Helping people with mental illness into the workforce

How can we encourage people on disability support pensions to work more while not hitting them with the big mean stick of loss of income support? Here's an opinion piece I've written on this question.

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Fractious Fifty Year Old in a Flurry of Flight

I didn’t get around to writing a birthday post this year. Partly because I have written one every year, trying everyone’s patience in the process, partly because the birthday itself was manageable. If you are having trouble with birthday depression, blog about it!

So the birthday itself was fine, apart from spending literally – I kid you not – up to three hours online finding the right restaurant: a recently opened Middle Eastern place in South Caulfield, nearish to home. It was worth the time spent – the place made up for its pretty basic ambience by being right in terms of food, location and price. Everyone was happy and I got to eat enough hommous and falafel to last me to my sixtieth birthday.

This was the restaurant. I would go back there in a jiffy.

Did I mention it was my fiftieth? Turning fifty is a bit special, what I mean is other people think it is. Sisters who don’t normally buy you anything leave birthday cards with money in them. Aunties you rarely see send cards or express a desire to see you. Wishes are expressed to see you blowing out birthday candles surrounded by the nephews and nieces.

I wonder if fifty is in some ways the biggest milestone of all. Half a bl—dy century – how amazing is that? Just to have survived that long, to be honest, feels like an achievement. Am I biased? Have I just enjoyed the attention too much? Part of me wants to rest on my laurels, to sit back and from my venerable age hand down my matchless wisdom to the younger ones.

But a post-fifty scramble is upon me.

Fifty is the time when you realise that the ‘now’ that you constantly revile, fight with, curse, try to come to terms with, forgive and generally are up against will change, is itself impermanent. Behind the scenes, the crew are arranging for a change of props, while the writer is preparing new calamities for the melodramatic heroine. The invisible/visible event of old age is looming, and rather than having a mid-life crisis (isn’t everyone in the West in an ongoing mid-life crisis after the age of twenty-eight?) I’m experiencing more of a mid-life scramble. There is so much to do and I am staring into the abyss of my mortality. Hurry! Hurry! life urges me. Like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, there’s no time to waste.

The New York poet Frank O’Hara adopted Lewis’s white rabbit  much earlier than I. In a journal he kept at the tender age of 22, he wrote: ‘one must hurry, one must avoid the impediments, snares, detours ... I’ve a long long way to go, and I’m late already.’ I understand how he felt.

Is this why I've published four ebooks on Amazon and am in the middle of a fifth? Like a woman who keeps having babies one after another, then has to stop and settle down and look after the ones she has, writing another book gives me an excuse for not marketing the completed ones. So the one I’m writing now, I promise myself, will be the last for a long while. And I promise not to unduly harangue my long-suffering blog readers too much* about these books; I have, or am preparing or resurrecting, separate websites or blogs for three of them, possibly four.

All this work is self-created, is really a hobby, and by definition shouldn’t be stressful. My paid work with clients should come first. So when I get too panicky about this I tell myself that it’s something I just started doing because I had too much time on my hands, that it is a skill-development thing, and that any success or otherwise is not the main issue.

Paid work must come first. I want more of it, and I must get myself out there to get it. More panic.

This scramble is partly because the drugs are kicking in and I’m able to do more. But my energies feel all over the place, I’m having trouble prioritising. In fact, I even wrote a new poem while sitting in front of the tele the other day, and have just sent it and a few others off to a poetry journal. Submitting work to a literary journal is so much less effort than it used to be in the days before email. If I’m knocked back, which is likely, I’ll be disappointed but not devastated.

Equally frustrating is of course that my hang-ups are still holding me back – that in fact there is still an angry fifteen-year-old inside waiting to get out, not to mention an attention-hungry five-year-old, and both will do anything in order to get attention. And I’m still very isolated, apart from the self-help group I attend and seeing the odd friend. The group is still a huge challenge for me – I will blog about it soon.

I bet anyone reading this blog from a mental health perspective is quietly shaking their heads and mouthing the word ‘manic’. (I’m not bipolar as far I know, but my SSRI does make me a bit high during the day, with a downer at night.) But when you come up for air after a long period you want to snatch at life while the mood lasts. You don’t know how long it will be before you get pulled down again. Oh those big gulps of air! I’ll breathe them in while I can.

* I said ‘too much’ – there’ll be a bit of skiting but I’ll keep it under control.

