Friday was my last day in my old role. Not many people there even knew. That didn't bother me. I don't have fond memories of my time on Level 25. In fact I don't have many memories at all. I do remember my last attempt at bluffing - nearly a month ago - before everything caved in on me: my big boss was talking about some make-or-break audit-whatsit called the FMR. I must have said MFR at least ten times before realising I'd got the letters in the wrong order. Perhaps that was the last straw for me. I might as well have said MFI (which is a chain store in the UK famous for selling dodgy furniture) or even MI5.
In all seriousness I managed reasonably well in the role until mid-November when my new boss arrived on the scene, creating an extra layer in the hierarchy. He was young, hungry, eager, energetic, basically all the things I wasn't (I'm not even young any more). Suddenly everything I did at work came under close scrutiny by an upstart who could quite easily do both our jobs. I was surplus to requirements. Depression set in, I became even slower and even less accurate, tasks got taken away from me, and before long I was just a body.
It was going to happen eventually, as it always has for me in a team environment. If it's just the three or four or five people in my immediate team then I can just about manage. But then people move in and out, you're expected to build relationships with people outside your team, alliances are formed, and before long I don't even know what I'm doing there any more and I end up on the sidelines. I know of no other possible outcome.
It wasn't a wonderful weekend. For some reason I could never relax. All that sunshine on Saturday did little to lift my mood. I did however watch some provincial cricket at the Basin - more about that in my next post. I saw Julie yesterday; she has her own battles with depression as well as physical pain. She takes twenty pills a day.
Today was my first day in the new role. New start. New opportunity. It would all be blissfully stress-free. If only. It was fairly menial, as jobs go, but I still had my fair share of new information to take in. I made multicoloured hand-written notes with bullet points and asterisks to help me remember. I started out OK but slowed up badly from about two o'clock when the sensory overload set in. I was wide-eyed, the ceiling lights seemingly turned up to 500 watts. It was a hugely frustrating afternoon for me - work got done, but very slowly. I'm quite concerned that I won't even be able to hold down this job for very long.
Buying this property (which, had I left it three months, would have been impossible) meant a new bank and more pieces of plastic in my wallet. I now have thirteen flexible friends, including those that fit into an ATM but have nothing to do with banks, and I can't keep track of them all. Most of the time I dodge the issue by paying in cash. As well as being easier for me (I find handling change much simpler than remembering which card is where), it helps to control my spending and reduce the size of my digital footprint. Regarding the flat itself, it's got a lot going for it and would be great if I was feeling better and could be confident of maintaining an income, but right now it feels like a burden. I structured my mortgage in such a way as to handle this scenario at work, not expecting it to eventuate quite this soon.
On Thursday I'm meeting Rose. Could be interesting.
My appointment with the shrink has been postponed till next Tuesday.
Tomorrow's job (apart from my actual job) is to tell Mum and Dad about all the work stuff. I know they'll be worried sick about me once I tell them, which is why I haven't as yet. Odds-on at least one of them will fly up here before the end of the month.
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