rollercoaster rides

Update on this week...

The stoooory so far... After the meltdown in a staff meeting earlier this week our intrepid hero decided that work was one of the major contributing frustrations and was not allowing him to work through the issues that he was having. The way things were going, he would have been up a bell tower with either a long rope or a high powered rifle by the end of the week. At this point, he decided that it wasn't in his best interests to remain in work and made an appointment with the doctor to see if he could get a sick note.

Aaaand now, the exciting conclusion to this chapter.

The doctor suggested that my meds be upped to a double dose and signed me off for a month. She told me to not even think about work for a week, no e-mails, no contact at all there were a couple of revelations in that appointment, for me and for Ms. J who had accompanied me. As a consequence, for the past few days, I've been working on stuff that doesn't tax my brain. The leather work that I do, could be regarded as a type of therapy for me. I can get out of my brain for a little while and be creative. Thing is that if I am working on commissions, I get stressed with getting it right for the client, so I've decided to knock the commissions on the head for the time being. I'll still make new stuff, but it's going to be either selling from stock or on the stall... This means that I am going to have to keep a tighter control of stock levels on the Etsy and on the other selling sites that I use.

The insomnia appears to be never ending at the moment and I am getting about 4 hrs per night. On the plus side, due to upping my meds, the lack of appetite seems to have kicked in, so that might be something that I can get under control.

So yeah, rollercoaster or what this week... Ms. J has remained a constant levelling influence.
I love that woman!

The hardest thing to do is realising that you need time to heal.

That turned out to be the hardest e-mail I have ever composed. Admitting to my line manager that I have some serious problems and need some time off to see if I can work them out. I realise that my job is a grounding thing, and that it helps me with a routine, and that I have just done the thing that I feared most. Asking for sick time.
Those of you that know me, know that I am a pretty self reliant person and my upbringing doesn't tolerate weakness in any form. Well, today I am at my weakest out of the is whole experience. I feel as though I am shrouded in eggshell and to drop me would result in scrambled Mark.

I hope work are understanding. They are traditionally very good at recognising mental health issues.

I didn't want it to come down to this as my position is a little precarious at the moment, but that is the very thing that is exacerbating the problems that I am experiencing. I dunno. After the outburst at a meeting yesterday, I don't feel as though I can go back and act as though nothing happened. It may seem like going into hiding, but I am not sure if they had been briefed as to my looney toons status.

Chemically, I am still experiencing side effects to the citalopram and maybe this episode has been heightened due to the lack of sleep that I've been experiencing as a result of the medication. There is also a very frustrating side effect that au won't go into details with, but suffice to say that some of the chemical make up of the drug is bromide which hasn't helped either.

What's the solution??? I dunno to be honest. Maybe change medication, maybe stop it altogether as the positives are beginning to get swamped by the negatives. I tried getting an appointment to see the doctor today, no luck. I'll try again tomorrow though.

Fucking, Fuck work! Fucking Fuck!

Well there's a thing... I thought I was doing fantastically... Well, I was doing fantastically until job changes reared their ugly little heads. The anxiety descended until I exploded during a staff meeting and suggested that I submit my resignation. There are big changes coming over the horizon with my job and I am not sure that I like these changes. If merely discussing the changes is doing this to me, what the hell is planning for and implementing them going to do to my mental health??? I think the time has come to possibly think about taking some time on the sick as I am just getting worse with this crap that's happening.

I don't like to load this shit onto my colleagues, but the changes have been compounded with other problems directly relating to my work environment and work life that have been growing and growing for the past few years. Does anyone know anything about career breaks or sick time?

4 weeks in, the drugs do work! In your face The Verve!

Can it really only be 4 weeks since I started taking the happy pills?

Blimey!

I have to say that I feel a hell of a lot better in myself. A case in point was the other night when I was performing. I screwed up one of the effects which would have sent me to pieces and jarred my confidence before I started taking the medication. It barely stopped me in my stride. I just shrugged it off and moved on. Afterwards, I didn't beat myself up about it. I didn't go into a huge post mortem of it on the way home, I just accepted that sometimes stuff happens that is outside your control and moved on... This may sound like pretty small potatoes to some people. But to me, this is a huge revelatory thing and is proof positive that the drugs really do work. Yes, I am still having irrational bouts of anger and negative emotions, but they are becoming few and far between.

