#oneaday Day 124: Dead Aim

During quiet moments at work, I, as most people do these days, I suspect, like to pop on a YouTube video or two to cheer myself up and distract from a gradually growing sense of how existence is futile, we’re all sitting atop a doomed planet, and that any “legacy” we might leave behind is largely meaningless.

Today I decided to watch a clip of comedian Jon Richardson talking about men pissing. I present it below for your consideration.

It’s true. Men can’t aim. Well, they can, but they can’t aim well, and at any given moment one is at great risk of one’s penis refusing to accept the commonly agreed laws of physics, and just do something completely unexpected with one’s piss stream. And, inevitably, as Richardson points out, this always happens when you are not at home, making it an embarrassing situation that you have to determine exactly how to deal with.

The most embarrassing time it happened to me was on a trip to hospital. I’d been suffering some pains, so I’d gone along to the walk-in centre, and they’d taken me in to the emergency room, as is seemingly fairly standard procedure with abdominal pains.

I was there for pretty much the whole day, largely because the combination of my own anxiety and what are apparently some incredibly stubborn veins meant that a gradually escalating series of medical professionals were completely unable to draw any blood from me via conventional means, and there was a very long wait between one giving up and them bringing in someone higher up the doctors’ food chain.

At some point as afternoon was turning into evening and I was developing increasing discomfort and unease about the cannula jammed into my hand, it was decided that I Must Piss. I was presented with one of those bedpans made from like eggbox material and invited to get on with it.

At this point I should say that I am not a regular hospital attendee. In fact, I have never been admitted to hospital, which is one of the main contributing factors to my anxiety over them. The other is the print ad for the computer game Life and Death by The Software Toolworks (below), which traumatised me as a child and has ensured that I am, and always have been, absolutely terrified at the prospect of Having An Operation.

Anyway, I’m drifting off the point somewhat. We were here to talk about piss. Fact is, I wasn’t sure what the, err, “etiquette” was for using this bedpan. And, given that I had a pointy thing stuck in my hand that was becoming both increasingly uncomfortable and a growing source of considerable anxiety, I wasn’t entirely thinking straight. So rather than doing the sensible thing of toddling off to the bog to piss in the egg box, I just whipped it out in the little cubicle and thought I’d do it there and then. The curtains were closed, I figured, and no-one was making any indication of coming by to check on me, so I thought I’d just piss and be done with it.

My knob had other ideas. It chose that moment to enter full on “lawn sprinkler” mode, spraying almost everywhere except the direction I was actually pointing it. I was absolutely mortified as soon as the whole hideous process started, but of course, I was powerless to prevent that which had already happened. Thankfully, I managed to wrestle it back under control soon enough to be able to provide a convincing sample in the receptacle, so that was one job taken care of.

Now, there was a more pressing matter to deal with: the fact that I had pissed all over the bed (which, thankfully, was covered with one of those thick black sheets that fluids just sit on top of, which I suspect is precisely for situations like this) and it was dripping onto the floor. I had to act quickly, less the proof of my shame flow out underneath the curtains into the adjacent cubicle, so I frantically looked around for something with which to deal with the situation. I settled on a box of tissues conveniently placed on the shelves at the back of the cubicle, and began mopping up. I supplemented the initial mop-up with the antiseptic wipes one of the numerous attempts to draw blood from me had left behind, and after a bit of effort, I suspect no-one would have ever known that I had, just moments earlier, sprayed the entire room like a particularly horny un-neutered tomcat.

Not long after, the hospital let me go, my eventual diagnosis being effectively a shrug of the shoulders and the vague suggestion it might be a small kidney stone, but it was probably nothing and I should just go home and rest. No mention was made of any smell of piss there may or may not have been in the cubicle, and the cannula came right back out, unused.

