Slightly Quiet – the Reasons

I’ve written many times about depression and how it affects me – although at the same time I realise that I don’t actually write about its effects on me, and I rarely (if ever) write about it at the time it’s all happening.

If I’m honest, this post isn’t going to change that status quo, I’m afraid.

I’m truly, truly awful at asking for help, and even at saying “No, I’m not doing well”. I go quiet, curl in on myself, and fight through it, being the only person I know I can rely on. I guess I’ll never really be an open book, it’s just not in my nature. I like to think I’m open, that people who truly know me should/would know what’s going on in my head, but I know that’s not the case. In many ways I am open, there’s very little I won’t disclose or talk about. But – ah, that infamous ‘but’ – I don’t disclose it at the right time, at the time of need. Afterwards, and with hindsight, yup. But at the time? Nope.

So – the last six months here haven’t been overly fun. It’s mostly been work-related, but that’s then had knock-on effects into every other aspect of life, which is never a good thing.

I’ve been more aware this year of my work instability, it’s been very much a year of ups and downs – and more downs than ups, by a significant margin. With everything else, I thought I’d aim at permanent roles rather than contracts, but the two perm roles I’ve had this year have been utter, absolute dogs. Roles and situations I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. (In balance, I’ve also had a contract that was one of the worst and dullest in recent memory, so it’s not been a good year all round)

The first of the perm roles lasted exactly three weeks. I knew within a couple of days that it was a dog (the interview whanged on about how positive everyone was, and within those two days, I knew that was a sack of shit, as was the product they were working on)  I left and quickly moved on to Job Two, which turned out to be even more of a dog – although this time because of the owner, rather than the work itself. The work was grand, the owner was (is) a cunt. I won’t talk about it, because there’s a lot of legal tat still ongoing. Safe to say, signifcant dollops of broken employment law, disregard for Working Time Regulations, Contracts, and many many other things.

More than anything else, it was Job Two that burned me out, and pushed me further down the slope. It’s not been a good year anyway, but that job was the final shove.

I left there at the end of September, once I’d been paid. I didn’t have anything to go to, didn’t even have any applications or interviews lined up. I just knew I needed to be out. Even with my experience of interviews and so on, knowing there’s no safety blanket makes that a pretty nerve-jangling decision.

It took me two weeks to get a new job, that was all. I’ve been ridiculously lucky, and the new contract seems like it’ll be OK – I’m two weeks in, and it seems to be going well.

All this is most of why I’ve been quiet for the last few months.

I’m hoping that things will start their slow build back to normality – or at least my usual approximation of it – and that things here will come back too. We’ll see.