Back To Shore

There is a incomplete draft for a blog post from yesterday in my text editor. I can’t be bothered to pick up the meandering line of thought from that one. I’m exhausted and I don’t quite know why. Part possibly hormonal. Part not enough sleep. Part lot of exercise yesterday and today. But even considering all this it feels weird to be this knackered at 7:30 on a Thursday evening. I haven’t done any packing for my vacation (starting Saturday) nor any of the basic cleaning I wanted to get done before I leave. Tomorrow will be a busy day. I might just sleep through the first weekend by the sea. I hope I won’t though.

Our team was in charge of organizing the annual works outing this year. We decided to stay locally and do a walk along the canal to a piece of art, followed by more walking along the canal to visit the new-ish state-of-art wastewater lift station. Followed by more walking to the restaurant.

If visiting a wastewater lift station sounds weird for a works outing, let me tell you that approximately 80% of our department have a civil engineering degree or a degree in an adjacent field. My impression was that most of us were adequately impressed or at least interested enough. We’re all just a bunch of nerds and I like that fine.

My legs obviously weren’t the biggest fan of all the walking today required. Add that to the general exhaustion and you’ll get why I might go to bed before 21:00 today. Or even earlier. (The draft I mentioned has a whole long paragraph about my out-of-whack sleep cycle).

Until I’m back here for a week…

My body and mind tell me that it’s about time that I get away for a bit. Not think or worry about work. Or local politics. Or anything else. Count my blessings that I a) am able to afford to just get away for a while and b) live in such a privileged position that I can ignore the news and whatever is happening in this country or the world for a while as well. I don’t have to worry about my safety or my livelihood or my home or my life.

I really might use the time away for some “positive introspection” or at least honour how far I’ve come mental health wise by noticing and writing down the progress. I will probably forever be a bit jealous of or at least be baffled by people who do not always expect the worst outcome of every tiny little thing they do. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shed all of that and that’s fine. Because by now I’m usually good at not sending my thoughts down that worry road. At least not consciously. Subconsciously it might be still ingrained. I noticed that today, when I wrote to my supervisor regarding some procedure. I explained how I would proceed and proposed he talk it over with our department head. Supervisor agreed with my proposal and so did the department head.

I can’t really put into words how the absence of expected negative feedback felt. It’s not the first time they went along with things I proposed and they do give me positive feedback when I need it and all. But this might have been the first time that a part of me noticed that another tiny part of me still expected a negative outcome. And that the tiny part then was a bit lost when that negative outcome didn’t happen. I still haven’t quite figured out how to handle the lack of that constant nagging worrying voice in my head. The voice is still there sometimes. More often than I like probably, but still so much less than before. I’m still not quite used to it.

Another part of work was a bit frustrating when I had to see with how little diligence other people handle projects I / we started. Why?!?!?! Ugh. I need to sit down with them tomorrow morning and see what can be salvaged. In that meeting I really need to make sure that I do not take over any responsibility for how they might have ran the project into the ground. We had handed over the project two years ago and offered support if they needed it. They never said a word until now.

Deep breath. Not my responsibility. Think of the sea…

Didn’t I state a few weeks ago that I do not want to turn this blog into a vague mental health / self care place? Oops.