October 30, 2004
……have wonderfully and very generously given me £1000 for my birthday. I am still debating how to spend it! A lot depends of whether I am jobless after 24 November or not! If I havea job, I will spend some savings I have on refurbishing the living room and my parents’ gift on other (yet to be specified) items. If I have no job I will spend my parents’ money on the living room and my savings on … well… more essential items.
You are invited to assume I will have a job and make suggestions here on how I should spend the birthday money!
In other news, Personnel at work have come up with a more lucrative severance offer for me so that is good and a bit of a relief financially but I still haven’t heard the results of the interview I did on Thursday. I think I actually would really like this particular job (despite the pay cut) so I’m really hoping……
Meanwhile my friend is coming to stay overnight with her 2 children (aged 2 and 4). I have till about 4.00pm to make my flat childproof! As I haven’t really sorted out much stuff from my weekend away, I have a lot of work to do. Flylady will be proud of me.
Right – I’m off now to dither over whether I tackle the kitchen or bedroom first!
October 21, 2004
almost forty.
Well my 40th birhtday is nearly here! Off to the Lake District to celebrate tomorrow. I am really looking forward to it and also really need a break. With all the work and counselling issues that have been going on, I feel really tired and low.
I got quite upset at work today. I won’t bore you with all the details but I got sudden hope that there might be something positive on the job front, followed very rapidly by these hopes being dashed! It was a bit much to take! I’m feeling very emotionally wobbly right now!
Thank you all for your prayers and encouragements. I do appreciate it!
October 19, 2004
get the job I interviewed for. I’m feeling very low and upset!
October 14, 2004
Ian got me thinking again about Jesus sharing our sufferings (and us being united with his?). I wrote this poem a while back that kind of explores this idea a bit – at least for me anyway. The first stanza is about my experiences of depression. The second stanza – well it kind of speaks for itself and was, I feel, Jesus’ response to me at a particularly low and difficult time!
Straws
I never planned to be in this dark hovel
Clutching at straws.
This was not on my itinerary.
Never in my childhood dreams
Did I map this geography,
Schedule this history.
Back then when I looked up
There was a dawn-bright hope,
The horizon all aflame with light.
Why then this bitterness and ashes?
This unplanned darkness?
I never planned to be in this dark hovel
Clutching at straws.
Even hope is brittle, fragile here,
Disintegrating at my touch.
Fear has such icy fingers!
Blood freezes in this little hell
This mind’s dictatorship laid bare,
This curdled dread.
I always planned to be in this dark hovel
Clutching at straw.
This was my itinerary.
Always from eternity
I knew this history,
Mapped this geography.
But now I lie fragile in the manger,
Senses bewildered,
Creation suddenly incomprehensible,
Mind and heart set to become,
To learn, to grow, to enter in.
I always planned to be in this dark hovel
Clutching at straw,
To know death’s bitterness,
To know that cold abandonment,
To break with pain,
To prove that love bears all things
And never fails.
And so shivering in the darkness,
I look up and see a star,
This edge of light an echo
Of the brightness of an Easter morning.
October 14, 2004
I have another job interview at 10.00am on Monday and another assessment counselling/therapy session on Tuesday (gulp, let’s not think about that yet!) I’m still not 100% fit and pretty tired but my head is still just above water at the moment! I am sorry that this blog is not more scintillating at present but writing about anything beyond my most immediate concerns is a bit difficult right now. I’ll scintillate at some unspecified time in the future if that’s OK with you!
October 12, 2004
Well my cold virus seems to have transferred to stage 2 where it becomes an upset stomach virus. Feel like everything that is happening at the moment is getting Rather Too Much (said pointedly whilst casting eyes heavenward and hoping that Someone has got the message! ).
I’m going to give up and go to sleep!
October 10, 2004
My current shopping list list goes something like this:
tea, coffee, 20 pints milk, butter, methylated spirits, camping gas, oasis, flowers.
It’s a list for my birthday weekend away in the wilds. It’s now only a fortnight away! I am really looking forward it now and hopefully my cold should have cleared up by then!
(The meths is for my little camping stove and oasis is a type of foam used in flower arranging – for those of you who may call it by other names). I am planning to freeze at least some of the milk, but I’m wondering how much I will actually be able to fit in the freezer.
I was aiming to sort the car out this weekend in preparation ie finish clearing it out from summer camping – (yes I know!), take it to the car wash, put waxoyl under the driver’s door sill where the garage says it is beginning to rust and do all the tyre/oil/coolant checks etc. My cold has put paid to that one so it will have to get squeezed in elsewhere! Next weekend was going to be the major clean through of the flat as my parents are due to visit the day after I get back from the camping barn. Well we’ll see how much of that I actually get through then shall we! (Anyone like to hazard a guess?)
I’ve been pigging out on icecream this afternoon. Its really nice and soothing whn you have a cold. Well that’s my excuse anyway and I’m sticking to it!
October 9, 2004
Today I am struggling. I feel fairly dire with a bad cold and my emotions are still all over the place too! Thanks for the lemsip Smudgie. Another really good remedy is Rochester’s ginger drink (from health food stores) plus blackcurrant squash diluted with hot water! I’m on the soluble paracetamol too – and it tastes awful, but does help me to feel a bit better!
Not too sure what to do with myself today. I feel all on edge so it’s not easy to just sleep and rest but I also feel exhausted what with the cold and all! At the moment I’m just pottering slowly in the flat trying to do a bit of tidying. I really need to be doing some serious logistical planning for my birthday weekend but I’m not sure my fuzzy traumatised brain can cope with it at the moment!
Oh – you’ll be delighted to know that you are reading the blog of one Arti, ace communicator to international students. I saw the evaluation report on our international student orientation programme yesterday. The top 3 talks that the students found useful were:
1. Talk on safety by our campus police constable – revised by yours truly to include visual imput in the way of humerous props and short drama to help the students get the mesage but in a non-threatening way.
2. My own talk on “living with the British”
3. Inteviews with current students – again suggested by me!
It was good to have a bit of positive feedback in an otherwise difficult day!
October 8, 2004
OK, so now I have a cold as well! Huh! thats all I can say! Huh!
October 7, 2004
I had my first assessment session from the new therapy service I’ve been referred to yesterday. It was NOT MUCH FUN! Actually I’m quite shocked at my reaction. I think I feel rather traumatised really. To cut a long story short I didn’t like the guy’s approach to things and the whole thing felt rather brutal. I didn’t feel he was respecting where I was at or the work I have already done with my other counsellor. Initial reactions I suppose- maybe some of it is just my reaction about moving on to seeing someone else but even so…. I have another assessment session on 19 October. Hmm thats something to look forward to then!
Today I’ve felt pretty terrible. I spectacularly managed to avoid doing work this morning (although I did achieve a whole hours talking on a telephone counselling line so thoughtfully provided by my employer and bursting into tears over a colleague!) I took an afternoon’s leave, I sent an email to my counsellor (which he has replied to very gently and graciously, bless him!) and then I’ve been sleeping! I still feel dreadful and in pieces and I’m not quite sure why my reaction has been so dramatic!
