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Blogging about work is hawt. Also I am emo.
The thing, is, I don't really have any complaints! Usually talking about work means WHINE WHINE WHINE MY BOSS SUCKS MY COWORKERS ARE DICKS WHINE WHINE.
Which I can understand -- I've worked in less ideal environments before.
However, I gotta say -- it's nice that when my boss returns from a vacation and comes to check in with my progress I suddenly feel more motivated to work, more inspired to creativity and, frankly, more excited about being alive (1).
This is because my boss rocks. He's that rare creature -- someone who is actually good at managing people and also employed as a manager. He worked his way up from the bottom, so he knows all about how the job is done -- he was a programmer himself, he understands the process, and when he has nothing better to do or we're in a major crunch he'll actually get his hands dirty with some code. He's really helped me adapt to corporate culture and federal employment culture, guiding me through office politics and gently making me feel like an utter twat when I screw up -- because I deserved it and it drove the lesson home. I'm now extremely well-equipped to deal with office life, which is a major life skill for someone in my line of work.
He's frank and understanding and lenient about things like when we can come in or what we wear -- but strict and demanding when it matters: he's really good at making sure the job gets done and done well. (Again, it helps that he knows what "a job well done" looks like.) He doesn't lord his position over anybody on his team but will joyfully bully anyone not in our team to make sure we get the best equipment, people, time slots, etc. that we can. He also shields his developers from the bureaucracy, which is a MAJOR plus -- he pretty much takes care of all administrative details, leaving us developers with very few interruptions to us doing what we're paid to do.
As a result, our team consistently puts out the best products in the shortest time with the best documentation.
In short, he's a great boss.
Sure, I have some gripes about work -- my coworkers annoy the shit out of me sometimes, especially my officemate, but they're largely competent and easy enough to get along with. I have major issues with our development platform -- we use the .NET environment and I HATE it because it's sloppy and ugly and generally awful -- but it's something I can't change (har har, federal standards and contracts, lawl) and have gotten used to working around. But really, I'm lucky in my job. I'm paid well, I got great benefits out of it, some of them for life (401k *CHEERS WILDLY*), I'm gaining valuable experience, and I enjoy working here.
Honestly.
It's just that I've been feeling kind of like crap lately, due to school drama and pointy-things-in-my-mouth drama and family drama. I'd forgotten that work is actually fun.
So here's the deal with the footnote up there about being more excited to be alive again:
(1) I've been pretty depressed lately, which really isn't anything new or exciting. I've actually decided to see a therapist for the first time since I was forced to by my counselor in high school. And I wanted to honestly give it a shot this time, since I wasn't so hot on the idea as a teenager. I'm not sure if it's helping or what... it's at least interesting to talk everything out with my therapist, though so far it's really just been me talking a lot, with very little therapy work being done. But then, I have a lot to talk about when it comes to explaining why I'm depressed. I mean, I've talked straight through each and every hour-long therapy session so far (I've had five, I think, so that means I have talked for five full hours) and we're still not done with the background information.
On the bright side, he did in fact confirm the diagnosis: I am indeed depressed and not just making it up! That's actually good to know, because I wonder sometimes if I'm not just being silly and oversensitive or something. But apparently, no, there's something pretty wrong with my head! Believe it or not this is reassuring information for me.
Anyway. So I've been pretty depressed. I've had a lot of reasons, but it immediately got worse after I came home for vacation. For one, I was with my family again, and that's a whole host of issues in itself. For another, my boss was on vacation and I had little to motivate me at work.
Oh. That's right. I also had surgery to look forward to.
I had my first surgery on Friday last: I got all four wisdom teeth pulled. I was VERY nervous beforehand because (a) FIRST SURGERY (b) NEEDLES INVOLVED (c) they were going to FUCK WITH MY MOUTH. For those not in the know, I have an embarrassingly strong needle phobia (can't even watch people get shots in movies) and an extremely sensitive mouth (very sensitive to pain, heat, and flavour -- for example, drinks that are just warm to others will literally BURN me -- turn red and puff up and everything). So I think it's pretty understandable that I was kind of twitchy about the whole thing.