And so that was that. My worst pissing shame, a completely wasted day and a sore hand. Have a pleasant evening.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 29: Dream Education

I had one of those dreams that it’s difficult to wake up from this morning. It was a variation on a dream I quite commonly have, which involves being back in some form of education, knowing that I’m not doing something I should be doing, and not being able to make myself sort that situation out.

The most common form this dream takes sees me back at secondary school, knowing that the school’s music groups (typically the orchestra and concert band) are rehearsing and that I should be there, but I am not going. My old music teacher Mr. Murrall is standing outside the music block looking disapprovingly at me standing some distance away, often with my friends from the time, but I can’t bring myself to admit that I’ve made a mistake, and that I should go along and resolve the situation.

Last night was a little bit different, as it revolved around university. I had just moved into a new flat — not any of the flats I actually lived in during my time at university, but something my mind dreamed up — and was settling in, but I realised I had no idea when term started or if I should have been going to any lectures. Any time I thought “I should look up when term starts”, I was distracted from doing so, and I became more and more convinced over time that I was missing significant parts of my course. But, again, I couldn’t correct the situation.

Education-related dreams are, unsurprisingly, usually interpreted as being something to do with learning, and variations on the theme such as those which I describe above are usually tied to various forms of anxiety — often imposter syndrome.

If I’m being honest, I can tell where some of those thoughts are probably coming from. The recurring dream about not showing up to orchestra rehearsals is likely due to how I’m aware I don’t make nearly enough time to practice music these days, and should probably do something about that. I think I want a new piano, though; our current one is fine apart from a few seriously dodgy notes in the octave below middle C, and unfortunately those notes appear to be some of the most frequently occurring in almost everything I want to play! New pianos are expensive, though, so you can probably see where some of that anxiety comes from.

As for the imposter syndrome side of things, I’ve definitely felt that before. I’m not sure I’m feeling it a lot right now, because in my current position I feel like I’m valued and that I contribute something meaningful — although thinking about it, there are still aspects of the daily work life that do cause me anxiety, such as having to deal with the social media side of things. But I’ve definitely felt it in the past; feelings that I “don’t deserve” to be where I am, or that I’m worried someone will “find out” something about me that I don’t want to be found out — exactly what, I’m never sure, because I don’t have anything particularly shameful to hide.

I suspect, as someone with a natural undercurrent of anxiety flowing through me at most times, I will never be completely free of these dreams. I actually don’t mind them all that much, as they sometimes have an interesting, nostalgic element to them. I do wish my dream self could break free of whatever is holding him down and resolve the problems at the core of those situations, though… that way I could just enjoy being back at school or university!

#oneaday Day 2: Taking Stock

So I said yesterday I’d come on to my present situation and what got me thinking that starting this nonsense up again might be helpful. It might as well be today, as that acts as a good introduction to what will come afterwards, as well and perhaps a means for those of you who are stopping by for the first time to get a better idea of who I am, what I do and why I’m typing this at all.

As I type this, I am 43 years old and, for the most part, broadly satisfied with my life situation. I am happily married to a wonderful wife, I have two delightful cats and I am gainfully employed in a field I actually have some enthusiasm for. I’m not what I’d call especially “wealthy”, but I make enough each month to both get by and to be able to indulge my interests. Nothing to really complain about as such.

And yet I can’t honestly say that I’m happy. Part of this is down to the depression and anxiety I have been suffering… well, probably since always, in retrospect, but which I’ve definitely been actually conscious of since my 20s. Part of this is down to the current state of the world in general, which just seems to be inexorably sliding towards self-inflicted oblivion in more ways than one. And part of this is down to specific things that occur on a day-to-day basis, which can have a fairly major impact on the way I’m feeling.

Yesterday, during a conversation over dinner, one of our assembled group of friends posed the question “when was the last time you felt joy?” — and it proved to be a bit of a stumper for several of us. One of our number — the one who, and I mean this with no disrespect to him whatsoever, is probably the most “privileged” among us due to the combination of his upbringing, the hard work he put in to get to the position he is in now and said position that he is in now — is routinely fairly cheerful about most things, so he had no problem in pinning down some recent examples, but he also noted that there are plenty of stressors and difficulties in his own life, and there had even been occasions that had brought him to tears.