On the plus side, I think my confidence is building back up again to the point where I don't feel the need to be affirmed for every decision that I make which is having a knock on effect with the creative work that I am doing. New designs are coming thick and fast from Broadarrow Jack and I will be premiering some new stuff at events and stalls over the coming few months.

There have been some negative side effects that have been in evidence, some quite embarrassing. I tend to sweat a lot more noticably now and as a consequence, I don't want to do some stuff because of the very obvious over sweating. I am assured however that the majority of this will calm down and probably get back to normal. I don't mind the negative side effects as much, because the positive effects that the drugs are having are absolutely fabulous. And the best thing of all, I haven't had to have any time off work as a result of this whole process. I may be asking for a bit of extended leave at some point in the future so that I can actually relax for a while without worrying about work and how secure my job is etc. but that is for the future and who knows what that holds...

this may be my last blog post for a little while as the worst of the hurdles are over with I feel. I will keep updating as and when I feel that I have something to report.

Other than that I don't want to keep reporting situation normal blogs Developments are interesting to read about. What I had for my lunch and what time that I got to bed last night are pretty boring for everyone (myself included). So, thank you all for following the process that I've been going through from the very bottom of my bottom, please feel free to keep it on a back burner and I will update everyone on the Facebook if I blog up again.

Peace!

Two weeks in... There is no spoon

Well, two weeks into the prescription and there have been a few things that have given me cause for concern. I won't talk about all of them because I don't think that is appropriate. Suffice to say that with Citalopram, I began to experience some interesting (although not entirely unpleasant) side effects. There are one or two worrying side effects however. As a person that needs to mark work and give detailed feedback, I have experienced (over the past couple of days) a general fog when it comes to formulating words and marshalling them into a coherent thought process. This is a pretty bad thing as the feedback that I give has got to be detailed and provide the student with a good idea of where they have excelled or where they are going wrong.
The blog is slightly different as I don't need to be quite so focussed with it.
One of the other things that I have noticed is that I haven't been experiencing a balancing of moods, I've been as depressed or as angry etc. as I have been all through this process, but the bouts of extreme emotion have been lasting a shorter and shorter time. This is very much in the plus column as far as I am concerned. I have been genuinely smiling a lot more since starting on the pills, however the bouts of positive mood have been becoming shorter and shorter too. Leaving me with a sort of low grade ennui. I'm not sure that I like it to be honest. But if this is what is necessary to give the therapy a chance to work then I suppose that I have to weather the storm. Concentration has been an issue at work. If I am doing physical work then I am OK, sitting and reading is not going well (back to the problems generating feedback). Prior to the advent of the pills, I had no trouble at all with reading the work of students and generating pages of feedback for them...

so yeah, just a quick update. I'll post something more meaty once the first course has been taken (I still have 2 weeks left of this course) with some detailed pro's and con's as when I was first looking into the possibility of citalopram, I tended to find either personal accounts of negative experiences or clinical accounts of positive experiences... There didn't seem to be much in the way of a personal analysis from both sides looking at it objectively. Hopefully, I'll be able to bridge that gap.

Time to grab the bull by the horns and all that

A few weeks since my last blog post. Thanks for the well wishes everyone. I know that you are still rooting for me even though my head is still saying "They're at the brink of not giving a shit about your mental shenanigans any more, give it up you hack!"
And that in part is the reason for the blog today.
Tackling the problem head on. Taking the medication that was prescribed to me last year by the doctor (Who really does know better than I do despite my protestations).
Everyone has said, if you're sick you take the medication, if you have diabetes, talking about it won't help with it getting better. In this instance I have come to the conclusion that I need to step down off my high fucking horse and listen to the experience of other people. I thought I knew my own mind, turns out I was just being stubborn and pig headed.

