Kick the shit out of the machine

Fortunately having bad days isn't something which happens everyday because then they would not be unusual and with a lot of bad days you'd get used to them.  Perhaps they wouldn't be recognised as bad days just ordinary days, or they could be given pet names. Like a animal, what a skunk day it has been, with a bit of relaxed wallaby. What does help coping with these sort of periods is when they happen after being on holiday, feeling relaxed even in a stressed environment is a valuable asset and thing to achieve.  I will admit there are times when I may appear calm and pensive but on the inside of a still exterior is a crazed lunatic on the verge of attacking the next inanimate object which fails to work the way it should work. If not object bureaucratic processes, a pop group has an apt name it is Rage Against the Machine.

This morning I failed to scan my prepaid travel card before getting on the train.  This I unfortunately only realised when I got off the train at the destination station. But at the back of my mind I thought what I would do is get on another train and go the opposite direction. Go back one station to the station where I know there is no automatic barriers on one side and then walk and get some exercise. Unfortunately this did not go to plan, because at the earlier station there were revenues officers. The result was being issued with a £20 penalty ticket. Great.

Getting into the Fish Factory a little later than normal I am confronted with a one hell of a stinky fish explosion which means I will be in the Fish operating theatre all day long, elbows right into the inners of some disgusting stuff.  Wonderful. I am then called into a brief meeting to be advised one of the Fish on my team has to be seconded into another pool and this will be for several weeks. Their absence will in due course result in their work being distributed to the other 8 fishes who are always at pain to express how over stretched they are. Of course their not the only ones but don't take into account such constant groaning and griping doesn't help the situation.

I get to lunch later than normal and decide not to buy a coffee from my sanctuary pub because I now have to try and account for the lost £20. I'm advised by Sparkling that losing this is not the same as losing 20 pounds in weight as it is the first day of dieting.  Which also has to be taken slowly but stressful situations sometimes require gentle love and kisses to ease them. My love and kisses was gained from a Chinese take away when I returned home.

Leaving work I was fortunately offered a lift in someone's car.  Except I would have to walk to them to their car which was up a hill somewhere.  I didn't mind because I was going to walk home and save on buying a train fare as well. The walk took nearly half an hour, there were two separate hills to climb and I could of walked half way home in the same time myself.  The calculations of money saved and loss today goes like this: Loss £20 through penalty fare, loss £2.60 from getting a take away so total loss is £22.60.  Gains are, £1.90 from not purchasing a return ticket, £1.90 for getting a penalty fair and not purchasing a destination ticket, £3.30 from not having a pint in the pub and £2.25 from not having a sanctuary like cup of coffee at lunch time, total gains  £9.45 full loss and profit comes to £22.60 loss and £9.45 gain leaving a net loss of £13.15 on the day. A couple of more days of destitution and I should of paid the penalty fare off.

Well it's a good thing I got my sense of humour, warm socks and porrage for tomorrow's breakfast.

P.S. I got a tooth ache which has been really bothering me the last two days, estimated cost to be discovered. But the worse thing is I don't know whether my gentle and very nice dentist still works at the surgery or has retired, otherwise next time I go it could be butcher time.

Reflections and sayings

Socrates said

"the unexamined life is not worth living."

In fact Socrates said a lot. I don't particularly read any of his works, I mean it's old stuff, some of it is probably on stone tablets. Then once in a while a saying pops up, I then research the origin and it may well be one of Socrates. Collecting sayings is something we all do, whether from books or people we know. They are tags of quick reference, they set a scene and all else which follows is linked.

I think about my life all the time. It is as if it's more than a habit, it is something which happens naturally and often without real conscious thought. Just sitting at a desk, or watching a movie and out of the air would come a replay of an event from memory, followed by the question of why did it happen in the way it did. Were I an ice cream seller then probably it would all be a lot easier, but selling ice cream would not be enough, I'd have to know more about the ice cream, how to make it, where the best ice cream in the world comes from, whether there was an ice cream convention. It would go on and on. Especially if it were a passion. Just as examining my own life, it is an obsessive process. At times it brings happiness in it's reflections but at others I am in despair and just can't put things together. For the moment this is how I'm beginning to feel about work. It is workplace stress. My ice creams keep melting before I've had a chance to take a bite of them. If only it were this simple.