The rest of us didn’t feel so positive, to varying degrees. A common thread of frustration and upset was how the world is today. Bombarded by advertisements, annoyed at the lies and misinformation routinely spread online, concerned about the yet-to-be-seen long-term consequences of innovations such as social media, we all found ourselves feeling somewhat despondent about certainly the near future, with the far future having some fairly severe question marks hovering above it.

And yes. There is a lot about today’s world that I do not like. There is a lot about it that I do not like that I am not in a position to do anything about, either, which is doubly frustrating. But there are some things, closer to home, that I probably can do something about.

For starters, one of my biggest frustrations about “the world” in general is that it doesn’t feel like it’s built for me. This stems from a combination of factors, including the social anxiety I feel as a result of both my depression and anxiety and the underlying autism spectrum condition of Asperger’s syndrome, and also physical factors such as my weight.

My weight is probably one of the things that upsets and annoys me the most, because I know it’s entirely self-inflicted, but I also know that it’s a symptom of other factors.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with my weight, but since the COVID lockdowns of 2020 or so, it’s been particularly bad. I got bigger than I ever have been before, and I was already at a size where certain activities were completely inaccessible to me. Couple this with the fact that I have a hernia which the doctors won’t treat until I lose some weight — which itself causes physical pain and discomfort on a fairly regular basis — and you can hopefully understand where I’m coming from when I say that I physically feel uncomfortable in a lot of situations in today’s world.

My weight problems can be tied to my mental health, because I know that I often use food as “self-medication”, to use the clinical term. I get depressed, upset or angry about something, and I reach for something tasty to “make me feel better”. I recognise that this is a problem; I even recognise the behavioural patterns as being alarmingly similar to someone with a substance addiction — without going into details, I have some experience of helping someone who went through such a scenario and thankfully made it out of the other side, though not without leaving me with some lasting trauma that I suspect will never go away. But that doesn’t always help me in doing something about it.

The old cliché is that the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging it exists, though, and I’m already a few steps along that road. As you can see above, I recognise the problem, and I’ve sought support for it — specifically in the form of Slimming World, an organisation with which I lost a lot of weight nearly 10 years ago. So far it has been going reasonably well — though I had a bit of a setback last week and am expecting another this week — but it’s hard work.

The trouble is with the concept of “normal”. In confronting personal problems like this, one of the biggest difficulties is in acknowledging that you are not “normal” by societal definitions, and that means you are going to have to do some things a little differently, perhaps for a long time or even permanently. On some days it is easier to make my peace with this than others. When I am in a position where I can mostly be in control of things and have some support standing by when I need it, I can generally muddle through without making too many mistakes.

But I do make mistakes, and confronting those, acknowledging them and dealing with the consequences is something I struggle with. If I deviate from a “plan” or even a “hope” that I have for myself, I beat myself up about it a lot. It upsets me and frustrates me and I become afraid. I’m not even sure what I’m afraid of — or perhaps it’s not just one thing. Sometimes it might be being afraid to face those who are trying to help me, like I’ve let them down somehow. Sometimes it might be being afraid of my mistake having irreversible consequences. Sometimes it’s just plain, simple fear, with no real source; it’s just there.

All of the above doesn’t just apply to attempting to bring my weight under control; it’s something I struggle with in daily life. If I make a mistake at work, it can utterly ruin my day, even if no-one else thinks anything more of it after the initial acknowledgement of the issue. If I make a mistake in a social interaction with someone, I’ll play it over and over in my head, wishing that I’d done something differently. If I make a mistake in something I’m supposed to be doing “long term” — like losing weight — I can easily feel a huge hit to my motivation and wondering why and if I should bother.

