Tired

I've been really tired all week. Getting out of bed has been a struggle. On Tuesday when the news came on the radio (that's supposed to be some sort of cue for me to get up) I just rolled over and next thing I knew, the red digits showed eight zero zero.

I'm not planning on doing anything strenuous in Auckland. I met the six-foot-five guy, for the first time in a few weeks, at last night's depression group. It wasn't much of a group - just him and me. He suggested that I play in the $2/$3 no-limit hold 'em game at Skycity (he sometimes flies to Auckland specially for that). I might take a look at it (apparently you can watch) but I'd want to have a much better idea of how it operates (mostly around the rake) before jumping in. Besides, live poker is probably more stressful than anything I'll want to do up there.

I'm looking forward to Saturday's autism group a lot. It'll be good to catch up with Richard and the gang.

Heading downhill

After my last blog post, which followed my last ever actuarial interview, I slid rapidly downhill. In the last few days I've had this real end-of-the-world feeling. I might have a big decision to make in the next 48 hours, and I don't like any of my options. The phone went on Thursday (I let it ring six times before daring to pick it up); it was someone from the Wellington company wanting to touch bloody base with me. They have had difficulties contacting one of my references and now want me to contact this person. That's a decidedly awkward prospect. Possibly having to move out of my flat when the new owners move in is an extra complication.

If I'm offered the job, my parents want me to take it. Mum said, "everyone I've spoken to has said it's easy to make friends in Wellington." You've known me for nearly 31 years and you still have no bloody idea. It isn't easy for me to make friends anywhere. Of course she does realise that; I think she was just encouraging me to take the job. She worries a lot about me and if I take the job everything will be sorted and she'll have nothing to worry about any more.

My cousin in Wellington thinks I should seriously think about going full-time with my puzzles instead of taking the job down there or applying for any other jobs. On Friday I spent some time trying to come up with an algorithm for making and solving a certain type of puzzle. I might as well have been in Bletchley Park trying to decipher the Enigma machine. If I do make my puzzles a full-time job, how will I move into a flat? I'm reminded of Danny Bhoy's attempts to find a flat. "So what do you do for a living?" I'm a comedian. "You must be joking."

On Saturday I attended the monthly Asperger's group. More than thirty turned up. On the whole they are such a good bunch of people. I have definitely made some connections with a few of them - losing them would be a big deal. Dad said I'd be earning good money in that job so I could just fly to Auckland whenever I felt like it. There was one bloke I'd never met before who had many of the traits of Asperger's. He was clever but could appear quite arrogant at times: "I like to play chess but can't find anyone good enough to play against." He was a mathematician who worked at home as a computer programmer. He was also interested in puzzles and games; we spoke at length about my puzzle and he could be a useful guy to have on board. People like him must struggle in relationships, or so I thought - I was surprised to learn that he's got five kids from two marriages.

My depressive symptoms have returned with a vengeance. Everything has slowed down and become a chore, I've been unable to concentrate on anything, and I've felt tired a lot. I slept for nearly nine hours on Saturday night but yesterday I couldn't stop yawning.

Last night I went with Julie to see The King's Speech, with Colin Firth playing the part of the king. I thought it was very good. Speech defects are common but they don't get a lot of media coverage. My grandmother, if she was still with it, would have enjoyed it immensely I'm sure.

My computer died on Thursday - it will need a new motherboard which won't be cheap. It's been a hassle not having a computer, but at least I can't play poker. What a distraction that can be.

Whacked

I felt completely whacked at work today. I needed coffee before coffee, as well as after coffee, just to keep my eyes open. The forty-plus hours I spend in the office each week feel more and more like “dead time”; all the really important stuff has to be squeezed into my remaining waking hours, of which there are never enough. My weariness could also be due to yesterday’s corporate jolly. For our second team building in just three months, we visited a number of wineries to the north and west, sampling their produce of course. When we voted on an activity, I chose wine tasting because it would be the least stressful option; it seems several of my colleagues felt the same way. Later we went to the pub – this was stressful for me because it involved my workmates recounting tales of drunken escapades while I sat in silence, so I didn’t stay long.

Last weekend, out of the blue, I received a rather exciting email from America. A publishing company in Illinois somehow stumbled upon my puzzle website and wants to buy forty of my puzzles for US$20 each. I started constructing puzzles in 2005, when the whole world was going Sudoku crazy, and have created a variety of word and number puzzles since then. A few of them made a guest appearance in an Aussie magazine in 2006, but that's about it, so when I got an email for someone willing to pay me eleven hundred bucks (in our money) for my puzzles, I was over the moon. I'm a little nervous dealing with unknown people over the net, but they seem legit, so I'm willing to take the risk. Who knows, this could lead to something big.

