Shakespeare's Fool

As usual I will leave it to my old pal at Crabby Road to tell the story in a picture worth the proverbial... but you know me, I am not short of a word or two on the topic either.

Ah the joys of technology.
Two hard drive crashes.... who'da believed it?

Well really it was only one and the second as a consequence of the first. But let me just demonsrate what it means to have BMD and be atempting to function in the 'real world'.

The actual workload I have whilst officially on three monthe leave of absence includes:

• Writing 50-60,000 words draft of my novel
• Creating a major web site of International Conference Proceedings (with a second Conference occurring simultaneously... the reason the inaugural isn't live... the academic responsible threw it to me with a two week lead time!)
• Creating a second website for a friend... again with two weeks lead time - the same two weeks, before her story aired on the ABC TV, so that there was a public call point for contact and info.
• Creating my own updated website to accompany job applications
• Doing the actual job applications including updating a seriously non-functioning CV
• Writing three refereed journal articles (not begun yet)
• Refereeing two academic journal articles (done, at least)
• Writing two refereed Conference papers (one national and one international... half done)
• Finalising the pre-publication draft of a jointly authored academic journal (online and published... yeah)
• Keeping content live on the Swinburne Post Graduate Writers network FB page so new members from other states can gain something of benefit also.
• Keeping my own FB page live and of use to colleagues and scholars living and studying o/s.
• Keeping on top of my RSS feeds and emails filtering out research data, calls for papers, conference notifications, new journal calls for submissions (ongoing) and the ever infuriating spam.
  
• Keeping track of useful research material from O/S conference proceedings and attending one run by QUT's CCi in Melbourne last week (now chasing those feeds and recordings).
  
• And lastly supposedly applying for a writing fellowship for this summer.

Yep ,and that's just whilst I am ON LEAVE!

Being back doing the PhD in Decmeber adds....

• researching and writing final draft of exegesis
• writing and redrafting novel draft
• attending symposia

So this is a great snapshot of current life as an trainee/junior academic.

The first list is the 'own time' list of duties which are conveniently looked at as key selection criteria for employment, under the guise of collegiality, contribution to discipline knowledge, cross-institutional and industry linkages, and community involvement and contribution.

The actual workplace tasks really fall simply...

• Teaching, lecture preparation
• Student advice and academic guidance
  
• Marking
• Quality audit administrative tracking via paperwork or online survey data
• Teaching quality audit tracking via student feedback data and 360 degree surveys
• Attending discipline, department, faculty and campus admin meetings (and social events... for collegiality and demonstration of collegial commitment)
• Presenting at Conferences, running symposia, mentoring junior academic staff (or students)
• Doing your own research and publication (for productivity audits and research active status)

To think as a PhD candidate when I was on stipend all this is worth (according to the Government $11.84 net per hour)!

As a sessional, it is valued by the University as worth $90 gross per hour, but no more than ten hours a week or I will compromise my PhD candidature. (In my current situation because I am a 'bad' (read slack and troublesome) PhD candidate ZERO sessional work!

Then if I am lucky enough to gain a lectureship after the PhD I might beworth a whopping $80k gross... for a ninety hour + per week workload.

Is it any wonder people in the 'real world' often query my sanity?

I know I do.

Often.

Hence leave of absence... an existential crisis if you will, and one all normal people can have!

Yet, because I am openly diagnosed as BMD, the nameless they assume I just can't cope and am breaking down!

No.
I am having a bloody break believe it or not
And NOT A HOLIDAY either.

Then let's just throw in a little guilt....

Non-timely completion of PhD after being awarded a PhD stipend...HOW DARE I?

Even with some months left in the STANDARD FOUR YEAR PERIOD OF CANDIDATURE! Not pulling it in in three and a half... HOW SHAMEFUL AND DISRESPECTFUL....AND UNGRATEFUL!

SHE MUST BE CRAZY. Told you 'we' shouldn't have accepted a crazy candidate.

Then lets add in....

crippling financial distress... surviving on Disability Pension of $580 per fortnight. Yep you read that right. Paying off car, intenet access, funeral plans, car insurance, a silly thing called food, medications and supposedly private health insurance and a student loan. Yep, easy as... just need to do some cash in-hand house cleaning, ironing or freelance writing in my spare time... oh yeah, that's called sleeping time.

Next the clincher (and how I began this blog)

The wonderful USB external hard disc drive that has been my life saver for just over a year... and yep... here comes the brand name... WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT pocket hdd crashed with everything on it.