All this might sound a bit bleak and, I’m not going to lie, it is. Despite being in a life situation that is more than satisfactory, as noted above, I am still struggling right now. Every day is a battle against myself; some mornings I even feel afraid to get up. That’s not something one should be feeling.

Perhaps talking about this stuff, even if it’s just to myself, will help matters somewhat. That is at least part of the intention of resurrecting #oneaday. It’s helped me before, so I suspect it may be able to help me again. And in the meantime, I’m thankful that I do have the support I do when I need it.

2475: Necessary Evil

I’ve grown to hate money.

Well, that’s not quite true. I like money when I have it. I hate the feeling of anxiety it gives me when I don’t have it, however, especially in situations like I’m in at the moment where I’m owed a considerable amount of money (like, over £1,000) in outstanding invoices from freelance work I undertook nearly two months ago.

It’s not character-building to have no money through no fault of your own; it doesn’t teach important life lessons; it just plain sucks balls.

It’s exceedingly demoralising to be strapped for cash when you know you’ve been working hard for your pay, and said pay is nowhere to be seen for one reason or another. It makes all the effort you’ve put in feel like a waste. Meanwhile salaried employees waste time on a daily basis fucking around with Fantasy Football and other such shit, secure in the knowledge that they’ll get their paycheck at the same time every month, come hell or high water — particularly if they’re an established employee with a decent enough track record to be considered a fixture.

I already struggle with anxiety and depression, but when money is tight, too, I just want to bury myself in a dark place and not wake up. It makes an already difficult situation feel all the more hopeless and desperate, and I’m running out of ways to cope with it.

I quit the job I described yesterday that didn’t feel like its benefits outweighed its many drawbacks — this is not the job that owes me over £1,000, I should add; rather, it was the part-time courier work I mentioned in passing a few times recently (which subsequently ballooned to an underpaid 7-day working week). I calculated that any money I would earn from it would immediately be eaten up by expenses incurred working that job, so it’s simply not worth the hassle, stress and physical discomfort it causes, particularly without any opportunity for a break.

I feel bad turning down a source of income, but if the net profit is negligible, I’m better off staying at home, saving the wear and tear on my car, not having to pay up for fuel and having the time and energy to pursue other opportunities. That’s how I’m rationalising it, anyway.

Just have to hope one of these opportunities I currently have an application in for and my fingers crossed for actually comes to something, but it’s frankly rather difficult to feel hopeful right now. I guess that at least means it will be a nice surprise if anything does happen.

2447: Left Behind

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I think one of the biggest sources of my anxiety these days is the growing feeling that I’m being “left behind” by the rest of the world thanks to the fact that everything changes so damn quickly these days… and moreover, if you don’t keep up with it, you may well end up having difficulties.

As I type this, I’m occasionally stealing glances over to my dining room table, upon which sits an Atari 800XL and a CRT TV-monitor for which I’m currently awaiting a cable to allow the two to talk to one another. I’m excited to get the 800XL up and running not just because “woo, wow, retro”, but because it formed such an integral part of my early life that it feels like a small piece of “stablity” in the turbulent waters of the modern age; a rock I can cling on to in order to avoid getting swept away.

This might sound like an odd thing to say with regard to a 30+ year old computer that I’m not entirely sure still works (I’m pretty sure it does), but since tracking it down I’ve become quite interested — excited, even — in the idea of using it for various purposes other than just games. Specifically, I’m perhaps most excited to use it as a “distraction-free” means of word processing; once I get it up and running, I fully intend to fire up the old copy of AtariWriter and actually do some ol’ fashioned plain text composition. (My one nod to it actually being 2016 is the addition of an “SIO2PC” cable, which will allow me to transfer files from the Atari to a PC or Mac for safekeeping rather than relying on 30+ year old floppy disks.)

