(no subject)
[obligatory bi-monthly disclaimer: not dead yet]
# the worthwhile stuff: Oct 13th - Jan 3rd, in reverse order:
# everything else:
To begin at the end, in job related news, while I've been whining about this job one way or the other for about as long as I've been on livejournal, last week it's become very, very clear that this will be the year I'll finally have to make an actual effort to find something new, because there's no telling what will (or won't) be next year.
Dear God. Maybe that's the kind of kick in my lethargic ass that I needed, but I'm not dealing very well. And am still not particularly motivated, sad as that is. I should be finishing a job application right now, but... (Finish, right. I got so frustrated Thursday that I basically went, fuck it, I'll never get this job anyway, and wrote the whole thing more or less completely honestly instead of in neueberuflicheHeruasfordrungblablabla job application-speak. Probably will have to start from a scratch.) Also fixed a date for some kind of potential analysis/counselling thingy in the hope that this will provide some inspiration and not just prove to be a waste of money, because after last year's failure with bookkeeping I'm at a complete loss at what to do now.
I've been trying and failing to write this entry since November. Flickr's changed its embed code since, apparently.
Last year was the kind of wasted year that I'd like to scratch from the calendar and from my life in general. By December I was so completely exhausted that for the first time I called off the family Christmas baking because I simply couldn't face it, especially not the variety at my sister's, with a 75+ mins. trip either way and trying to get some baking done while the older niece wants entertaining and the younger looking after, with my sister's mother and father in law contributing professional advice & efficiency. I did two batches at my parents', their respective favourite cookies, and that was that. Some regret for breaking with a literally life-long tradition, but not all that much, considering.
Things were supposed to change last year (implied: for the better), but it all went in exactly the wrong direction and now in some ways it felt/feels like years ago when I basically already knew my diss wasn't going anywhere and that I'd never have a job in that field, but couldn't bring myself to actually admit it by quitting uni. But then at least I suppose I at least implicitly knew there was a future, whereas now I just feel terribly defeated. I have even less of an idea now what I'm supposed to do, and while that probably sounds overly melodramatic as per usual, on some level it feels as if I broke my brain by forcing myself going through with the bookkeeping class and exam. It's not just that I cut myself off so much that I can't get rid of the sense of detachment and still am mostly unable to get genuinely - or non-genuinely, at that - interested in or feel something about anything, but it also feels like I dropped about half of my IQ points over the course of last year. I used to like analysing things and that's completely gone. My brain has gone terribly, terribly quiet. Whatever energy I still have goes into Russian, but even there progress is slow and I can barely motivate myself to study vocabulary any longer.
Defeated and hopeless, on just about every level.
(I might need a holiday, but I can't bring myself to waste a week or two of it at this time of the year.)
There's been a couple of times earlier this year, especially when I got too little sleep on top of everything else, when I caught myself in the mirror and the look in my eyes genuinely shocked me. I've felt like crap before, but it's never visibly showed like this.
It's become too easy, much too automatic, to just take a step back and tell myself that I don't care, that it doesn't matter. One some level I guess it makes life easier, at work too, less anxiety, less getting worked up about things I can't change anyway, but it's not really conductive to getting things done and it's not something I seem to be able to do selectively. How the hell do I unlearn that again?
(I know what helped me snap out of the worst of it eventually last time, but I don't think there'll be someone to crush on that will save me this time around.)
There was even a time last autumn where I thought I should have handled the H. situation differently, because at least I felt something then, and I have the increasing suspicion that this was my first and last chance at someone whom I liked and who at least was on some level interested in me. Maybe I just should have said fuck ethics, it's not my marriage, and fuck getting hurt, because it's not as if I didn't end up hurting anyway, and gone for it. But too late now anyway, as always.
Not entirely unrelated I've come to the realisation that my whole life has been one cowardly decision after another, or more precisely, avoidance of decisions, taking the easy way out and not risking anything, ever. But again this is something that I haven't the slightest idea how to change.
Paradoxically, I had an unexpectedly good New Year, or more precisely a good Jan 1st. Dec 31st was uneventful, work, getting buzzed with coworkers and bosses afterwards, returning home, watching the last two episodes of B5 (rewatch marathon over the autumn), crying through Sleeping in Light as per usual, and completely ignoring New Year otherwise, but on the 1st I got up early and went for a hiking tour on the Hohe Wand. It was a sunny and quite warm day, and it felt wonderful to be outside again, with the sun on my face the whole day after weeks of being almost exclusively inside and not even seeing a lot of daylight.
It was the kind of day where you actually believe you can get it done. Celebrated by walking over the open side of the skywalk despite my fear of heights and (completely unplanned) made the New Year's resolution to attempt to maintain this state of mind, because if I felt peaceful and balanced like that, rather than constantly panicking about what I needed to do and beating myself up for failing, I might actually manage to get things done.
It's impossible, though. Back at work all I can do is make it though the day somehow and my mental horizon is a blank wall about half a meter from my face.
I keep coming back to last spring's realisation, that may problem is not actual depression as such, it's that my life makes me unhappy.
But how do I get out of this vicious circle? Why is my life always one step forwards, two steps back?
[ETA: Oh look what I wrote six years ago (ETA of ETA: The fuck? That was six years ago already?)... Can I unlearn to feel again? Can I withdraw into that state of mind where nothing matters? I've done it before, after all. Should I? Probably not, but it seems the only way to gain a certain distance, and I can't deal with emotions when the only thing they ever do is hurt and hardly ever bring any pleasure. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.]
