Are you ready?

I think things have finally reached a stage where I can attempt posting here again.
 

My plan last time I checked in – the one involving quitting work to become a SAHM – didn’t work out quite so well. Like, not at all.

It took a bit longer to finalize things with the transfer of our old house (June 2013), which meant that we didn’t move in with my mother and grandmother as scheduled, which meant that I had to go on working in tech support (when  I wasn’t on sick leave) to make sure we had enough to cover childcare expenses. But, I found out by eavesdropping in the break room (hey, at least I admit it – and, really, can it be called “eavesdropping” if I was at  the complete opposite of the canteen and the geniuses held their conversation at a level to be heard over the TV and shenanigans from the call floor?). So, it was stated that people in supervisory/management positions were deliberately looking up Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, blogs - anything written by employees - to see if they were complaining about work.

Now, I’m relatively behind seeing that people are releasing damaging information and quietly addressing it. Like, if Chef had checked MySpace to see if people were talking about being stoned while on the job, I could kinda see that because, let’s face it, more than one person would have done just that. But, the blind testing described in the canteen? It extended to people just bitching about having to listen to callers cuss them out without recourse. Now, yes, in the past we were granted a little room by some supervisors to disconnect a call after four or five personally-directed F-bombs from a customer. Likewise, if a customer threatened to harm us personally, we could inform them that we were disconnecting the call for security reasons and please call back.

Then the powers that be decided agents could no longer deliberately disconnect a call for any reason, except to call the customer back immediately following a dropped call or to troubleshoot their phone system. This followed the introduction of the “resolve everything on the first call” initiative, largely directed by a meeting where-in a lovely bar chart indicated that too many resources were spent addressing issues it was felt could have been handled in one session. Now, when questioned what percentage of those calls was due to irate customers calling back because they had been disconnected for safety/security reasons or because the customer had called back on their own because, for example, the agent had told them their issue was not eligible to have expedited case resolution, it was relayed that the analysts had determined those calls did not warrant a large enough portion of repeat entry calls to require an exception. Ideally, we were supposed to immediately connect those customers with someone above our pay grade. If we're going to be honest here, we weren't supposed to let customers hold our line hostage, but if there wasn't a superior available (and believe me, I had a running record of screenshots where there wasn't a single person available) you basically just had to sit and listen to abuse until the caller either gave up, or someone finally became available.

I’ll throw my own experience out. In the years I worked for the company, I’d disconnected a call for profanity less than five times, and I think only twice for a personal threat. However, I had witnessed people trying to accost employees leaving the building, or even trying to force their way in, multiple times. The fact that the company had decided protecting its employees’ safety and rights to human decency (as some people perceived it) massively pissed people off. When most of us signed on, there was no clause about having to sit and listen to Joe-with-the-Entitlement-Issues dehumanize us. It was attempted to argue the change in requirements fell under agreeing to work in a changing and flexible environment, but you can only dress up being a dick so far. Then the company wants to hold people responsible for bitching about their jobs. That’s almost as nuts as expecting a woman who is deeply in love with someone, marries them, then one days finds her spouse is beating the shit out of her and calling her a whore, to keep her mouth shut and not tell her friends and family. Almost.

I usually make it a rule not to mention fellow employee or company names directly, anyway, but I didn’t trust my supervisors (well, one supervisor in particular) not to go off and running through my profiles.

So, I let my pages fester. I could pull off laziness being the cause of their demise easier.

While muddling through, I began to experience massive pain in my shoulders when I was touched (later diagnosed over a year later as fibromyalgia), but searing pain in my right leg was ever present. Like, “there is real danger of losing bladder control” kind of pain. I was initially supposed to be out for just a few weeks while I was on PT for IT band syndrome, but it turns out the painkillers (that didn't help, anyway because it wasn't an IT band issue) triggered a depressive episode, and I ended up out for about seven months. Great from the standpoint of avoiding office drama, but lousy when your short term disability is denied and work threatens to cut you loose. So back I went, not really 100%, but knowing I needed one last push at some money for my son’s first year in Pre-K. I was back for about a week when a couple higher ups asked, rather bluntly, why I hadn’t promoted in all the years I’d been there. Well, gee, do you guys remember the hiring freeze that’s been in place since the recession started? If there are no openings, where would you like me to go? Aside from Hell, I already work there.