This probably sounds like a lot of effort to go to, but I’m excited because it allows me to focus on one thing rather than constantly being bombarded by the distractions that life in 2016 — and computing in 2016 — offers. Multitasking is all very well and good, but when you’re trying to get anything done and Google Chrome is right there willing you to go and, I don’t know, hunt for rare Pepes or something, it’s sometimes hard to resist. Boot up a word processor that you have to load from disk and can’t do anything else while it’s running, on the other hand, and you have a situation much more conducive to Getting Shit Done, because once you’ve spent a couple of minutes listening to the soothing (and occasionally terrifying) sound of that disk drive snarking and zurbiting its way to your chosen program, it feels like something of a waste to then just shut it all down without actually doing anything.

I’ve drifted off on a tangent a bit, but my point is fairly simple: I long for the simplicity and the single-mindedness of days gone by, and am feeling increasingly stressed out and anxious by the constant demands for attention we get from all angles these days in 2016. I’ve attempted to minimise my exposure to these distractions as much as possible — primarily through minimising my contact with social media, which is probably the biggest distraction of all for most people these days — but with each passing day, I feel more and more inclined to just want to shut myself in a dark room and have a bit of peace and quiet to myself.

2409: Changing Perspective

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I don’t feel quite so bad today.

This isn’t to say I don’t still feel fairly bad about everything in general, but I don’t feel quite so bad today. I even found myself applying for some other jobs in a slightly different field to that which I’ve not been having much luck in so far, and the simple act of doing that — of finding a job listing that, while not offering particularly good wages, certainly seemed to say “hey, you could do that” — helped me feel marginally more positive.

Dealing with negativity is all a matter of perspective. The easiest thing to do when you’re feeling negative is to look straight up and see everything falling down on your head as you’re buried by it. And once you’re buried by it, it’s very difficult to get yourself out again; the cycle becomes self-perpetuating.

Once in a while, though, you have a moment where you have the opportunity to step back and look at things from somewhere other than directly underneath them as you bear down on them. I’m speaking purely metaphorically here, of course, but looking at something from the outside — perhaps floating high above it, or from the perspective of a being that is much bigger than you are — can make things seem not quite so daunting. That huge inky blackness that was closing in threatening to bury me can become just a pile of papers on a desk — papers that can be shuffled, dealt with one at a time, even thrown away.

I wouldn’t say I’m through the worst of this particular bout of depression — these feelings of general uselessness and worthlessness aren’t going to go away until I find some way I can meaningfully contribute to the world (and by that, I mean do a job I get paid a reasonable amount for on a regular basis) — but today… didn’t feel quite so bad.

I can only hope these feelings improve. I’m going to try and get some sleep now. May tomorrow be a brighter day still.

2406: Getting it Across

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The worst thing — well, one of the worst things, anyway — about being depressed and anxiety-wracked is the perpetual feeling that you are not getting your feelings across properly, and the companion fear that people around you are just thinking that you’re “a bit down” or, at worst, being irrational and unreasonable rather than suffering from crippling bleakness and an impossible desire to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

I, at least, have this blog as a means of expression as well as words I say face-to-face to people, words I write in email messages or words I say down a phone. (The latter is particularly rare, since, as those of you who know me well will already know, I do not like speaking on the phone at all.)

So, feeling particularly bleak and hopeless as I am at nearly 4am on this stuffy, sweaty August evening, it behooves me to try and be as frank as possible within the confines of the medium.

I am not doing so great.

I’ve not been doing so great for quite a while now, partly as a result of my own meandering, directionless life and partly due to external factors I have no direct control of. But at the moment, I feel like I’m doing especially not great.

It’s true, I wrote a while back that the new meds I’ve been taking have had a positive effect, and I stand by that, but I’m having one of those times where I feel like everything is getting on top of me, and that’s causing a domino effect of everything else in my mind to collapse, leaving me a mostly useless mess for a considerable proportion of the time.