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The Tyranny of the List: How to Break Free of Your ‘To Do’ List

Lists are great things. They help give us focus and remind us of things we need to do. They’re essential in most work situations. They’re useful for remembering to buy a present or ring someone, keeping appointments, getting what you need at the supermarket, and completing an urgent admin task to avoid getting fined or penalised. And they’re absolutely indispensible in goal setting. They can also be important for people suffering depression or struggling to fill unstructured time.

But.

Every now and then they need to be ditched. I’ve discovered that letting myself off the ‘list-leash’ on a regular basis can be a good thing, even if it’s just temporary. If you’re fond of lists, or you want to become more spontaneous, it could be a worthwhile exercise to have a list ‘holiday’, no matter how short. (If you’re a bit chaotic and just starting to use lists to get more focused, it’s probably not a good idea – yet.)

Not that it’s easy. Truth to tell I’m addicted to lists, especially the daily ‘to do’ list. Writing the list and then ticking the items off once I’ve completed them gives me a sense of comfort, security and achievement. Perhaps you’re the same. Sometimes not doing something that we strongly believe we need to do right away, even if intuition is telling us to leave it for now, can be excruciating.

And that’s part of the problem.

Over the last two decades or so I’ve worked very hard to develop and trust my intuition. One of the reasons for this is my tendency to behave in quite compulsive, driven ways. Many of my actions over the years resulted in putting much energy into particular aims, goals or activities that weren’t right for me.  All too often the form – getting something done and ticking it off – was more important than the worth (and sometimes timing) of the behaviour. I would complete a task or work towards a goal in a bloody-minded way, while completely failing to listen to the faint intimations within that were gently telling me what I really needed to be doing at that particular time.

I’m now much more intuitive, but this ability has been hard won (wish I’d learned it when I was a young ’un!).

In the past six months or so I’ve noticed that, especially where the weekend is concerned, I  write my ‘to do’ list and then often partially, and sometimes completely, ignore it. That’s because my intuition is telling me to do something completely different. I might end up sprawled on the carpet watching DVDs on a Saturday afternoon instead of mopping the floor, or staying home and writing instead of meeting up with a friend (or the opposite).

The results have been fascinating. When I ignore the list, I follow my energy, and yet things still get done, although not always in the timeframe I’d envisaged. When the right time to mop the floor comes, the energy is magically there to do it. Or suddenly I might get the urge to do some yoga in the lounge room instead of having to force myself. And after my slothful afternoon watching DVDs, hey presto! I’m recharged and ready to face the world again.

 What if you procrastinate?

There’s  a really important caveat here. Following your energy isn’t the same as procrastinating. I may still not want to mop the floor (in fact I never do; it’s the domestic task I hate the most, with cleaning the bath coming a close second). But the energy is there once I start, and the task is done in an optimum way.  If you’re trying to overcome procrastination it may be a challenge to ditch a  ‘to do’ list, but it could still be a worthwhile experiment.

On the other hand, list-ditching can sometimes help with procrastination. Imagine you’ve been planning to get a Twitter account. You’ve been putting it off because you assume it’s going to be difficult and complicated, and the more you think about it the more trouble it seems. Then one day when you’re being spontaneous your energy leads you to Twitter and before you know it, you’ve signed up. Spontaneity can help ditch the overthinking that can lead us to put things off.

None of us has unlimited energy or time. We’re all trying to juggle various roles, interests and activities. When I trust my energy and  throw the list away, even for a short while, I find I get a surprising amount done with less effort.

I don’t want to make out that I’m some sort of spontaneity saint. Quite the opposite. In fact at the moment I’m itching to update my long-range goal list; I’ve let this go for a while and I’m really feeling the need to have that structure again.

But even when I give myself the safety and structure of a list, whether it’s a daily or long-range one  – and as I’ve said, I need daily lists during the week – there’s flexibility in it. If something doesn’t feel right to do at a particular time, I won’t do it. Sometimes it may feel right to do at a later time, and sometimes not at all. I still keep my A4-sized  diary open on my desk, reminding me of any appointments or particularly urgent tasks.

Ditching the list can be especially valuable for creativity. We all know that the muse doesn’t turn up at scheduled times (although self-discipline encourages it to do so – that’s a separate topic). Being willing to drop everything and write a book chapter, complete a sketch or strum the guitar for half an hour means you make the most of your creative energy.