Not a problem you say... still got backup on laptop HDD.... you'da though wouldn't you, especially with two partitions on the HDD, one simply for data, away from applications.?

But alas, no; the problem with the WD is that it crashes the RAM on your HDD... and you cannot restore or reboot even in safe mode... need replacement RAM.

Great the data is still there but you try justifying spending nearly $100 on ram and data recovery on a 2003 laptop to a tech savvy son of 21 and an ageing luddite aged 78.

"What? When you can't even pay the family health insurance on time?"
"Buy a new laptop for Chrissake...."
"Don't go into more debt... don't take a Cash Converters loan at 24 per cent either"...
"Just use the old desktop Mac you were given"

But don't expect to buy any software of that age, or even get it wifi'd to the household LAN that you pay for... and don't expect to be allowed to have an ethernet cable running from your study to the modem (across a hallway and into son's room... hmmm now why was it located there in the first place... oh I remember I wasn't home).

Then, when I try to tell the IT guy at work that my research (on my son's laptop loaned under duress and borrowed under cintant threat of revocation should I even alter an icon place...) has found in the techie forums that this is a COMMON PROBLEM with WD usb ext HDDs and even the company software won't/can't recover the data.

Yep, built in obselescence!

But try telling that to the IT guy, because the Dean at work has just ordered a department full of them for her academic staff.

You'd think forewarning would be acceptable.... but guess what?

"Don't listen to her... she's just a crazy,crabby old bitch. She must have done it herself, not the hardware."

And so Shakespeare's fool exits stage left.

Friends are gold and LRB rules.

Yesterday, I knew that my mood was not stable as it had been the day before. I would say I was hovering around the minus 4 ( remembering that hospital beckons at that level). I felt that I could not face even getting out of bed. Even the shower seemed like too much effort, and I am one of those people who needs to shower whenever I feel stressed or just plain tired. My skin itches and feels like I want to scratch it off... and only hot streaming water, or a seaside dip can make me feel clean and alive. BUt this seemed pointless yesteday.

I knew I had arranged to be at a friend's house to help her with some writing for her PhD, and to work on something of mine. But I had nothing I could work on with a partner, and really felt just plain lethargic. I also had NO money for petrol. Well I had $10 but this wouldn't do the trip (110 ks return) an always ashamed to tell people how broke I am.

The words of my son and another girlfriend always resonate in my ears when I am broke. You SHOULD put money aside when you have it and not be in this position. Budget better!

There is that word again.. the bloody SHOULD!

Tell me oh wise ones.... how do you prioritise the budget to meet the shoulds of saving? And here I will publically lay it out. I receive (note not earn!) $600 per fortnight from Centrelink for a Disability Payment. My medication alone is $10.40 per week, without vitamins or mineral supplements that also help my mood states (fish oil, multis, B complex, and flaxseed oil). Then there are the few meals... say $80 pw (which includes personal care items also).

Next priority is keeping the car paid... as without it I am marooned and cannot escape AT ALL. That's $215 per fortnight. Add fuel $60 per week.

Now what's left? Well there is that little extravagance called an Internet. $45 per fortnight, plus a mobile phone pre-paid $20 per week.

Then let's add that ridiculous move I made to borrow money from Cash Converters to get to and from Uni (and attend the PhD colloquium) just so I could feel self-esteem and a sense of belonging with my co-students and ex-colleagues. So at 24% interest for the whole huge $500 my payments are $50 per fortnight. What a waste... how could I be so outrageous and ridiculous! Yep, I SHOULD HAVE stayed at home, felt disconnected, unempowered, isolated and totally worthless.... of course.

That leaves the princely sum of $10.

Now would anyone like to work out how I pay the thing called a Funeral Plan... at $37 per fortnight, car insurance $26 per fortnight, family health insurance at $115 per fortnight, and that other ludicrous extravagance Chrisco at $40 per fortnight... just so the household can feel normal at Christmas with festive fare and no huge debts afterwards. Let's add to this a waste of money through my last mental meltdown... an $80 library fine, and an outstanding student loan of around $600.

I am going backwards without work. Yet with work, my study time is eroded and I do not finish. Without finishing the PhD there will be no work. Catch -22.

Is it any wonder my self-esteem and my mood swing lower when I am financially pressured? How can you attend to the SHOULDS and save when at these moments YOU ARE NEVER SURE THAT THERE WILL BE A TOMORROW, OR NEXT WEEK???