So yeah, I might be a bit funny for a couple of weeks as the drugs start to work their magic. I have no idea about how (if any) the side effects will affect me but the more common ones are dry mouth (solution: Have a bottle of water with me at all times) and potential stomach churning leading to nausea (solution: stop eating all of the pies and then I won't have as much to throw up if I need to). which has an added bonus of possibly less food going in my talking hole and as a result, I might lose a little weight which in turn will lead to a boost in self confidence etc. (Hey, I can turn anything into a positive, or not as the case may be.)

I'll still be doing the talking therapy/CBT (NOT the compulsory basic test for motorbikes OR the naughty winky torture for the BDSM inclined, get your filthy mind out of the gutters) and I'll keep up with the blog as and when to chart my progress.

So, here's hoping that it'll be a positive step in the right direction.

Let's face it, it couldn't get much worse than it has been recently.

In other news, I have another magic gig in June so getting back on the horse there too. Who knows where it will go after that as that's the last firm booking this year after other things fell through etc. We'll see. Maybe it'll go on hiatus while I develop some new effects. Maybe, I'll keep adapting stuff to my own nefarious ends, maybe, it'll fizzle and go pop... That's for the future and who the hell knows what the future holds.

Wish me luck guys.

Oh and I've just realised that the blog has now had over 1,000 views. That seems to be a cause for celebration, but then as this about my inner anguish and turmoil, it says more about the ghouls who read these pages than it does about my writing style. You should be ashamed of yourselves and stop reading the blog right away!!!
Please, disregard that previous statement. Don't stop reading the blog!

Ermmm....

Look, hand puppets!

*Scarpers!*

It's been a month or so. How's it going? You still looney toons?

Blimey! Has it really been a month since my last post? Well no, slightly longer than that, but I'm sure that you know what I mean.

What's been happening you ask? What's the latest juicy little tidbit of information that the Black Dog has been getting up to with me recently?

Well, there is a reason that I haven't updated in over a month. I haven't felt up to it. I had a few set backs recently and I have been looking at the way that I dealt with them. The short answer to that is 'not well'.

There is a support network that has grown up around me, people are generally still in the caring phase rather than the 'just fucking get over it already' and 'are you still fucking mental or what?' phases. It's been a testing time really. I can see that some friends are becoming weary of the constant paranoia and in-securities that I've been displaying recently.

On the plus side, I have made a decision... Remember waaaaaay back when I first started the blog? When I said that I didn't want to go down the chemical route? Well, I've decided to do a U-turn on that one. The paranoia is getting worse. The therapy sessions are too few and far between to be of any real use as I can't actually remember from one session to the next what the hell I was supposed to be doing, (Did I mention that I have memory problems too? Well I do.)

So as a coping mechanism and just to give my loved ones a little respite, I've decided that it's in everyone's best interests if I give the Citalopram a go. I'm not particularly happy about it as it feels as though I am giving in and letting the chemicals take hold, but after talking to some good friends over this past weekend in Whitby, who have been on the receiving end of this form of treatment (as well as the talking therapies), they recommended it to me and this time, I think it sank in.

So I have no idea how the pills will affect me, for some people, it's like a chemical cosh for a couple of weeks while the drugs suffuse throughout the body while they make their presence known, with others apparently, it's hardly felt other than the positive benefits. I have to admit, when I was originally researching the drug that I was prescribed, I did tend to lean more towards the darker and less than positive websites to justify my decision.

So, that's it, shit got bad, as bad as it could get for a little while where I really was rocking backwards and forwards in my chair, but (and I hate myself for using buzzwords and bizniz speak) it's time to be proactive, time for me to stop the fucking moping around and get on with stuff. I have had a real problem with motivation recently and the completion of a couple of larger orders and one of the longer term display pieces for exhibitions etc. have helped me get back on an even keel. I'm not there yet, but hopefully, the pills will help.

Here's hoping. The next blog may be written from the asylum using my allotted weekly internet kitten credits! We shall see. I was going to write 'Kill or Cure' there, but I'm not sure that is appropriate.

Wish me luck Oh and a Happy Beltane to all of my pagan chums. Here's hoping that the lighter days bring lighter moods for all!