An exercise for the list-addicted

If you’d like to be more spontaneous, you could experiment with ditching your ‘to do’ list, but you don’t have to go all the way.

One option is to write your daily list and then simply give yourself permission to ignore it if necessary. Try doing one or two things on the list, and see how that feels. (Better still, write your list slowly and intuitively - you may be surprised at some of the items you end up with!)

Another option is to give up the list for, say, a few hours. Write it, but give yourself a few hours off, or don’t write it at all until halfway through the day.

The more daring option is to have an entire list-free day – scary but fun! Enjoy the ride!

I’d love to hear about where you are with  ‘to do’ lists – whether you’d like to become more disciplined with using them, or are trying to be a bit more spontaneous.

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Visits to My Psychologist, or The Joys of Tele-Therapy

I wrote an entry not that long ago on my experience of seeing a psychologist after years of not having therapy. I’m still seeing her.

The way Australia’s universal health care system, Medicare, works, it will cost me only about $15 a session until the end of the year. This is because the out-of-pocket expenses I’ve incurred are now over the maximum amount needed for the Medicare ‘safety net’ to kick in. Until the end of the year, whenever I visit my psychologist or any kind of doctor, Medicare pays 80 per cent of my out-of-pocket expenses.

The safety net starts all over again at the beginning of the calendar year, but the 18 Medicare-subsidised psychology visits allowed per year are allocated from the time in the year they began, which in my case was mid-June. This means that, while it would be natural for me to want to ‘blow’ my last six visits before the end of the year because I would pay next to nothing for them, in reality I have to stretch them out till June next year. I’ve decided to have two more visits this year (I’ll need these to cope with pre-Christmas socialising, if I manage any) and then one visit a month till the end of April, leaving a six-week gap until my 18 subsidised visits start again in June, if I decide I need them.

The system is quite limited, with Medicare still favouring psychiatry over psychology – if there are limits to psychiatric visits per year, they’re much higher, and the psychiatrists charge heaps more than the psychologists. But I’m grateful the system is there at all – psychologists have only been subsidised by Medicare at all for the last four years or so.

The very limitations of Medicare’s support for psychological services also indicate the practical orientation of psychology, suggesting that the powers-that-be don’t see these services in traditional psychotherapy terms. As someone who has enthusiastically embraced the therapeutic relationship, I’m still having trouble with the relatively informal nature of my visits to my psychologist, including the fact that they are at differing times of the day, with differing time intervals in between.

I’m finding it difficult to really let go and complain about my parents to my psyche, especially when it comes to discussing my mum. I have been able to talk about my mother with my psyche in ways that are productive, but all the while I’ve somehow feared that she would think I was complaining about her. This is paranoid, I know, but it’s also indicative of the types of therapists I’ve seen in the past, who, if they had inferred this kind of parallel, would have identified it as part of the therapeutic process. Despite my psyche’s easy confidence, I don’t quite trust her to be robust enough to handle the enormity of my angst towards parental figures!

Because the fact remains, as with my relationship with my mum, I’m more analytical than my psychologist (not more intelligent). And when I whinge about my mum being in her own little world, perhaps in some way I’m also complaining about my psyche’s chats at the beginning and end of the session – she often talks about her family during these chats. I know why she does this – she told me once her small talk is meant to put the client at ease – but part of me wants her to myself for the entire session, even during those minutes when you’re getting seated, or getting ready to go.

Anyway, I wrote this post because I wanted to mention two things my psyche has said that have really penetrated my consciousness and made me understand, almost for the first time, that I have much more power over my mind, and the way it operates, than I’d thought.

Since about the age of seven, my mind has sometimes felt like a frightening, uncontrollable place that gave me pain and suffering in unpredictable ways. Even before the more adult kind of social phobia I’ve detailed in this blog, I was subject to a sense of dark dread that would hit me for the most trivial reasons – accidentally taking some small item home with me from my grandparents’, knowing my parents were going out that night and a babysitter was coming over, and, when I was really young, dreading I would go to hell when I died, or that the communists would take over Australia (no need to allocate blame for where the last two fears came from!).