That is not an overstatement. I have promised myself that I will not give up and just call it quits but deep in my psyche I still doubt that I can in fact 'pull it off', face down the demons and actually live or simply survive.

Living to me entails all the joyous wonder of the emotions, the social life, the glamour of the theatre, music, art galleries and restaurants. My life on DSS is simply survival. It brings a paucity to the spirit. My soul is in pain without affording me the beauty of 'living' at present.

So my SHOULDS go out the window. My common sense just can't win out.

So I guess for those reading this without BMD, I am (like my son and some friends seem to think) a selfish, immature little wastrell full of self-inflicted drama.

Oh, how I wish my words could allow you to empathise... if not agree with my thoughts and actions.

Luckily for me yesterday there is one friend who can and does empathise.

I am so pleased she convinced me to humble myself and borrow $20 just to get to her. To shower, dress, drive the 50 ks and walk along the beach, feel the sun on my face and the sand between my toes. How can I capture in words the pleasure of stroking the heads of two magnificent dogs across a fence; animals that accept a stranger's touch... and thus reassure me that I am an inherently 'okay' person?

I was able to drive home with 1970s and 80s pop music returning me to a time when I felt valued and with the future stretching ahead with all its promise.

Although not jumping up the mood scale, I think today I am stable again. I know the hospital is there in the background... but only when I catch up on the bloody health insurance payments... so maybe December??

What are those lyrics again... LRB? Hang on Help Is On The Way?

40 years of Python... wow

To think another pop culture icon is turning 40!! Geesh was the 70s that great or is it just that we are a population bump? I hope the former as my son, like young people before him, rediscovered the hit and miss magic that is the Python oeuvre. Just the one therapy I have ignored over the past few days to attack my downward mood swings... that's right gerotology!

Doncha just luv it when you discover a new word and just hafta use it!

Good old laugther therapy. Maybe a good dose of Python today is just what Dr Adams ordered. Given that I am too far away from the Big Dipper or has that been dismantled at Luna Park, St Kilda? the Scenic Railway just doesn't cut it... and Space Mountain requires an LA airfare! Dear old Andrew I can never forget how you introduced me tothe power of adrenaline, but why oh why did we need the depressive Gin first? Was that just an excuse to drink dry martinis. As someone with BMD I never needed the push downwards with 'mother's ruin'.

So when chocolate's phenylethylamine is not enough, sunshine's seratonin boost, maybe good old belly laughs will do the trick.

Relax this isn't just another delaying tactic on my part, or at least that's what I am telling myself to justify screening a ridiculous DVD... possibly not Python after all I no longer guffaw when the punch lines are delivered. So which will have the desired effect and still leave me daylight hours to complete a minimal level of productive writing?

Must go... the DVD search is on in earnest now!

Also a confession... I had to look up the brain pleasing chemical in chocolate... I thought it was tryptophan now where does that come from?

Phenylethylamine

Status Quo... no not the band - despite my age.

Well there is good news. I haven't slipped further down my 'wellness scale'. The bad news is that I haven't swung upwards either.

But at least I am grateful for a respite in mood swings. Being a Sunday I find it so hard to motivate myslef to actually do any work. My procrastination gene kicks in and I look for housework to do... yep you read that correctly... housework. That just shows how desperate I am to avoid anything that engages my mind. And what housework was so desperately pressing (pardon the pun).... folding the two adult blokes laundry and getting 'shitty' about doing it.

It's not that I am expected to fold clean laundry, or hang wet washing from the machine to the line, or remove cleaned dishes from dishwashers... it's just that it annoys me that things are left half finished... even when they are not MY THINGS!

I can draw the line at cleaning the blokes bathrooms and toilets. That is my demarkation line but the clothes and dishes do impact on me. I can't use the washing machine until it is de-linted and empty and the dishwasher is needed daily also. I guess it is just that I can be messy in my own spaces but try to keep the common areas at least tidy, if not spick and span.

Oh these little domestic niggles that can be the focus of so much angst, when really there are deeper issues simmering under the surface. It is so therapeutic to feel a martyr and have a good sulk. Then I feel rewards are due, so I can waste a day in front of the TV screen... yep a complete day and without guilt. Me the TV addict for one day... how about that? Whereas once my addiction was The West Wing, even I can't replay all those DVDs ... it would take days and I do enjoy company for this TV show. So my default program of choice is Boston Legal. Five eps in a row thank's to pay TV. Imagine the damage I could do to my health and wellbeing if I had Tivo or a DVD recorder?