However, stress comes from multiple sources. It can be from kicking the dog on the way out of the house, not being able to find the thing you want. Like today, at lunch time I had it in my mind to get a certain pie, chips and beans from a pub. I went in the pub ordered a soft drink then at the food counter found there was no pie. I didn't want anything else, my mind was fixed on this impulsive, irrational need and it could not be satiated. So I went without the pie and got something else after quickly downing the drink. Disappointment on a small but significant scale was what I suffered. Later after work I went to the same pub, sat down with a couple of people I knew and we chatted. I felt exhausted after work. Someone had fed the music machine with coins and it was pumping out crappy electro hip music. Which wasn't even contemporary. I looked around and recognised the individual who would of fed the machine. For it is always the same kind of music they select. The volume was impinging overwhelmingly on my senses. I complained as I sat with my pint. Then decided I'd had enough and walked out, leaving half the pint unfinished. I wanted to relax, to chill. Yet twice in the same place I'd been disappointed. I made the choice and I walked out.

I think it is important to wrestle control, because the things we don't do are just as much by choice as the things we do act on. It is blame which gives the feeling of helplessness and victim status. I spoke to my 25 year old nephew and he tells me about his state of anxiety. About how he is afraid of everything in the world, everything causes him anxiety, he blames everything he can and takes no responsibility for his non action. He has been moulded by his upbringing and no matter how I've tried to coax him into making his own decisions for himself or motivate and raise  him up, he always reverts back to the same frame of mind and sets of behaviours. it is sad, I want so much for him but it is his own choice even though he will deny it, he is what he is. Just as a melting ice cream is what it is. In need of some chilly air or a greedy dog to come and lap it up.

So I'll finish with another saying

"you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

Stress busting

The pressures of working at the Fish Factory have been high, but as though in some kind of anti-hero to the notion of stress I've decided to be even calmer and more relaxed. To accept them and just do what I can. It's like everybody must have a piece of the action and they all think I am the action thing to have a piece off. Little fishes pester me with questions and throw their own stresses at my direction. They pass on problems, called passing the monkey to those in the know. The monkey then clings to my own back rather than their own. When seeing other people react to pressures they are under a different part of personality comes out. How they act, or rather react as the situation takes them over and their nerves go a jingle-jangle like. One Fish came up to me, sat down and was on the edge of a precipice. I kept it calm sat and listened to what they had to say, even though they had interrupted my own flow of work. Something I've learnt is another person's problem is always the most important thing in the world. Much more important than your own. To the extent they are wrapped up in it, just like the outer layer of a deep fried pancake roll. As another monkey was passed to me, I sat an did a Buddha like contemplation.  The more I relaxed the easier it was to find a solution to the problem.  This attitude in turn had an effect on the Little Fish, they gradually got de-stressed and it was easier to deal with them.  Stress is a contagious feeling but equally calmness can be a contagious thing.  Besides being calm there is another walnut cracker which works well. One even Witchdoctors keep under their hat, it's powerful magic, very powerful. It is, humour. Whether being droll, sarcastically funny or just plain funny, it will do the trick.  Well in most cases it can, it may be difficult with those who have little in the way of a sense of humour. The ones who you speak to and instantly wish today it would of began better had you just stayed in bed.

It is all a matter of personality, some people are able to cope with the pressures of life, others have learnt how to deal with it. Dealing with stress is 99 percent dealing with your own attitude to stress. Learn from others I'd say, but ensure those you learn from are good examples. In my family I have a lot of bad examples of personalities, rather than learn from them I find they can then sap energy from my own reserves. To the point it is worth not even speaking to them or avoiding them. They will get a little of my time and then it is over. In some cases it is not possible to undo what has been a life time of depression, anxiety and emotional vampirism. Not even hard core therapy could dent. Ultimately we are all responsible for our own mental health, learning to relax in even the most confrontive of situations is probably the ultimate in black belt stress busting.

There is a new abbreviation out. It is YOLO (you only live once). If we were to take this to heart in every interaction a lot would change in your own personality. I heard it said Samuri would think about dying everyday. They would consider being killed in a variety of situations, it was  a matter of getting used to the thought and confrontation of an inevitability, certainly present in the line of work they had.  This was one of the exercises which would make them more able to cope with life, and personally I think they were probably quite light hearted people.