Everything I thought about, including normal adolescent fears, was mediated by that lonely dark dread of the worst happening, the worst being somehow beyond imagining and not able to be faced and dealt with in any way. This overweening, lonely angst was the precursor to the more specific fear I would later develop – the fear of my phobic symptoms manifesting in uncontrollable ways.

Anyway, my psyche said something interesting to me a couple of months ago. She’d mentioned an episode of a comedy-drama series we’d both been watching, Offspring. The heroine of Offspring is Nina, a young, accomplished obstetrician who is nervy, self-obsessed and awkward. She has a crush on Chris, the sexy paediatrician she works with, and her feelings for him only exacerbate her painful self-consciousness.

The main technique used to depict Nina’s angst is to show her walking along the hospital corridor as we hear her innermost thoughts in voiceover while, in sync with these thoughts, various expressions of fear and embarrassment cross her face. This is both funny and painful to watch, and possibly inexplicable to those who don’t suffer from anxiety (a cousin of mine said she couldn’t warm to the character; one female reviewer complained of the Ally-McBeal-style ditziness of the heroine). In fact, watching these scenes has been at times quite a profound, even therapeutic, experience, with the comic angle helping to demystify the anxiety, and diffuse the sense of the viewer being trapped in Nina’s claustrophobic inner world.

Nina is obsessed with what others think about her, dreads specific events in the future, and, when locked in her own thoughts, is disengaged from the world around her. Yet, most of the time at least, she’s not that transparent. When she encounters a frightening or unexpected situation in the real world, she appears to be distracted and sometimes flustered, but her actual thoughts remain unknowable to others. She’s as opaque as the next person. Seeing this has also been therapeutic for me.

(We interrupt this blog entry for a brief TV review: unfortunately the series subsequently disappointed, as Nina didn't really develop at all; rather than gaining a greater sense of herself, she was just as people-pleasing, insecure and trapped in her thoughts in the last episode as she was at the beginning, and the plotting, so strong initially, gradually deteriorated as the series progressed.)

Anyway, at one session soon after a particularly apt episode, my psyche brought up the topic of Nina, and I gleefully told her I’d been watching the show.

‘Nina is very attached to her thoughts’, my psyche said. ‘Most people have different kinds of thoughts but they don’t pay much attention to them. There are some people, though, who get very attached to frightening thoughts. This is what you do’.

The combination of my psyche saying this, and me having recently watched the process being played out on screen, was quite powerful. Through my understanding of mindfulness I’d already been aware that thoughts were separate from the self, that they were random mental events rather than the basis of my very identity. But this dramatisation of an attachment to fearful thoughts, and my psyche so clearly pointing out that attachment, somehow made me understand in a much more practical way not only that my thoughts are not me, but that my attachment to fearful thoughts is something that I have some control over. If I’m attached to my thoughts, then there is a possibility that I can detach from them, at least partially.

I’m not saying for a minute that this will stop me getting fearful, especially when I’m dreading, for example, an upcoming summer barbecue full of groovy people who I know just well enough for them to invoke terror. What it means is that I have an extra tool in my arsenal when faced with scary thoughts. I had already been able to respond to these thoughts by telling myself: ‘these are just thoughts, they are not the truth’. But now I can add to that, and say: ‘these are just thoughts, and I can see how I cling to them as if they were the truth’. I can see for the first time that there is some security in these thoughts for me, that they represent a kind of ‘home’, and that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Talk about good timing.

As I’m writing this, I’m also wondering if the attachment to thoughts has got something to do with my feelings towards my mum. Do thoughts become a security blanket when there is no one to cling to? Are insecurity and fear a form of security seeking? In being so attached to my thoughts am I somehow refusing to separate from my mother? Am I metaphorically burying my face in her absent shoulder?

That’s not the only example of my psyche saying something relatively straightforward that has really resonated with me. As the copywriting aspect of my business has expanded while the editing aspect has diminished, I am starting to deal with clients over the phone more frequently. This is downright terrifying, and I’m currently facing imaginary scenarios of being in constant, crippling fear of clients calling if the business should seriously take off.

I’m even more fearful of people in the context of work than I am in the rest of life – I have a terror of success, a compulsion to display my fear combined with a deep need to please superiors (in this case, clients) and demonstrate my talents. These contradictory aims make dealing with clients in a functional way challenging to say the least, and I’ve avoided writing about this because it’s such a difficult and seemingly insurmountable area. The anticipatory fear that I sometimes experience in these situations is akin to the feelings of dread that originated in my childhood.