But I went through with it and it went fine and hopefully I will never need oral surgery again. I'm super cranky about not being able to chew -- you just don't realize how orgasmic the act of chewing is until you can't do it for a week. Although I can't open my mouth far enough right now anyway -- in addition to having a sensitive mouth, I also have a very small jaw -- hell, I'm just a small person in general. So to get IN my mouth to do the surgery, they cranked my jaw WAY open -- pulling the corners of my mouth (which cracked and bled a bit) and doing SOMETHING to my jaw joints/muscles such that they're extremely sore and I can't open my mouth wide enough to fit a teaspoon in flatwise comfortably. I'm pretty tired of my bland diet and of the endless amounts of live-culture yogurt I have to eat to counterbalance the ridiculous antibiotics I've been given (SERIOUSLY THE PILLS ARE AN INCH LONG GUYS WHAT THE FUCK). I was also pretty put out by the pain meds I had to take for the first few days -- the Vicodin wasn't working for me so my mom gave me her old Percoset and man, that worked good. I hated it. I was completely loopy and high -- and really, I don't like the feeling of being drunk or high, especially when all I get to do is lie in bed and try to focus my eyes on the computer screen. In my view pretty much the only benefit of being unsober is how it lowers my level of social anxiety.
So. I've spent the last few days flopping around in bed, in pain, in my family's house, with nothing to do.
Small wonder I dropped like a rock into a depressive phase and started crying randomly -- I get depressed most easily when I fell I'm being unproductive, and when I'm too drugged to work and forbidden to even chew, yeah, that gets me pretty good. I see little point in life then -- nothing dramatic like being suicidal, I just get terminally uninterested and, well. Lie there and flop around like a fish. It's pretty sad. I'm still going through the Granddaddy of Existential Crises -- the "Why Am I Here?" one. I see little point in my existence unless I'm helping people or creating/producing something worthwhile. When I do too little of either I basically shut down until I manage to pull myself together to drag my ass out of it. It's pretty retarded, I guess. I'm working on it. But that's how I roll -- if I feel unhelpful and/or unproductive, I fall into a depressive state where I -- guess what! -- don't do anything, worsening the problem.
So I sloped back to work today and listlessly fiddled with my project. Then my boss showed up, critiqued what I had and gave me new assignments and suddenly I felt much better. I'm still in a depressive phase, I can tell, but I feel more active and productive, which will help put me on the road to something less ridiculous. I still have a long-term problem. I'm still refusing medication although it's quite obvious I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. But for now, I feel a little better.
Which I can understand -- I've worked in less ideal environments before.
However, I gotta say -- it's nice that when my boss returns from a vacation and comes to check in with my progress I suddenly feel more motivated to work, more inspired to creativity and, frankly, more excited about being alive (1).
This is because my boss rocks. He's that rare creature -- someone who is actually good at managing people and also employed as a manager. He worked his way up from the bottom, so he knows all about how the job is done -- he was a programmer himself, he understands the process, and when he has nothing better to do or we're in a major crunch he'll actually get his hands dirty with some code. He's really helped me adapt to corporate culture and federal employment culture, guiding me through office politics and gently making me feel like an utter twat when I screw up -- because I deserved it and it drove the lesson home. I'm now extremely well-equipped to deal with office life, which is a major life skill for someone in my line of work.
He's frank and understanding and lenient about things like when we can come in or what we wear -- but strict and demanding when it matters: he's really good at making sure the job gets done and done well. (Again, it helps that he knows what "a job well done" looks like.) He doesn't lord his position over anybody on his team but will joyfully bully anyone not in our team to make sure we get the best equipment, people, time slots, etc. that we can. He also shields his developers from the bureaucracy, which is a MAJOR plus -- he pretty much takes care of all administrative details, leaving us developers with very few interruptions to us doing what we're paid to do.
As a result, our team consistently puts out the best products in the shortest time with the best documentation.
In short, he's a great boss.
Sure, I have some gripes about work -- my coworkers annoy the shit out of me sometimes, especially my officemate, but they're largely competent and easy enough to get along with. I have major issues with our development platform -- we use the .NET environment and I HATE it because it's sloppy and ugly and generally awful -- but it's something I can't change (har har, federal standards and contracts, lawl) and have gotten used to working around. But really, I'm lucky in my job. I'm paid well, I got great benefits out of it, some of them for life (401k *CHEERS WILDLY*), I'm gaining valuable experience, and I enjoy working here.
Honestly.
It's just that I've been feeling kind of like crap lately, due to school drama and pointy-things-in-my-mouth drama and family drama. I'd forgotten that work is actually fun.
So here's the deal with the footnote up there about being more excited to be alive again:
(1) I've been pretty depressed lately, which really isn't anything new or exciting. I've actually decided to see a therapist for the first time since I was forced to by my counselor in high school. And I wanted to honestly give it a shot this time, since I wasn't so hot on the idea as a teenager. I'm not sure if it's helping or what... it's at least interesting to talk everything out with my therapist, though so far it's really just been me talking a lot, with very little therapy work being done. But then, I have a lot to talk about when it comes to explaining why I'm depressed. I mean, I've talked straight through each and every hour-long therapy session so far (I've had five, I think, so that means I have talked for five full hours) and we're still not done with the background information.