But it turned out that the ban on new positions had been lifted, even if the selection was mostly limited to supervisor positions in a department I loathed. As one of the supervisors I “gelled” with pointed out, any interview would be good practice, and no one said I had to accept if offered the new position. Off to interviews I went, trying to learn the easy, smooth confidence of Patrick Maitland.

Just a couple of weeks later, my grandmother passed away. It was exactly one week, to the day, that I took her for a physical and bought her a wheelchair. It was also about three/four weeks after I went back to work, which pissed off some people who felt I shouldn’t need more than the three days of bereavement time that was standard to get my family's shit together. Well, let’s face it. My bipolar swings had reached the point where I would be out of work for three months or more while I waited for the depressive or hypomanic swing to pass. My mood stabilizer had never prevented them in the first place, but I did notice they lasted longer after my second son was born. What happened next was inevitable, really.

 

After working thirteen-hour days multiple times a week for OT, hypomania from really set it. I went back out, after less than three months actively working, I think. HR asked when I expected to be back, and I gave them a timeframe I said I thought should be in the ballpark. Well, it turned out I was wrong. My doctor said I would be out for probably twice as long, if not more. And I don’t blame the company, per se, for cutting me loose when you look at how often I had been out. I did, however, find it illogical to cite, as one of the reasons for separation, that the timeframe my doctor quoted was much longer than what I had quoted. I get that I’ve been bipolar for quite some time, but I’m still not the medical professional who actually knows the expected time needed for the prescribed medications to begin leveling things out. Partly because it’s a bit like spinning a prize wheel to see what treatments we’ll try this time, and partly because, and I think I mentioned this, I’m not a medical professional. Seriously, who believes that going to the patient and getting a guesstimate on recovery time is wise? Anyone?

 

So, that chapter of my life ended. In the interim my family has had some japes, scrapes, and misadventures that I now feel far enough off the company’s radar to share again.

A Riding Rant

Watching the cross country portion of the eventing trials at the Olympics yesterday, I was taken back to when I used to compete in my childhood through early twenties.

The Hunter-Jumper division in which I competed was very politically biased. Your trainer affiliation mattered as much as your performance, or your appearance. I never had any patience for knowing which judge liked what with their coffee. I always just wanted to go into the ring, complete my class, and go put my feet up until the next the next class. Most of all, I wanted someone else to ride my horse in the under saddle portions.

I damaged my knees at an early age between all the time I spent on horseback and playing volleyball. Ironically, the over-fences classes never caused me pain, despite the pressure it places on the knees. And in lessons the under saddle workout didn't bother, either. But for some reason, when I would wear my field boots in competition, the pain during the rising trot was excruciating. I tried Advil, Aleve, all kinds of OTC medication to try the dull the pain, but nothing even made a dent. I tried multiple times going to doctors for treatment, but they mostly wanted to discuss my weight in the saddle. I had built huge muscles from riding. Most of the riders you see are very slender, with beautifully lean muscle build. I build muscles like I'm on steroids, only without the use of any enhancing drugs. As it was explained to me, the combination of the bulk from the muscle in my thighs with a large Q angle was putting too much pressure on my knees. The suggestion each time was "lose weight", but they never offered any pain management.

By the time I was a Senior in high school, I was exhausted. I had been on diet drugs for almost three years solid. Every time I took adipex and pondimin, I would lose bulk from my middle, but I could never lose anything from my bust or, of course, from my main muscle groups in my arms, back, and legs. The result was a frame that looked attractive enough on the ground, but in the saddle I never looked as though I had lost any weight. I can remember my instructor telling me how fat I was at 135lbs, a size 6 around the waist. Even then I was still a D-cup and my thighs were bulky as ever, so I guess from her perspective I must have looked like I wasn't trying to get slimmer.