My one justification for my sloth, apart from martyrdom and reward, is that I am also reading the Sunday broadsheets and a novel during the ad breaks. Why, oh why did Pay TV have to start having advertising. And the next greatest unfathomable... why are there so few movies I actually want to watch even when I am prepared to pay for them. Does it say more about me or more about C21st film-making?

To mobilise myself just a smidgeon, when there appeared to be life gathering in the lounge area, I turned on my laptop... at least for some housekeeping there also. Emails to file, spam to trash, chain jokes to smile at, Facebook to check on... and get depressed that there are no new messages or comments, then a complete waste of time trying to drive a new Web Creator program that is supposed to be simple.

Simple I can't even instal the bloody thing! Back to Dreamweaver and frustrations with tables layers and design elements. I know I can do this stuff but there are days when everything I think will work or look good just doesn't or isn't!

The time is ticking, as I have only two weeks to get a simple site online for a work colleague and another with working links and source code for another colleague. I haven't done these things for so long that the program updates have left me behind a tad and I am rusty so everything takes three times as long and I end up despairing that I will have to do hours of tutorials just to get up to speed. ..

But just when I think I am going to sit down and have a solid, self-pitying cry, up blinks the You've Got Mail icon and a fairy Godfather emerges from cyberspace with offers of assistance.

Perhaps this is how I staved off the fall to minus four... thanks P... I sure owe you one!

Oh dear, navel gazing

This is the man, the guru, Aaron Beck MD from the Beck Brain Institute. He is reputed to have developed Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for use in clinical depression and other manjor mental illnesses. Like any therapy it takes years of practice, and typical me... when I know I am heading downwards on the Bi-polar express, it is so difficult to dredge up the will to do the thought auditing required, let alone connect the analytical with the emotional and mobilise action. I am very good at staying above intellectualle and knowing the effect of my thinking, but I am very very bad at translating the 'common sense' across to what always feels like an overwhelming swarm of self-hatred.

It is so hard to put these things into words, for fear of being judged. To be seen as self-indulgent. If one has suffered from situational depression then you have an idea of just how debilitating the condition is... but when you add the constant pull towards clinical depression wrought by my illness, it is almost unbearable. Of all the people who should (oh dear just used the no, no word),
be able to call up an inner strength and harness my intellectual capacities it should be me. But at the start of this blog, I promised to be honest and take any readers through the Bi-polar express from a safe distance.

Well, as you can see from the many gaps and lack of daily posts, whenever I felt in the 'grey zone' or what people call 'normal', I forget to blog. I just get on with life in all its 'grey mundaneness'
.
But when the colours are brighter, the sounds orchestral, the aromas gastronomic then there is a pull to the keyboard. To capture this moment. A fear that if I do not capture these emotions and ward off the inevitable fall down to grey again. And similarly, when the mood swings towards the black pit, with the 'dog' nipping at my heels again I refuse to sit and type for fear that I empower the blackness and am drawn irrevocably into the abyss.

Yep, for the priliveleged well people this sounds so overly dramatic, but simple words are so powerless in describing the intensity of the swings. So for well over 30 years now I have happily worn the description of drama-queen, what other choice do I have but self-acceptance? I have made the ultimate promise to myself that I will never act on any suicidal ideations so I ust have to wear the negative labels. This is a small price to pay for the sacred life I have been given, that my parents strugdled to nurture, and the life that pushed so many loving people away when they felt so powerless to stop my spirals.

I guess this is the reason I am so sad when new friends run a mile in fear when they learn of my illness. They fear this sense of responsibility or the confrontation of raw emotion on this scale. I wish they could trust me that the 54 year old woman is no longer the self-centred, hurt the world type who woud act on her anger and pain.

At the core of my downward spiral would have to be the saddness of being alone. And I do not just mean partnerless. I mean alone... intrinsically devoid of any kindred spirits to walk my journey with me. Who could expect anyone to voluntarily choose this path? I wouldn't. I fell alone because you can never expect even the best friends to be there all the time. It is so draining for me, let alone someone else. Above all I feel very sad that my illness also conjures memories of pain for other friends who have lived and loved someone with Bi-polar and have never recovered from that pain and dissppointment that the relationships were inherently doomed from the start.

It is for this reason that I run away from relationships and put on so much excess weight to fend off any intimate relationships. I did it when I left the workforce to stay home with my son and now that I am at home again, on my supposed three month leave of absence (to attend to my mental health swings), the weight demon is calling my name.