Every evening when I head home after work, I look forward to an important part of the night. It is picking up Bertha (Ukulele) and giving her a strum. OK she can give my finger tips pain, she occasionally goes out of tune when her strings have been changed, but she gives me a weird pleasure. Playing Bertha is like having a hit of some kind of happiness drug.  The next step in my progression is learning to sing along with her. Now, my timing is pretty crap, and my singing is pretty crap, and my memory of learning words to songs is also pretty crap.  when I put all of these things together and try a verse or two of a song the result is hilarious, well, it's hilarious to me. I sit there and just laugh. The other night I was laughing so much there was tears in my eyes. I rang up Rock Chick and played a verse to her, she thought I was drunk at first, I wasn't, I was plain happy.  Rock laughed as well. I said little Baby Fro would love this music, and indeed she will once she hears it. Rock will know Baby Fro has been suitably minded when she's been left to sleep in company of Bertha and myself.

Oh what a wonderful world this can be.

Stress at work...it's all about crap

Stress in the work place is an awful thing.  Dealing with it is about realising there is nothing which can be done about the amount of crap hitting the fan.  It will just keep hitting the fan.  Wearing a helmet may help, ducking under a desk, speaking to a colleague and having a good bitch, getting hypertension, running to the toilet (the only place there is for peace quiet) for a five minute break; working all the hours under the sun, escaping on holiday and then coming back to an even bigger pile of steaming crap which is screaming out for urgent, immediate, deliberate, dependency of attention are all things to think about.  Ultimately it doesn't change the situation.  It will continues to be like this, feeling unable to cope because of too many environmental demands doesn't help or change the situation.  Stuff will inevitably not be dealt with but can be guaranteed to rise like crap to the surface. 

Then there are the people, in particular two groups.  Those who look up to their boss for guidance but to the point they are so needy they are more like little children than they are adults.  Always wanting a bit of attention or help on a problem for which they should be able to work the answer out.  They've done the job for years and get paid a handsome salary, yet don't appreciate these salient important features.  The unemployed figures are exceedingly high, it's an employers market something else they don't take into account, just as their abilities most certainly should be.  The second group are those above.  The ones who make the big decisions and get paid the big bucks.  They have expectations of how things would run but don't want to get engaged in the finer details, along the lines of snapping fingers and expecting high jumps.  There is between these two groups a massive disparity of reality.  Being stuck in the middle is like Bob Dylan's song, with cowboys to the left and Indians to the right.  If you are stuck in the middle expect your hat to have multiple arrows and bullet holes in it.  Trying to talk of reason to either group about the expectations is like backing a snail in a horse raise, with little chance of it every making the finishing line let alone winning.  The situation will not change no matter what happens.  Cowboys will always want to shoot their guns and Indians ride bare back and shoot arrows.

It's a matter of accepting your own limitations, and fobbing the rest of them off in a diplomatic way.  The working like a slave bit just doesn't seem to change the situation.  More than anything else it is about understanding your own stress and your own stress reactions.  Then knowing how to handle them, how to change behaviours and recognise how to prevent the stress habit from sinking you lower than a world war two sub just hit by a depth charge.  There's a line from a poem called Desiderata it is:

 "Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself"

This can be taken in many ways, gentle with emotions, thoughts and importantly feelings.  Such as the feeling of being unable to cope.  The most difficult thing in the world though is to act on this ideal.  Not to take on the opposite view, e.g. you are able to cope but rather accept, you will do your best and if there is just too much crap; accept you can not cope but why the hell should you let it harm yourself?  It's also about expectations, your own and other people's, even if they demand you do things all the time and there are only so many demands which can be met.  Time for human beings is finite.  Sometimes it is not even about doing the most urgent pressing things, sometimes it is about giving some of that precious time to the not so urgent or pressing things but are important to other human beings. 

It's about looking outside of the moment you are in.  Outside of the moment which has become a critical stress crap situation, as these don't last forever.  In the middle of my day I like to speak to Sparkling, she is like a rudder and steers me back to the important things in life.  Which are usually her and Rock Chick.  So thinking about family, and outside of the current situation can bring it to insignificance.  Coping is about looking after yourself, changing bad habits, such as eating junk and waiting for a heart attack, it includes exercise, time for self meditation, esoteric and aesthetic things.  Listening to music you love and crying with happiness at a fond memory from and old photograph.  These are things I have to personally take on a lot more and so hope I can for the sake of my own being.  

With a little luck this two day headache will shortly lift.  Even a headache goes away, eventually.