I quit a job I had a while back that had the possibility to be if not particularly well-paid, then certainly reasonably secure and possibly even enjoyable. I did so because I was extremely worried about my wife, who was suffering especially ill health at the time. I was a little hesitant to do so, because I was afraid that I would end up in the exact situation I am now — seemingly unable to get another job — but ultimately I knew that it was the right thing to do, and I stand by my decision.

However, my wife, while not fully recovered as yet — still waiting on the NHS to do various bits and pieces, which will hopefully get into motion in earnest next month — is now back at work, seemingly getting on just fine with her new job, while I am reliant on erratic freelance income and sending out swathes of job applications every week that are probably never even looked at by cynical HR departments. While I know I’m not being completely useless, as I am getting work and getting it done to a good standard, there’s always this feeling at the back of my mind: why?

The question that comes after “why” varies from moment to moment. Sometimes it’s asking why I didn’t stick with teaching. (Because the stress of teaching in two particularly “challenging” schools was a strong contributory factor to the depression and anxiety I’ve been suffering since 2010.) Sometimes it’s asking why I didn’t fight for my USgamer job when I was unceremoniously told one morning that I didn’t have it any more, sorry. Sometimes it’s asking why that job had to end at all — and this one is usually accompanied by furious anger and resentment towards several people involved in the situation, whom I believe were responsible for me being shown the door. Sometimes it’s asking why I couldn’t just have knuckled down at SSE and been a good little corporate drone, nodding and smiling at their primary school-level Health and Safety “exercises” that they foisted on even the office staff at every opportunity. And sometimes it’s asking why I made choices back at the beginning of the Millennium that now feel like massive mistakes altogether: studying English and Music, pursuing the PGCE, going into teaching.

There aren’t answers to many of those questions, and they tend to lead on to bleaker thoughts. The question about my time at SSE in particular is almost always accompanied by an exaggerated combination of flashback and imagination where I recall my traumatic last day at the company, dragged over the hot coals by an unsupportive management who just wanted to get me out of the door and wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say. In reality, I yelled “fuck you” at them, stormed out and slammed the door, wishing to God I had the courage to say or do something more coherent to make my frustration known. In my imagination, I do everything from throw the phone on the table of the meeting room at my “opponents” to flipping the table, ripping the door off its hinges or smashing every computer I walk past on the way to collect my things. Each time I have this flashback-dream, it gets more intense and unpleasant, and it leaves me short of breath, panicking, begging for sleep to claim me, because it’s always when I’m trying to get to sleep that my mind sees fit to dredge it up once again.

And the bleakness these endless questions leave me with make me more vulnerable to all sorts of other things. A simple request to play some online games with friends becomes an unimaginably frustrating and infuriating slight when I can’t pin anyone down due to their (rationally speaking, perfectly reasonable) commitments to family or suchlike. I have difficulty focusing on anything, feeling like I “should” be doing something, anything other than what it is I am doing at the time, and this often leads me into a cycle of just doing nothing at all.

One of the most frustrating things is that I’ve fallen back into old habits with food. We stopped going to Slimming World when my wife was particularly unwell, as I was finding the weekly weigh-ins and Syn-counting an unnecessary stress on top of all the other things I was thinking about. Consequently, with little to no control over what I eat each day — plus a predisposition towards eating as a means of “self-medicating” anything from boredom to depression — I’ve put a bunch of weight back on again, so much so that I’m terrified of stepping on a set of scales, going back to the same Slimming World group I once attended or even trying on certain pairs of trousers.

All kinds of adjectives float around inside my head when I reflect on myself and how I might be able to get out of the situation I’m in. Hopeless. Worthless. Useless. Failure. I know none of them are true, but when you get this far into the darkness it’s hard to see the light of hope. I vacillate between burning hatred for the people who have directly or indirectly contributed to the position in which I find myself, despair that makes me want to curl up and cry for the rest of time, and guilt at all the people I feel like I’ve let down with my inability to have made anything worthwhile of my life by this age.