When working as a salaried employee I feel intrinsically valuable and my self-esteem rockets. The more people expect the more I strive to produce and live up to their (and my own expectations), I feel good, I begin to look good and I am happy, for that wonderous prolongedperiod of time. But of how tenuous it is to attach self-esteem to employment status. I know this thanks to CBT and Dr Beck and Co... but I seem unable to ward off the feelings of worthlessness when I am not employed and am in receipt of welfare sickness or diability benefits. Yet I am disabled... so totally disabled that I am under seige. The pull of self-destruction is so intense. Ido not sleep. I cannot concentrate.

The smallest professional task takes Herculean effort, as does the dredging up of the 'party-face' to keep small linkages with my colleagues and possible future employers.

Party-Face.... so tiring. I am so over it. If only I could strive for acceptance, warts and all. But the 'outisde world' is not ready for this. So... the self-esteem plummets, the call of alcohol to ease the pain is assuaged with chocolate... for those supposed endorphins of whatever. After all fat is a battle I am prepared to wage over again, but alcoholism is my one of my gravest fears... to lose even more self-control and willpower, I doubt I could survive it.

Well dear reader/s, this is the thinking at minus three on the mood scale. The tilt to minus four is even scarier. It is coming and I will write about it. Yet I also ask for forgiveness and acceptance when this cess pit of loathing curdles on the screen.

How amazing and touching...

I was gripped by the TV footage of the first Chilean miner hugging his son. His son's tears during the seemingly endless wait would move anyone. Then the excitement of the second miner to emerge bringing a bag of rocks... wow. I do indeed feel uplifted.

But back to loding my pictures to the web... and I haven't scanned mine of the memorial at the Sunshine mine... but luckily the web comes to tha party again. For anyone interested there is a good blog record of the significance of this mining tragedy in the US. http://sfcompanion.blogspot.com/2010/05/may-2-sunshine-mine-disaster.html

It is with hope that the world learns that human life cannot be priced in the same way that productivity and down time is accounted for on fiscal bottom lines.

Miners not minors....

That's a Galaxy Quest joke for other nerds reading this... no further elaboration needed, except that it is probably wise for me to begin this post with a joke. That way it will ensure I keep things upbeat.

Today I have taken the proverbial well-earned lunch break, after two fraught days reformatting ansd reinstalling all my programs and data on my main computer. Thank the goddess for external hard drives!

Was unable to go online via my 'new' Mac as I need an ethernet cable some 10 metres long and permission from a surely young adult son to enter his room to access the household wifi modem!!! Why oh why did I get it installed there? Stupid moment methinks.

Anyway, sat down with my one whole grain sandwich (that's an important milestone for a post lap bander!!), to watch the news station, only to find Channel 9 live to the Chilean miners rescue.

My breath caught, I am in two minds. One total rapture that these 33 men can be rescued and returned to their families albeit with probable mental health issues impacting their lives for the forseeable future. The other emotion is overwhelming saddness. An irrational saddness really, given the time it has taken to drill the rescue shaft.

My dear brother could not have survived this long to wait for such a rescue effort, if they had had the tecnology back in 72. The men with him (82 others) on the 3,000 foot level survived for some unknown period of time after the silver mine fire in Kellogg Idaho, before succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning, but not months! Kevin would not have benefitted from this technology and skill yet I feel sad that he and his co-workers had no such option.

The fire had to be extinguished and taking the oxygen was the only way. I remain sad that Kevin's life was taken so young. Every time a mining incident or accidentcomes up on the news, the old emotional wounds re-open and the grieving begins anew. I thought the Beaconsfield disaster had solved that problem for me... with the April dates, the two week entrapment and other eerily co-incidental material.

This is different, so why the grief? I guess it is the whole media circus thing. I, like everyone around the world want to watch and feel vicariously part of the rescue, yet it is this same media coverage that so impacted my family when Kevin was trapped.

We the family became trapped and hunted. So much so that I was sent away to drama camp... yep... good call that... focus on The Beggars Opera while my brother's life or death was unknown!
The denial of family support and shared grief satys with me today. There is no blame... just saddness and the knowledge today that this will ALWAYS surface as one cannot 'get over' such traumatic events in one's life.

But hey, let's end on an upnote.. let's pray (to which-ever divine being) that no communities are decimated like Kellogg, USA again by such a tragedy and that human ingenuity can save lifes.

I should post the pic of the Kellogg memorial as an image but I haven't loaded those data files yet. I will though. This I promise the men and families affected.