The tennis interclub season began in earnest last Saturday. Thanks mainly to my partner, we comfortably took out the men's doubles 6-1 6-1, but the mixed match was a totally different ball game (it was still tennis, but you know what I mean). We were lucky to get one game in a 20-minute first set, and though we weren't playing that badly, I couldn't see a way back. The opposing woman was a demon at the net. I was heading down one of my infamous spirals of negativity, talking incessantly to both myself and my partner about how screwed we were, when my partner told me to stop talking and to act more positively. From that moment the match turned. I became more confident in my shots, and my intensity levels rose a notch or two. My partner's play also improved as she was no longer feeding off my negativity. Our opponents couldn't quite hit the heights they reached in the first set, and we wound up 1-6 6-3 6-3 winners, wrapping it up on our fifth match point. After the match we ate and chatted; our opponents were such nice people that I felt a bit guilty that we beat them. One of the highlights of interclub tennis is that you meet new people every time you play.

The current spell of dodgy weather is predicted to continue into Saturday. A good day for making puzzles I think.

Losing my mind

Things have escalated in the last couple of days. On Sunday night I went to bed late, which meant I got up late, which meant I got to work late. At 9am I had my daily meeting with my boss and pretended that things were basically OK. Shortly after that, we had a team meeting - these are often a source of embarrassment for me because my boss asks each of us in turn what we've been doing in the past week and what we've got coming up, which for me is usually not a lot. But yesterday I had a smorgasbord of items on my plate so I rattled them off when asked, knowing full well most of them would remain untouched. After the meeting, time seemed to fly by: eleven, half-eleven, twelve, half-twelve, and I still hadn't done anything. I was constantly yawning. I ate a Subway at my desk, partly because I felt I was too far behind to take a proper lunch break, but mainly because I couldn't face sitting with the usual crowd and having to make conversation with people who are so jovial and optimistic and young and alive. Not that I have made conversation with any of those people at lunchtime for a while - I just sit there with the paper, if I can get hold of one (they're like gold dust) and do the crossword if the woman from Distribution hasn't already filled most of it in. There are a couple of ifs there so that means I often just stare blankly into space. Even though my concentration is impaired, I can still do things like crosswords because I've done them hundreds of times before. I've even compiled them on occasions. Anything new, on the other hand, and I'm screwed.

In the afternoon I tried frantically to find the one vital spreadsheet, out of those ten or so spreadsheets I had open simultaneously on Friday, that I needed to complete my most urgent task. I promised I'd have it done by the end of the day, which wasn't far away. A figure of eleven grand was bandied about that morning, but I couldn't find any figures on any of those spreadsheets that were even close to eleven grand. I called Brian over. "I've got a lot of spreadsheets open here, Brian, and none of them seem to be the right one." "Did you save it?" "Er, ah, I think so. Oh hang on, my computer crashed on Friday and I ended up crawling under my desk and turning it off at the wall. So maybe I didn't." "No worries," said Brian. "All you've got to do is change this and add in that and check the claims." "Thanks." Change what and add in what and check what?! I gathered this was probably a simple task but I had no idea what Brian was talking about. I went to the toilet and found myself writhing around in the corner of the cubicle, moving my head backwards and forwards, and after a while, laughing uncontrollably. Shit, I'm going mad. I must have been in the loo for twenty minutes. When I'd composed myself I went back to my desk and waited for the clock to tick round to five. Outside the office, nothing seemed real. The sunlight was almost intoxicating, rather like how it seemed when I arrived in New Zealand in 2003, having been accustomed to the weaker English sun. The walk to my car felt like a hike of several miles. I still hadn't sent off my assignment which was due at 5pm Sydney time. After a lot of faffing around (why do they make the process so damned complicated?) I got it sent off just before the deadline, not that it really mattered anyway. I can't see how I'll pass the exam. I haven't done any study for weeks now. I went to tennis - the boot camp session where you run around and hit balls and don't have to worry about scoring - for the exercise. I felt better after that, but then my mum rang. She's coming up from the South Island tomorrow; she managed to get one of those "grab-a-seat" fares. I was unable to talk coherently and had to hang up at one stage due to my inability to stop laughing. She's understandably very worried about me and I wish she could be up here for longer than just three full days.

I saw my doctor this morning. I was lucky to get an appointment at such short notice. I told her all my symptoms before again being overcome by uncontrollable laughter. I was told to take the next five days off work and to make an appointment to see a psychiatrist, which I did, in spite of the cost.