I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’ve exhausted all my options, tried all the things I’m supposed to try, and I don’t know what’s left. I’m sure in life it’s pretty difficult to back yourself into a completely unwinnable situation, but I was designed in the ’80s, after all; to continue the analogy, I feel like I’m in an early Sierra game and I’m finding each and every single place it’s possible for King Graham to fall off something, trip over something, get crushed by something or get eaten by something. Eventually I might find the right path without tripping over Manaan’s cat (yes, I know that was Gwydion, not Graham) or falling off a cliff, but right now I can’t see it. And, sadly, life has no GameFAQs.

I should probably go to bed. Reflecting on this further isn’t particularly helping me, but looking back over these 1,400 words I am a little glad I put pen to paper to express these things ticking over in my mind. Perhaps someone will read them and understand me just a little better. Perhaps I’ll look back on them one day and wonder what I was worrying about. Or perhaps I really am a useless waste of space with no future whatsoever? Who knows.

Either way, bed beckons. If you read all this, thanks.

2393: The Drugs Sometimes Work

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Early last year, shortly after I lost my job at raging shithole SSE for reasons at least partly linked to my depression and anxiety, I decided enough was enough and went to the doctor to seek some chemical help with my mental health issues. I was prescribed a drug called Sertraline, which I dutifully took for well over a year.

I can’t quite tell whether or not Sertraline had any effect; I think on the whole, it did improve my mental health somewhat — although this may well be a placebo effect — though it didn’t “cure” it. There is no such thing as a magic bullet that will “cure” depression and anxiety, unfortunately; if there were, whichever drug company was able to churn it out by the ton first would doubtless become the first “megacorporation” with all the proceeds, and we’d officially be living in even more of a futuristic dystopia than we do already.

One thing I found while on Sertraline though, and I don’t know if this was the drug causing the problem or my own overactively anxious imagination, was that I had great difficulty sleeping. I’d lie awake until 3, 4 in the morning most nights, unable to get to sleep until my body was so exhausted it simply shut down. Prior to that, my brain would be rapidly darting back and forth between all manner of different thoughts — some worries, some desires, some recollections, some pure fantasies — and be far too “alert” to allow me to properly switch myself off and get some much-needed rest.

I persevered with this for probably far longer than I should have, but eventually, once again, I decided that enough was enough, and I wanted to try something new. I’d seen some positive effects on someone (who shall remain nameless for the moment) who had exhibited similar symptoms to me at times when switching from Sertraline to another drug called Mirtazapine, so I went to my doctor armed with this knowledge and asked to switch to see how I got on.

Like the other person, the difference was night and day. While Mirtazapine is also no “magic bullet” to completely alleviate depression and anxiety, one of the things that was bothering me the most — the inability to sleep, and the anxiety this caused — is “fixed”. I can go to bed at a reasonable hour now and actually get to sleep when I choose to put my head down. Rather than constantly worrying that I don’t know “how” to get to sleep — which is something that continually bothered me while I was on Sertraline, and possibly beforehand, too — I can just, you know, sleep without thinking about it, like a normal human being.

This has made quite a difference to my overall outlook on life. Getting a decent night’s sleep is important, and as soon as you start getting it again having endured a period where you haven’t had it, you really appreciate it.

Plus Mirtazapine gave me about a week of feeling perpetually stoned and having some incredibly vivid, crazy dreams, too, so if nothing else it was worth it for that experience.

2365: If I Had a Million Quid

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An awful lot of my anxieties come down to money issues. I’ve always found financial matters to be inordinately stressful, largely because there haven’t been that many periods of my life where I’ve felt particularly “secure” in this regard.

There have been a few, admittedly. When I was teaching, the pay was great, whatever other teachers might say, but unfortunately it was not worth the life-crippling stress that the rest of the job gave me. So that was out.

One of the retail jobs I had actually paid very well, too, which is unusual for retail, but probably not surprising for the company in question, who I won’t name for the moment (at least partly because I wouldn’t mind them hiring me again, please) and also perhaps not surprising given that my role wasn’t exactly traditional “sales assistant” stuff.