I was also tired of the politics of the local show scene. I hated that certain judges would automatically discount riders based on the color of their horse, or whether they were wearing a navy pinstripe jacket versus a solid navy jacket. I never really had an issue because my mounts were mainly chestnuts or bays, but I did ride a gorgeous paint at one point. There were two judges who would never pin her above fourth place, even when my ride was technically clearer than the horses that placed ahead. Ah, well, gotta love subjective scores.

Which brings me back to the Olympic eventing. There were snide remarks yesterday regarding Niklas Lindback's tie and how it came out of his jacket during his jumping round. He had a decent round except for two downed rails, which begs the question, "Who cares?" It wasn't as though his pants split in an embarrassing way or his attire was unclean after warm-ups, and it definitely didn't happen during the dressage phase. If the biggest complaint you have with a rider's jumping round is a minor, minor, appearance fault, which has nothing to do with the rider's score, while there are rails falling, then perhaps you shouldn't be commentating for that sport. Equestrianism isn't a national pastime , and when a good rider is brought low for something unrelated to their performance, let alone their worth as a human being, it only makes it harder for people to understand and appreciate the skill involved. If you want to make negative remarks, there were several riders who not only "took an extra step" as you put it, but completely buried their horses at the fence. One can certainly find more to say over those gross errors than "he should have used a tie tack". And, bless his soul, Lindback quietly tucked in his tie at the end of his round, no embarrassment (for really, there was none owed), and completed his ride.Lindback's was a nice round to enjoy for highs and lows, as he and Mister Pooh work well as a team. The same could be said for Jonathan Paget, whose tie also came out, even though he did drop arail. In the end, style should matter less than substance in jumping, where you have enough to worry about between downed rails and time faults, and the commentators should recognize that.

I think I can

They say it takes 28 days to form a new habit or replace old habits and thoughts.

I've been working on developing new thought patterns for five years, and I'm still not there.

BT (my Bodhi Tree, if you will) would say, and has said, this indicates that I need a clearer picture of what I want to change. BT's mantra over the years has become "When you know what, you'll know how."

I've always found that to be a bit too simplistic for me.

In my case, I think my weird-ass blend of bipolar-ish disorder, ADD, and OCD has an unseemly amount of influence.

Yeah, I fall in the bipolar range. It pisses me off to be "in the spectrum", but that's for another day. My brand of BPD swings between three states: severely pissed off, depressed, and hysterical because I'm despairing and enraged at the same time. Good shit. I'd say that level of unpredictability would make it hard to maintain any attempts at lasting change.

Then, there are all of the external factors. All of us have friends, family, or just random assholes and angels who move through our lives. Sometimes they bring peace; sometimes they leave pieces. (Why does that sound like a greeting card??) At this point, I seem to have averaged about 50/50 on how I have affected others. But, I am a wrecking crew magnet.

If you are a person who attracts destructive forces BT would probably say, "You might want to look at that." No disrespect, BT, but telling me to just look hasn't worked in five years. We may want to look at that.

Step One

The first thing you need when you decide to make any life-altering change is a plan. So, in the words of the person who got me started down this path, "What do you want to change?"

In the past, I've tried making changes that almost always failed. I would start a new fitness regime, only to run out of steam when stress piled up in my life. I would try to change my thought patterns, only to fall off track when I would feel too tired or agitated to focus on change. As for the spiritual side of things, let's just say that God, Allah, Susan - whatever name you want - probably has a back room betting operation on how long it takes for me to go off course again.

Oh, I have plenty of faith. I have plenty of brains and plenty of brawn, too. But I never seem to be able to get all three working at the same time.

Back, then, to the question at hand - what do I want to change? Well, first would have to be my job. I just went back to work, yesterday, after eight weeks of leave, only to find the place as depressing as ever. The job used to be fun, and everyone (ok, almost everyone) walked out laughing and smiling at the end of the day. Now, the fetid piss-stench of soured hope and decaying dreams fills the building.

And as bad as that sounds, I have to confess that complacency has kept me in place. I love the perks of my job, especially the discounts on services like my cell, and I can do the job half-comatose on migraine meds. I can't even say that last part about raising my son.

In conjuction with a job change, there has to be a change in diet and exercise. If I take a position, or secure the loan for my own company, it's going to require more energy than my current point-and-click position. And my son would like a mom with more pep, too.