Recently, my psyche said of my ‘scary’ clients: ‘you give them so much power’. In the context she meant I was giving them the power to produce my symptoms, as well as power over how good or bad I felt about myself. I was using them as judges of whether or not I was an okay person.

This isn’t the first time a therapist has pointed out something to this effect. One very insightful psychiatrist once stated that in my fear of making a fool of myself socially, I turned other people into objects whose existence was only relevant in relation to me – that I corralled others for the purposes of giving me negative attention. At the time this certainly chimed, but it was an abstract idea, one I couldn’t really do much with. A problem was identified, but no concrete solution was suggested or implied.

With what I understand now about thinking, I was able to read my present psyche’s remark more usefully than I could have in the past. She was actually saying to me: ‘You give your clients so much power in your thoughts’. In other words, it was the way I was rehearsing encounters with these people in my head, or simply the feeling that I adopted automatically when I thought about them, that was the issue. I was giving them power in and through my cognition, through the exercise of my mental faculties, at specific moments in time. These specific moments occurred every time I conceptualised them, not simply during my actual dealings with them.

In the past I’ve simply assumed they had the power I was attributing to them. After all, they are my clients, the people who hold the purse strings. But are they really the arbiters of my self-worth? In reality, they are simply people who want a service from me. If I sound awkward or frightened on the phone, they have the choice of whether or not to deal with me in the future. Their personal judgments of me, whether positive, negative or somewhere in between, are not really all that relevant. They are not sitting on some pedestal miles above me, dictating how I should feel about myself.

Now, when the usual dread descends, I tell myself that I am giving these people unnecessary power. I’m using them to make myself feel scared. In reality, they are marginal to my life. This thought process doesn’t banish the dread of course, but there is a real reduction – its hold on me weakens. The ‘judges’ start to descend to earth, devolving to their actual status as fallible human beings with their own agendas.

One thing I’ve been doing ever since I started to see my psyche is write down the most salient points she makes, sometimes during the session. I then type them up on my ‘therapy’ file (obsessive? me? never!) This has been a good thing to do, and occasionally I’ll read through the file. Because my thinking constantly seeks to go back to its old habits, and drag me back into the dread – that confusingly comfortable, familiar place of pain, humiliation and discomfort.

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Social anxiety and the challenges of exposure therapy

It struck me as I jumped into the shower this morning, in the split second as I registered that the cold was not unbearable anymore, that the problem with winter is not winter but summer.

I wrote a piece about minor mishaps a while ago. One of my points was that if a crisis remains unresolved for a while it may cease to be a crisis as one adjusts to it. Winter is the same. As long as you have somewhere to live that offers reasonable levels of warmth in some rooms, eventually your body adjusts to the cold.

And just as you’ve become accustomed to it and have your bedtime routine worked out (in my case a hottie and four doonas, as well as copious layers of pyjamas), the Earth stretches as if from a long sleep and starts to exude warmth. The blossoms unfurl, the camellias drop liltingly to the ground in their prodigal abundance. Everything wakes up, and you have to adjust again.

This is not some idle complaint. It makes me think of exposure, now a central plank of short-term talking therapies for anxiety disorders and phobias. Exposure relies on the concept of increasingly difficult forays into feared experiences. These forays are graded so there is always a carefully calibrated level of discomfort, while the difficulty of the task increases. The theory is that the sufferer learns to tolerate an ever-greater degree of risk and is therefore able to deal with an increasing number of feared situations.

Exposure is an incredibly useful concept. I’ve never practised it in conjunction with a therapist, but I have a friend who is an exponent of it (he even wrote a book about it), and I practise it in very small ways.

But the challenging thing about exposure is that it is aligned to life yet also pitted against it. Creating a list of progressively more difficult tasks is a way of creating order, but the chaos of life is constantly intruding. And, depending on your disorder, it may not always be possible to retain control over the level of exposure.

Work is an area of life where I gain valuable exposure only to sometimes lose momentum. Because my work stops and starts, I don’t often get into a pattern of work. This is bad, because once the work starts again I not only have to adjust to the discipline but I also need to refamiliarise myself with processes and even skills.

As well, I have to ‘expose’ myself to a lower standard of self-care and housecleaning, which leads to an increase in anxiety levels.