# the worthwhile stuff: Oct 13th - Jan 3rd, in reverse order:
# everything else:
To begin at the end, in job related news, while I've been whining about this job one way or the other for about as long as I've been on livejournal, last week it's become very, very clear that this will be the year I'll finally have to make an actual effort to find something new, because there's no telling what will (or won't) be next year.
Dear God. Maybe that's the kind of kick in my lethargic ass that I needed, but I'm not dealing very well. And am still not particularly motivated, sad as that is. I should be finishing a job application right now, but... (Finish, right. I got so frustrated Thursday that I basically went, fuck it, I'll never get this job anyway, and wrote the whole thing more or less completely honestly instead of in neueberuflicheHeruasfordrungblablabla job application-speak. Probably will have to start from a scratch.) Also fixed a date for some kind of potential analysis/counselling thingy in the hope that this will provide some inspiration and not just prove to be a waste of money, because after last year's failure with bookkeeping I'm at a complete loss at what to do now.
I've been trying and failing to write this entry since November. Flickr's changed its embed code since, apparently.
Last year was the kind of wasted year that I'd like to scratch from the calendar and from my life in general. By December I was so completely exhausted that for the first time I called off the family Christmas baking because I simply couldn't face it, especially not the variety at my sister's, with a 75+ mins. trip either way and trying to get some baking done while the older niece wants entertaining and the younger looking after, with my sister's mother and father in law contributing professional advice & efficiency. I did two batches at my parents', their respective favourite cookies, and that was that. Some regret for breaking with a literally life-long tradition, but not all that much, considering.
Things were supposed to change last year (implied: for the better), but it all went in exactly the wrong direction and now in some ways it felt/feels like years ago when I basically already knew my diss wasn't going anywhere and that I'd never have a job in that field, but couldn't bring myself to actually admit it by quitting uni. But then at least I suppose I at least implicitly knew there was a future, whereas now I just feel terribly defeated. I have even less of an idea now what I'm supposed to do, and while that probably sounds overly melodramatic as per usual, on some level it feels as if I broke my brain by forcing myself going through with the bookkeeping class and exam. It's not just that I cut myself off so much that I can't get rid of the sense of detachment and still am mostly unable to get genuinely - or non-genuinely, at that - interested in or feel something about anything, but it also feels like I dropped about half of my IQ points over the course of last year. I used to like analysing things and that's completely gone. My brain has gone terribly, terribly quiet. Whatever energy I still have goes into Russian, but even there progress is slow and I can barely motivate myself to study vocabulary any longer.
Defeated and hopeless, on just about every level.
(I might need a holiday, but I can't bring myself to waste a week or two of it at this time of the year.)
There's been a couple of times earlier this year, especially when I got too little sleep on top of everything else, when I caught myself in the mirror and the look in my eyes genuinely shocked me. I've felt like crap before, but it's never visibly showed like this.
It's become too easy, much too automatic, to just take a step back and tell myself that I don't care, that it doesn't matter. One some level I guess it makes life easier, at work too, less anxiety, less getting worked up about things I can't change anyway, but it's not really conductive to getting things done and it's not something I seem to be able to do selectively. How the hell do I unlearn that again?
(I know what helped me snap out of the worst of it eventually last time, but I don't think there'll be someone to crush on that will save me this time around.)
There was even a time last autumn where I thought I should have handled the H. situation differently, because at least I felt something then, and I have the increasing suspicion that this was my first and last chance at someone whom I liked and who at least was on some level interested in me. Maybe I just should have said fuck ethics, it's not my marriage, and fuck getting hurt, because it's not as if I didn't end up hurting anyway, and gone for it. But too late now anyway, as always.
Not entirely unrelated I've come to the realisation that my whole life has been one cowardly decision after another, or more precisely, avoidance of decisions, taking the easy way out and not risking anything, ever. But again this is something that I haven't the slightest idea how to change.
Paradoxically, I had an unexpectedly good New Year, or more precisely a good Jan 1st. Dec 31st was uneventful, work, getting buzzed with coworkers and bosses afterwards, returning home, watching the last two episodes of B5 (rewatch marathon over the autumn), crying through Sleeping in Light as per usual, and completely ignoring New Year otherwise, but on the 1st I got up early and went for a hiking tour on the Hohe Wand. It was a sunny and quite warm day, and it felt wonderful to be outside again, with the sun on my face the whole day after weeks of being almost exclusively inside and not even seeing a lot of daylight.
It was the kind of day where you actually believe you can get it done. Celebrated by walking over the open side of the skywalk despite my fear of heights and (completely unplanned) made the New Year's resolution to attempt to maintain this state of mind, because if I felt peaceful and balanced like that, rather than constantly panicking about what I needed to do and beating myself up for failing, I might actually manage to get things done.
It's impossible, though. Back at work all I can do is make it though the day somehow and my mental horizon is a blank wall about half a meter from my face.
I keep coming back to last spring's realisation, that may problem is not actual depression as such, it's that my life makes me unhappy.
But how do I get out of this vicious circle? Why is my life always one step forwards, two steps back?
[ETA: Oh look what I wrote six years ago (ETA of ETA: The fuck? That was six years ago already?)... Can I unlearn to feel again? Can I withdraw into that state of mind where nothing matters? I've done it before, after all. Should I? Probably not, but it seems the only way to gain a certain distance, and I can't deal with emotions when the only thing they ever do is hurt and hardly ever bring any pleasure. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.]