What a relief...

...to wake up in the morning in a stronger mood than last night.

Thank fuck for small mercies! Nothing else has changed though.

Most times when I've been battered down to my knees by life it's taken a combination of several simultaneous attacks on me. Life is too cruel to leave things to chance so, yesterday, for example:

• My mind was buzzing with a comment a customer made about over-40 year-olds being technologically inept. At the time I replied, "Wow, I'd better make the most of the next two years then LOL" but it did nudge the Sword of Damocles a little closer to my head;
• I resented working on a public holiday (the entire public sector in Ontario had the entire weekend off);
• I'd worked several days in a row at The Beach which, thanks to my ill fortune with dating, is now a district of Toronto I regard as (sometimes nauseatingly) ostentatious, and sinister;
• I was one dose behind on my meds;
• I'd just arranged a chat with an advisor at my bank which, strictly speaking, should be a positive thing - especially if I manage to secure a line of credit. However, yesterday all I could foresee was being judged by her, scolded by her, and generally having to defend myself because she neither understands nor believes in mental illness...much like my ex-wife and her entire family;
• Yesterday was the first day of 2010 it's been warm enough for me to wear flip-flops. Naturally then, when I left work the streetcar was just ahead of me and I needed to run for it, but couldn't. I remember thinking, "Well, that's what you get for trying to enjoy life. You're gonna have to wear combat boots for 12 months of the year, even when it's 30+ degrees, because otherwise life will ensure that there will ALWAYS be a reason why I have to run."

If you've been reading, paying attention, or caring at all then by now you'll recognise that 'all the above' is riddled with cognitive distortions. But, at the time, it was just too strong, and there were too many yesterday for me to be able to fight. They crushed me, dissuaded me, demotivated me, drained me. By 8.30pm I was in tears on the sofa, kittens in my arms. By 9.30pm I was in bed, crying myself to sleep, and rocking side-to-side the same way I used to before I hit my teens.

I just need a break. Just one break. In general, I feel like I have earned the right to sit back a bit, to cruise, to smell the roses. I'm 38 for fuck's sake! I went to uni late and had to fight to get in. I had to fight to change careers and get into PR. I had to fight to further my career vs people younger than me, with degrees from fancier universities than me. I had to fight the bureacratic inadequacies of both British AND Canadian governments in order to fight my way 3,500 miles across the Atlantic to Toronto. I had to fight for my reputation when I got here when employers bullshitted me, "Well, you won't be as effective as a Canadian PR professional because you don't know the Canadian media."

What rubbish.

In 1994, when I was 23 years old, I was afraid of scrapping my retail career and going back to university. I would have to start all over again. Circa 2006, 12 years later, I had just started to feel like I was getting somewhere in life - married, a homeowner, and successful at work with savings in the bank. My next steps were to become a father, diversify my financial portfolio, and change down a few gears from the breakneck speed my career development had been going at for the preceding decade. Then it all went to shit.

So yesterday I was feeling old. I felt as if my ex-wife had stolen away ten years of my life. Here I was, at 38, worse off, iller, and lonlier than I was 20 years before that. The ex got the house and the car because at the time of the divorce I was too ill to work and couldn't afford to buy her out of her share. I lost everything and barely made it out alive. I was at the point in my life when I SHOULD have been a Dad. I SHOULD have been settled. I SHOULD, finally, have become one of those nine-to-five people I used to hate at work, who always arrived no earlier than 9am and always left on the dot of five because their kids need collecting/dropping/taking to hockey/ballet/football/whatever. I've earned that right but it has ALL been taken away from me.

Life, sometimes, is like picking peanuts out of poo.

Back to square one...yet again...

It's not fair

Saying that I'm a man of principle is the nice way of describing it. Describing me as idealistic helps to explain why I have so little patience for malpractice - such as that incurred by some companies on a near-daily basis. When put under intense pressure though, or treated badly, that idealism quickly morphs into defiance.

Then I become a peculiar combination of things. The voice of everyone's conscience. Defender of the defenceless or downtrodden. Empowered by my perception of right and wrong to do whatever it takes to ensure the right result, regardless of whether it also happens to be the most profitable one or not.

My concept of "right" is a bit old-fashioned and eccentric. To me, "right" means that I actually BELIEVE AND UPHOLD the line, "In sickness and in health, until death do us part." Right does not include employees in the organisation I work for being reduced to tears or - worse - a hospital bed. "Right" is like communism but amongst a species that isn't too selfish to actually make it work - unlike humans. "Right" means that when I'm incapacitated through illness, my government says, "How can we help?", not, "You're not eligible." (Fuck me, even Americans get that now thanks to Obama). "Right" is when someone who tells you they love you isn't lying about their name, town, marital status, intentions, emotions, and pretty much everything else.