Then there was my work for GamePro and USgamer, which to date have been my favourite jobs, not to mention the ones I think I’ve been best at. Unfortunately, neither of those were to last; GamePro because it folded, and USgamer because of general behind the scenes assholery.

Then there was SSE, which I will name because it was a health and safety-obsessed shithole staffed with some of the most odious people I’ve ever had the misfortune to work with. Again, pay good, but the working environment — very much a culture of fearmongering and whistleblowing — was horrible.

The freelance work I’m doing at the moment also pays pretty well, but unfortunately it’s very sporadic; at the time of writing I haven’t had any for a while, so pennies are running a bit short. Andie is at least back to work now so our household will have some income again, but I am very much in need of a regular source of income.

Money anxieties naturally lead me to fantasising about what I’d do if I won the lottery, because that would take away a considerable number of the things that stress me the fuck out each and every day. It’s almost certainly never going to happen, of course, but it’s nice to dream.

If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t do anything outrageously huge. I have a few things in mind that I’d definitely do immediately: I’d pay off the mortgage on our house, I’d pay off my car and I’d clear my credit card. Then I’d probably buy an HTC Vive VR headset. And from there? Well, I wouldn’t really do anything else. I’d just live my life in the house I’m in, safe in the knowledge that I won’t have to worry about money again. I’d do the things I want to do rather than feel like I have to do; I’d write, I’d make music, I’d make games, I’d play games. I wouldn’t feel that crushing sense of guilt any time I do any of those things now because I wouldn’t be under any sort of pressure to do something more “productive” and “useful” (i.e. something that pays money) with my time.

To be honest, the dream of just living normally, only without having to worry about money — that’s far more appealing and exciting to me than any grand designs to buy a country manor or a sports car or a holiday home in exotic climes that other people often claim will be their lottery dream. Perhaps it says something about me that the only real “ambition” I have is to be comfortable and secure; opulence would be fun, I’m sure, but security is what’s going to keep you happy in the long term.

2352: Fuzzy Head

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I’ve had a horrible, fuzzy head today. I don’t mean physically — although after getting my hair cut yesterday, my head is a bit fuzzy — but rather a not terribly pleasant feeling of “detachment”; of being slightly “out of phase” with the rest of the world. And a slight headache.

I’ve felt this before, and it’s usually a symptom of depression and anxiety. In this instance, the fact I haven’t been sleeping well for the past few nights and am feeling especially worried about my future have been contributing particularly to the way I’m feeling. It’s not nice, so after writing this I’m going to go and sit in bed and relax with a bit of Ys: Memories of Celceta, then try and actually get off to sleep at a reasonable time if at all possible.

I actually have a job interview tomorrow. As usual when this happens, I’m being struck with anxiety over whether or not I’m actually suitable for the job and whether or not I’m going to make an idiot of myself in the interview. (Mind you, last time I thought I made an idiot of myself in the interview I ended up getting the job. Of course, that turned out to be the worst job I’d ever had, but that’s perhaps beside the point.) The thing I’ve been telling myself — and Andie said the same earlier — is that if I looked completely unqualified and unsuitable for this job, the company wouldn’t have got in touch and offered me an interview in the first place. This isn’t any guarantee that I’ll actually get the position, of course — given the geographical location, I’m not sure I’d want it, anyway, as it would mean a bit of a commute each day — but we’ll see.

All in all, I haven’t had a particularly good day. Not for any particular reason — nothing actually bad has happened, I just feel shitty.

Such is the way of things when your own mind likes to do its best to sabotage your life and happiness, though.

Oh well. All I can do, I guess, is take tomorrow as it comes and see how it goes. It’s not as if the interview I have tomorrow is the only iron I have in the fire at the moment, so it doesn’t really matter one way or the other as to whether I get it. But, you know, getting back into a routine and actually having an income would be nice.

One step at a time.