On the bright side, he did in fact confirm the diagnosis: I am indeed depressed and not just making it up! That's actually good to know, because I wonder sometimes if I'm not just being silly and oversensitive or something. But apparently, no, there's something pretty wrong with my head! Believe it or not this is reassuring information for me.
Anyway. So I've been pretty depressed. I've had a lot of reasons, but it immediately got worse after I came home for vacation. For one, I was with my family again, and that's a whole host of issues in itself. For another, my boss was on vacation and I had little to motivate me at work.
Oh. That's right. I also had surgery to look forward to.
I had my first surgery on Friday last: I got all four wisdom teeth pulled. I was VERY nervous beforehand because (a) FIRST SURGERY (b) NEEDLES INVOLVED (c) they were going to FUCK WITH MY MOUTH. For those not in the know, I have an embarrassingly strong needle phobia (can't even watch people get shots in movies) and an extremely sensitive mouth (very sensitive to pain, heat, and flavour -- for example, drinks that are just warm to others will literally BURN me -- turn red and puff up and everything). So I think it's pretty understandable that I was kind of twitchy about the whole thing.
But I went through with it and it went fine and hopefully I will never need oral surgery again. I'm super cranky about not being able to chew -- you just don't realize how orgasmic the act of chewing is until you can't do it for a week. Although I can't open my mouth far enough right now anyway -- in addition to having a sensitive mouth, I also have a very small jaw -- hell, I'm just a small person in general. So to get IN my mouth to do the surgery, they cranked my jaw WAY open -- pulling the corners of my mouth (which cracked and bled a bit) and doing SOMETHING to my jaw joints/muscles such that they're extremely sore and I can't open my mouth wide enough to fit a teaspoon in flatwise comfortably. I'm pretty tired of my bland diet and of the endless amounts of live-culture yogurt I have to eat to counterbalance the ridiculous antibiotics I've been given (SERIOUSLY THE PILLS ARE AN INCH LONG GUYS WHAT THE FUCK). I was also pretty put out by the pain meds I had to take for the first few days -- the Vicodin wasn't working for me so my mom gave me her old Percoset and man, that worked good. I hated it. I was completely loopy and high -- and really, I don't like the feeling of being drunk or high, especially when all I get to do is lie in bed and try to focus my eyes on the computer screen. In my view pretty much the only benefit of being unsober is how it lowers my level of social anxiety.
So. I've spent the last few days flopping around in bed, in pain, in my family's house, with nothing to do.
Small wonder I dropped like a rock into a depressive phase and started crying randomly -- I get depressed most easily when I fell I'm being unproductive, and when I'm too drugged to work and forbidden to even chew, yeah, that gets me pretty good. I see little point in life then -- nothing dramatic like being suicidal, I just get terminally uninterested and, well. Lie there and flop around like a fish. It's pretty sad. I'm still going through the Granddaddy of Existential Crises -- the "Why Am I Here?" one. I see little point in my existence unless I'm helping people or creating/producing something worthwhile. When I do too little of either I basically shut down until I manage to pull myself together to drag my ass out of it. It's pretty retarded, I guess. I'm working on it. But that's how I roll -- if I feel unhelpful and/or unproductive, I fall into a depressive state where I -- guess what! -- don't do anything, worsening the problem.
So I sloped back to work today and listlessly fiddled with my project. Then my boss showed up, critiqued what I had and gave me new assignments and suddenly I felt much better. I'm still in a depressive phase, I can tell, but I feel more active and productive, which will help put me on the road to something less ridiculous. I still have a long-term problem. I'm still refusing medication although it's quite obvious I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. But for now, I feel a little better.
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And, well, the depression thing, really it's not news -- I just whine about it sometimes. It's at least partly hereditary, so I've had it pretty much my whole life. I'm just trying to see how I can live around it -- I think of things like depression as something that you just have to deal with, not something to use as an excuse to live life less fully or as something to blame when things go wrong. It's like any other lifelong condition -- you find out what works to help you live normally in spite of it, and that's that =)
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I think you have a healthy outlook on it, at least. I dislike when people try to use things as an excuse to justify bad behavior or reasons they hurt others. I suppose I should do the same thing and stop making justifications all over the place for my own bundle of issues, eh? xD
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Did they ever figure out what it was that set you off -- the gas or the anaesthesia? Maybe if you ever need to be put under again they could like use a different family or something. But really I am not a fan of surgery and had avoided it successfully up till now -- I researched the hell out of the wisdom tooth thing, since I knew a lot of people got it JUST BECAUSE it might maybe cause problems at some point maybe kinda. I found all kinds of articles about how extractions were overprescribed and a lot of people could have done without, etc. and was going to confront my dentist with the news... until they took detailed x-rays and turns out that with my tiny crowded mouth wisdom teeth would have wreaked merry havoc in there. Damn.