Now I hear the next-door neighbours will be gutting and rebuilding their house over the entire fucking summer of this year. The noise and mess will be so bad that the neighbours are actually moving into the apartment above the coffee shop around the corner until their new home is complete. My upstairs neighbours already gave their notice and will be in Thunder Bay by the time the work begins.

They didn't want to leave either.

So now, on top of everything else, that single scrap of stability in my life that I've fought for more than a year to get might be evaporated overnight with the signing of a single planning permit. If I have to move house, then I am seriously considering moving countries. I was willing to stick around when things looked like they might work out with Sarah but now I have no reason to stay. I have no property here, no family I haven't adopted, no career anymore thanks to a string of piss-poor employers, and no money of speak of. In fact the five biggest things Canada has given me are mountainbiking, exacerbated mental illness, divorce, near-bankruptcy, and near-death.

This weekend's been tough on me. And I can mountainbike anywhere on the planet.

I should probably sleep before I make a decision.

The internal struggle

I missed a dose yesterday morning and even that's enough to jangle my nerves, so strong are the meds. So this morning, Easter Monday 2010, I am having to try very hard indeed not to freely communicate to all and sundry how cheesed off I am to be at work on a public holiday.

It's blazing sunshine outside and - not surprisingly - the rate of traffic in the store equates to approximately 1.1 person per hour. It's deserted. I had to wait half an hour to get an Eastbound streetcar this morning, and yesterday morning half of Queen Street East was closed anyway! What a waste of time and money. We could have had a much needed team meeting. We could have closed and spring-cleaned both stores. We could have brainstormed the problems both stores face. We could have built a 2010-2015 business plan. We could, at least, have planned window displays for the next year but, instead, we're open.

And alas, as they say in the SAS, only proper planning and preparation prevent piss-poor performance.

Being an idealist makes me a great leader (when I'm not petrified) but also means that I live in a constant state of disappointment and frustration. This is one of those classic situations - when I have to try to care less about something. I also have to remember I took a part-time retail role so that I wouldn't be responsible for such things. My role here is just to show up, serve as best I can, and go home again. But I can't switch off my personality to the extent that I don't get frustrated when things are managed differently to the way I'd do it.

Another five-and-a-half hours to go. :o(

What iceberg?

Things are steady-as-she-goes right now. I haven't done a general update in a while because I'm so enamoured with my kittens that I've been blogging about them instead! Plus my retail hours are still full-time and thus allow for little else.

Kittens - what a brilliant...brilliant...idea that was. They chase after me when I leave and try to get out the door with me. When I get home from work and unlock the door, they are both already sat right behind it, waiting for me. F**k knows how they do that because I never really know in advance what my hours are going to be, let alone what time I'll get home! They give their love quite unconditionally, and sometimes are pretty insistent about it too. Five minutes before the alarm goes off in the morning, either Luna, Pinball, or both of them are in bed with me. Pinball will stand on my face, whereas Luna has a tendency to nibble on anything soft and pink sticking out from beneath the duvet.

Thankfully, up until now it's just been my fingers and toes! LOL

I haven't done my spreadsheet in ages but I don't need it anymore because I am now better-able to tell how well I'm feeling each day. I am more in touch with myself. Plus, the kittens (if nobody else) are quite frank in needing me, and are fulfilling my need to love, to support, and to parent while I wait to see what the next Canadian woman who comes along has in store for me. Hopefully it'll be an improvement on betrayal, constructive dismissal, or divorce.

Gotta go - I'm in my lunch hour. Yep, that's right, I had to f**king work on Easter Saturday AND Sunday.

Go Canada! (Not).

Yet another epiphany

I react with most hostility and aggression to those who threaten my sources of security.

When I was completing my BA (Hons) in Business Communication, I was taught a great deal about organisational behaviour. One of the earliest and easiest theories I picked up was the 'staple' from Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist who died the year before I was born. It's pretty simple - he found out from doing studies on rhesus monkeys that the things any sentient being needs in its life in order to be well, stable, and satisfied, always fall into a hierarchy of importance (see right).

If someone (a boss, a partner, a friend) does something to threaten my sense of security then I react more strongly the lower down the hierarchy of needs one travels.

For example, the quickest way an employer can get his or head bitten off by me is to make me work such long hours that my sleep becomes deprived. This is why I've been suffering so much over the last three months, and why I have had to fight every day to keep my temper and not lose my job by 'exploding' at someone.

Similarly, in the case of Sarah, what she offered/promised me (without dwelling on details) was the completion of all my psychological needs, all my safety needs, all my belongingness/love needs, and a short-cut to many of the things further up the hierarchy than that.

In short, that's why she fucked me up so badly, and why she's still on my mind now.