Two Weeks In.

I meant to start off the blog series yesterday, but didn't quite get there. I don't think I'll be getting there today, either. Needed to write something else first.

I'm finding myself in a very annoying loop when it comes to work. Get job -> enjoy it for a bit -> job becomes stale -> move on (usually to a different job). And depending on the job, the length at each point in the cycle has changed. But the longest I've had a job has been about two years or so. Which, to me, is crazy, because most of them have been less than a year. I've had about fifteen or so different jobs, not including volunteer positions. But to other people, who have been in jobs for five, ten, twenty years, this idea of going between so many jobs is crazy.

I've also never had a full-time job, and technically only just transitioned to a part-time one. Though I've had the equivalent of full-time (and more) hours before, I've only ever had casual work. Which generally works well for me - I like the flexibility, and never having had the full-time benefits, I don't really miss them! But I also don't get paid leave like many do.

One of the reasons that I find more hours (or the prospect of full-time work) difficult is because it allows me much less time to be creative. To do music, or acting, or writing, or poetry, or whatever else takes my fancy. Like designing board games! But then, when I do have the time - like now - I find that, generally speaking, I find it very hard to motivate myself to do these things anyway. Which seems rather counter-intuitive.

Apparently, I'm not particularly good at motivating myself. Which isn't ideal, to say the least. It's gotten worse over the last months, and I'm wondering if it's also a depression thing. I don't really know. I don't know heaps on that front.
But there are many days where I'm struggling to get anything useful done. Where things are getting put off to the next day. And the next day. I'm not getting back to people like I should. I'm forgetting things that are important. Mess is piling up. And so, I'm finding, are negative thoughts.

Though I don't think much of work - it's rather a favourite topic of mine, if you've been reading my blog at all previously - many people in this world do. And so not having a regular job (okay, I do have a regular job, but one day a week isn't much) can make you feel - less, somehow. Couple that with probable difficulty with paying the bills in the near future, and attempting to figure out what on earth you're going to be doing to sort that out - it can get you a bit down, and stressed, at times. Particularly when you're heading towards getting married early next year, which is a rather expensive thing. And then having a shared financial burden of two people, rather than just yourself.

It adds up to quite a bit, in terms of expectation. And when you feel like you can't meet that - or even worse, like you never could - that hurts. It's very difficult. And that's what I'm working through. (I should note, by the way, that these are not expectations imposed upon me by other people, or my fiancée. It's just me.)
At the moment, it's making me feel things like worthless, useless, those sorts of fun words. And somewhere, I know that they're not true. But that part of me isn't doing very well at being able to fight back at the moment. And so, I start to believe them.

Which, needless to say, isn't good. In fact, it's very not good. It's very very not good, and I need to figure out how to stop this downward spiral. So far, I've tried stopping most of work, because I was finding that that was making things harder. I think that's helped a bit, but not nearly as much as I'd hoped. Medication doesn't seem to be doing as much as I'd like yet either. Don't know if it's because I'm not taking the right type, or because I'm not taking enough. Guess we'll see when I see the doctor next. That's still a couple of weeks away. I was doing running at one point, but I need to actually have the motivation to do it. I haven't for a while. I've been playing music a bit more regularly, and that's been good. So I'll keep doing that.

I feel like I've got a lot to work through, but the busyness and money-centredness of this world doesn't allow much leeway for that.

I don't really know where I'm going. I don't think I have for a long time. I have too many ideas that are very vague and wispy, and I jump at near anything that moves.

I don't know. I just don't know. Hoping that God does.