In Living Colour

Well, well. There was a time when writing this blog was (amongst many other things) a kind of therapy. Putting it all down in the edit dialogue box was a semi-structured way of working through how I thought about stuff. I'm not sure where I forgot about that along the way, but I really should have kept it in mind. I've had stuff to work through you see, but didn't use this blog to help me figure my way through it.

In short, the first quarter of 2010 pretty much sucked ass (and not in a good way). I broke up with the guy I thought I was dating (Or is it that I thought I broke up with him? Given that... never mind.) on New Year's Eve, at a party, from which I walked home, leaving behind my favourite hooded jacket. Portents? Omens? You know, one of the reasons I often don't celebrate New Year is exactly because people seem superstitious that only a good New Year can equal a good year ahead.

Poppycock, clearly.

So, flashing forward and trying to be brief, Sometime up until a few weeks ago I got profoundly depressed. Not dramatically depressed, no renting or wearing of ashes, because so long as you weren't inside my head I gave most of the signs of actually keeping it together. But somewhere along the way I lost me it felt like. Despair must be terrible, but numbness is in the race as well. At least Dorothy Gale got to see Munchkinland turn into colour, which is a lot more fun than the reverse lemmetellyou.

No I didn't seek professional help, other than mumbling something to my doctor and then agreeing that yes it was probably something to do with my old sleep problems and no the strong drugs I used to be on were not a road I wanted to take again. I got up and went to work, sometimes went out with friends but became a bit flaky about turning up for things, basically stopped doing any housework, and on days off quite often remained unwashed and in my robe until I couldn't any more.

The weird thing about being depressed is it's not like your limb is hanging off and people can see that yes indeed, you are a tad poorly. Unlike an only semi-attached appendage sometimes it isn't so bad, and sometimes it seems much better. I had some good times over the past 3 months, and I had some quite average times when I tried to fake it until I could make it... and thought mostly about being home in my robe not doing any housework.

A few weeks back I decided that in line with my parents' Northern English upbringing, all I needed was to pull myself up by the bootstraps. Symptom or cause I don't know, but things miraculously made a turn for the better. Step 1, I needed to lessen my stress about the work/money situation, so I contacted my previous temp agency, and a previous employer, to see if they had any work going. One temp work offer was made, but I decided I also should approach my boss at the yarn store and put my cards on the table. Explain what I wanted to do, what I know I'm good at, why I would rather stay working for them than go elsewhere, and how much I thought I would need to live on to be able to do so.

Essentially they agreed. I'm now on a less modest income (though still not immodest by any stretch), and am in charge of visual merchandising for the 2 (soon to be 3) stores as well as keeping the website updated. The VM stuff is my baby, and because we are a yarn store designing windows means having garments to put into said windows, and to differentiate ourselves it also means designing and product development of said garments. I'm loving it. I put our new windows in a few days ago with 5 garments that I workshopped with our in house designer, and one I designed and knitted outright, and the customers are lapping it up.

About the time I received my promotion I also got a flatmate. The stress of breaking the housework embargo almost broke me as well, and it's true that much of the contents of the junk room front bedroom that couldn't go to Goodwill are now stacked in teetering piles in my bedroom. Awaiting being dealt with. In baby steps. But my friend Steve is all moved in and is paying his rent, and is working out just fine.

Having someone else in the house is a good thing I've decided. Someone to make you reflect on the fact that maybe you don't really want someone to see you welded to the sofa, in your bathrobe, at 3 in the afternoon, and that maybe it was time you brushed your teeth at least. I want to be alone has its uses, but it's time for a little less Garbo just now.

I'm a bit less poor. I have a bit more money in my pocket, and am not looking at a single digit bank balance while waiting for pay day. I've started to not only service my debt, but have started to put a bit away for a trip to Italy next year. I've been doing some stuff around the house. My creativity has been fizzing away, planning things for work and jotting down things I want to make for myself.

So much of my situation was stress related, I can see now. Wow, I do not handle stress well. Shut down all non-essential services, and just leave a pilot light running on some of them. Best of all I feel more like me than I have almost all year. The colour is back, cue the munchkin!