Club" which, from the photo attached to the notice board, seems to consist of four elderly blokes. Scores are written down, but curiously only those where the loser got fewer than ten points. George isn't doing that well. Malcolm has just thrashed him 21-3, a result which was highlighted as the record lowest score.

Went to the tennis club in the afternoon, but only played briefly. Wasn't a lot of fun. Anything white seemed blindingly bright while the sound of ball on racket appeared louder than normal. I was double-faulting all over the place and was generally hopeless. And I have to play interclub tomorrow. Heaven knows what will happen there.