Wednesday 31 January 2018

Mental health update

I've had my worst day in some time, since my time off work last year. After returning to work on progressive hours to get me back into the flow, I was finding full time too much; the energy it takes to get through the work, of focusing and the performance of dealing with clients and colleagues, of worrying whether I am up to doing this or should even be trying, was just leaving utterly drained. Outside of work I hardly had the energy or inclination to do anything at all.



So, I requested reduced hours, backed by my manager. After initially trying to fob me off with half-hour shorter days, that would have been no help at all, I've gone to a four-day week of normal shifts. I'm only a month and a half in, but I can tell it's helping; the three day break gives me time to recuperate, so it doesn't just feel like a downward spiral from which I'll never recover. I'm beginning to gain the energy to do things out of work, although it takes a hell of a lot of effort.



There are still some really hard days, of course. It's not unusual to have a workday where I feel like I'm struggling early on, where I'm having trouble drowning out the thoughts that I just can't do this and You're fighting an uphill battle that you're going to lose anyway, so why not save the effort? but I push through this and it tends to settle down and I actually end with something of a sense of achievement.



Monday was one of these. Right from the start I knew it was going to be tough; I was having problems focusing and felt outside myself and wanted to give up, but stuck with it until these feeling subsided, and it was a good day. On Tuesday I was fine, hammering away at the coalface and getting lots done. In retrospect, perhaps I was having a little trouble concentrating at times, but that might be entirely post hoc. Suddenly, right after a phone call with a client - which was lovely, no issues at all - it was like being hit by a freight train. The volume level in the office had risen suddenly, as it sometimes does, but it seemed so loud I could hardly breathe. Everyone seemed to be shouting into their phones or across the office to each other. I was having trouble writing up my notes, the world spinning around me. I actually thought I was going to throw up.



I managed to finish my notes and practically sprinted away from my desk. I just needed to be somewhere away, somewhere quiet. I locked myself away in one of the disabled toilets - a room instead of cubicles, and there's nobody in our organisation that would be more inconvenienced by me blocking this than any other loo.



And I couldn't leave. I just had to sit there, on the floor, trying to gather myself. Not even gather my thoughts; when this hits it feels like a tornado in my head, everything whirling around so much that I am aware that thoughts are there but they just flash past like snowflakes, barely visible as individual things, never mind graspable.



I must have been there for 45 minutes, by which time it was lunch so I walked around in the fresh air and winter sun for half an hour, went into Waterstones, although I have no idea what I looked at.



Back at my desk, I was aware I was away from the phones for the rest of the afternoon - admin and casework I could do at my own pace, but I found myself just staring at the screen. I couldn't make sense of anything. Not like I imagine severe dyslexia or alexia is - I could read the words, but just couldn't hold any meaning in my head. What was I meant to be doing?



Even though the office had quieted and it had been almost two hours since I left my desk, I knew I really couldn't do this. The inner voice was right. My manger was away from his desk and the deputy manager seemed in high demand elsewhere - besides, he didn't know about it and I felt suddenly so embarrassed, and didn't feel it was worth troubling him. I just wanted to slip quietly out, but some part of me knew I couldn't so I sent a quick email to the boss - I'm sorry, I'm really struggling today I can't do this. I need to go. I'm sorry - turned off my PC and left.



I jumped on my bike and took a circuitous route home to try to clear my head. I curled up in bed for awhile, in the warm womb-like comfort of the duvet. It was a nice afternoon and I'd thought to go for a run, the rhythm and exertion and serotonin release of running is one of the was I keep going, but I was so tired I could hardly move. I felt drained, probably not more drained than I ever have but that bone-deep weariness which, like severe pain or cold, is difficult to comprehend if you've never felt it or to remember accurately when you have.



This morning I slept through my alarm (although I'd only slept fitfully during the night, I vaguely remember rising enough from slumber to silence my phone) and woke again after 8.30. I'm not sure whether I'd planned on not going in, but that sealed it, so I texted my manager an apology and curled back up, trying to ignore the light of day. Tomorrow would be the last day of my working week, I guess I'll just have to take it as it comes.

Review: Dirk Gently season 1

I’ve just watched the first series of Netflix’s Dirk Gently, and I enjoyed it a great deal.


But.


But I have many problems with it. Let’s start with the positives. Some good performances, nice script (way better than the Will smith movie Bright, that Max Landis also wrote), along with lots of wackiness and a good plot, which reflect the source material, along with a violence and darkness that doesn’t necessarily, but was well handled. I really loved Bart the Holistic Assassin, superbly portrayed by Fiona Dourif.


And, I confess, most of my problems are in other ways that the series diverges from the Douglas Adams books on which it is loosely based, so can be viewed as purist ire which I am not denying.


The first is actually fairly minor, in the annoyance level anyway. The character of Dirk Gently is played wonderfully by Samuel Bennett as an wide-eyed innocent, socially inept almost to the level of autism (although the innocence part is slightly punctured at the very end). This is so very at odds with the character as written I found it to be quite jarring - a problem I recognise someone not coming to the show via the books wouldn’t have. Adams’ books have Dirk as an amoral, conniving - if charming - huckster - saved by the fact that his madcap theories of Holistic Detection actually work out (mostly), but who is nonetheless entirely in it for the money and seems to take pleasure in conning people. I can see why here they went for the safer option, but it does take away from the depth somewhat.Some of this amorallity was transferred to the sidekick - but, even then, only as something in his past which became a rather sick-making and obvious moment of character growth, completely with strings in the background music.


Another divergence is to make Gently’s powers, well, almost like a superpower while In the books (I am sorry, I know I shouldn’t compare different media) it is a talent he has that he can more-or-less stumble onto the right thing. I know that sounds like a minor change, but the way this is presented in this TV show makes it much grander, and also emphasis a kind of intractable fate while Adams, an arch-skeptic, makes it quite clear that it is NOT fate, merely chance, that ties everything together. Dirk just ‘has the knack’ of being in the position where these chances combine. Added to this, the ‘secret government organisation’ to which Gently is connected was so very out of place as to be pointless.


There was an adaptation a few years ago on the BBC, with the Stephen Mangan playing Dirk Gently as brilliantly as he does everything, which was utterly pitch-perfect. As well as being underfunded and hidden away on BBC2 at some ungodly hour so hardly anyone was aware of it, never mind watched it, comparing the two shows the potential strengths and weaknesses of the sort UK and longer US series formats. In the UK everything has to be tight and to the point and serving story and character, but the viewer barely has time to get into it (especially when it is cancelled so soon), while the longer series allows development and exploration of the world and the characters, but can lead to unnecessary padding and extraneous levels of plot that can sometimes take away the focus.


Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the series and will be watching season 2 - possible in just a couple of sittings - but I reserve the right to hold an original book and BBC adaptation purist grudge.