Anyway, yeah, no surgery ever again if I can help it. People who get elective surgery for trivial cosmetic reasons (like, things other than major disfigurements and such) are CRAZY.
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I've been taking steps to make it better for close to a decade now, really. It's just a matter of finding what will work for me. I mean, this is something I'll have my entire life, so like anyone else with a lifelong problem, I just have to find how I can live how I want to anyway.
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This week, I tried to tell my psychiatrist I'm depressed--and she told me I wasn't. Actually, that made me feel better. Sometimes I forget it's normal to grieve, that one can have non-chemical reasons for being sad all the time. She also told me the reason I'm sleeping non-stop is probably because it puts space between me and the family. Heh. Maybe next year I'll think twice about a three-week vacation.
As for the hanging out, when are you free? I think I'm available Tues/Thurs/Fri/Sat and maybe Wednesday. Cell is 703.801.2625.
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I've KNOWN I was depressed since, lord, I don't know when I realized. Definitely at least early in high school. It's just nice to hear someone whose job it is to know these things and not make judgments about it confirm it. I mean, I WAS diagnosed in high school but good lord, EVERYONE is diagnosed with something in high school these days. It's just... some kind of confirmation that I wasn't just being an emo angsty teenager, and that I wasn't making up the idea that somehow I was doing it wrong XD
Honestly coming from my friends, I don't know... I don't think it would have been helpful. I mean, I'm pretty open about my depression. It's... I consider it kind of like, say, diabetes, and I'm about as open about it. It's a lifelong condition; there are certain steps you can take to life a good life around it. I've finally decided it's not something to be ashamed of (although honestly I'm still working on convincing my subconscious of that, I mean deep down somewhere I still think I'm just being weak somehow and that if I were stronger/smarter/more determined/not fucked up in some other way I'd snap out of it, presto), so I don't mind talking about it. So, really, I don't mind discussing it with friends, especially when I know some (but not all, John =P) have the same problem. But if you mean a friend or some kind of intervention-style group of friends coming up to me and saying, "ira, we think you're depressed and should get help" ... well! I'm not sure how I'd react, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't make me feel very good. I already know it's a problem, and I've been working on it for years. Having someone who I specifically haven't spent five hours explaining my life to with the express goal of understanding how my mind works tell me that all my effort hasn't been working and that it's that obvious would probably have been discouraging!
What WOULD be helpful, I guess, is telling me how well I'm doing with, just, you know. Living. Not making excuses. In other words, tell me if and how I'm succeeding; I guarantee I can spot and rub my nose in my own failures better than anyone else ever could XD
And I'm glad that conversation with your psychiatrist made you feel better. It IS normal to grieve, and it can take a long time. I don't know what would work for you, but inactivity certainly doesn't work for me. If you have a long vacation again sometime soon, consider adopting some kind of productive daily routine during it anyway, something you'd enjoy -- I have work, which helps me feel productive, maybe you could try volunteering with an organization you like. It's pretty inspiring and fulfilling to do volunteer work, and it might help. I know it sounds cheesy, but honestly it's a good feeling.
As for hanging out! Well, like I said, I have work, but I'm free most days after work. Maybe Friday night or something?
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I have had friends to whom I've said things like that before, but it rarely seems to go over well (or help), so I stopped.
It's often hard to recognize success except when it's juxtaposed with failure. For example, if one person said to another, "You were so much more outgoing on the white than you have been recently," well--I can think of a number of problems with that statement. First of all, coke does have a tendency to make a person more outgoing regardless of their emotional state. Secondly, at the time it was happening, one might assume that some other element had simply changed in the person's life to make them more outgoing--until suddenly things returned to how they'd been. Thirdly, who's to say being outgoing doesn't make a certain individual worse off? Just because for me being outgoing is a sign of happiness doesn't mean it's true for everyone else. "Outgoing" is so subjective and worthless as a measure of anything. It all sort of falls roughly under "too many variables" and "you don't know what you've got till it's gone / they paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
So. I'll give this a try anyway. I think you've been successful at being brilliant. I'm always impressed by that, and your enthusiasm for knowing things. It's hard to be enthusiastic about anything when the chemicals say otherwise.
Inactivity doesn't work, but when I'm active I don't deal with things. Also, because I've been working sixty or seventy hours a week (and graduate work IS volunteer with paid lunch, essentially), I really need time to let myself do whatever. =/
As it happens, I've got a new video game to keep me entertained. I play it daily from when I wake up until when I go to bed. =P