I believe that I’d be able to gradually increase the level of work I was able to take on if I could control the flow of it – but that’s not the way the real world operates.

Social anxiety is another area where the exposure levels are difficult to control. According to psychologist Dr R. Reid Wilson, this is because the unpredictable nature of social life is such that it’s impossible to grade one’s exposures; and because their lifestyle may require the sufferer to carry out social tasks that go beyond their current level of comfort. 'When you have social anxiety, events that are high up on your list of threatening situations may take place before you have mastered your lower level tasks’, he says.

Dr Wilson’s excellent website is the first time I’ve come across a therapist who identified the unique difficulties of social anxiety in this way.

Another difficulty with conquering social anxiety he identifies is that the sufferer must focus on so many anxiety management skills at once, sometimes while performing a complex task like public speaking.

One way to get around the unpredictable nature of social exposure, according to Dr Wilson, is to simulate the scary situation using friends and family. For example, you could practise public speaking in front of a group of friends, conduct a role play on bumping unexpectedly into someone in the street, or ask someone to look over your shoulder while you practise writing.

Life, the universe and exposure

The chaos of life may pose a challenge to exposure therapy more generally. Unexpected stresses or adverse events in one area of life may temporarily lower our ability to challenge ourselves in the areas we need to work on. Sometimes I need to withdraw and regroup because of some unforeseen blow.

This is not to argue against exposure but to demonstrate how important it is for the individual to be in control of their therapy. This is the view of Bronwyn Fox, a recovered sufferer of panic disorder who has written books on the issue and now counsels sufferers.

The important thing is to get in touch with your gut feeling and obey it. I have learned this lesson painfully and slowly, sometimes suffering from too much exposure and sometimes not enough. In my experience both are harmful.

If I’d known about exposure earlier, there are definitely aspects of my social and working life I would have fought harder to retain, rather than simply letting them go because they were too hard. But not knowing about exposure also led me to throw myself into situations that were too difficult, which meant I got overexposed and therefore more phobic very quickly. In both cases I wasn’t managing my anxiety well because I didn’t have the knowledge or tools.

I’m not saying that everyone can expose themselves and eventually rid themselves of their anxiety. In my case I think there are some things that are just too hard and will be for a while, and perhaps forever. However, I do want to create some sort of graded exposure program.

Exposing myself

Recently I visited an arts event alone. I’ve done this heaps of times but it was in a venue that I was unfamiliar with. I’m an expert at subtle avoidance – I’ve been practising it my whole adult life – and I noted that two very effective avoidance strategies were in play: getting there late, and sitting in the back row.

The getting there late was partly my unconscious mind at work. I just missed the tram! How convenient!

Next time I will resolve to sit in a row that is somehow more ‘threatening’ (this could mean, for example, a row where the people look interesting, or towards the front, or both) and getting there before the event starts. I might have to tackle one of these tasks at a time. Even being in a room with others and experiencing my reactions can be difficult for me sometimes. The important thing for me is to stay with myself somehow, to practise mindfulness without buying into my fears.

And soon it will be time to get exposed to a completely separate dilemma – the extreme heat of a Melbourne summer.

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In the land of Minor Mishaps

Recently I entered the land of the Minor Mishap. Those experiencing Minor Mishaps belong for a short time to a very unexclusive club.

A Minor Mishap doesn’t involve serious illness or death, and is not annoying enough to be soul destroying, but it usually requires that SOMETHING BE DONE. It demands to be given priority.

When you’re in the throes of a Minor Mishap you’re in a slightly different space from everyone else, floating a few inches above them. When you are speaking to anyone about the problem your voice carries urgency, purpose and a touch of desperation. You are driven by an overwhelming need to restore the world to exactly what it was once was. You no longer want a partner or more money or world peace. You just want what you had before – your version of normalcy, which, since it has been snatched from you, has suddenly become incredibly precious and sacred.

Minor Mishaps often involve parting with money that one would rather spend on fun and frivolity. Action is important, sometimes just for the sake of keeping the momentum going, even if it achieves next to nothing.

Minor Mishaps that can’t be fixed right away gradually stop being mishaps and become absorbed into normal life – in this case, the experience of ‘normal life’ changes to incorporate the Minor Mishap. I rent a crumbling semi-detached flat, so house-based Minor Mishaps in the form of needed repairs are incredibly frequent. If it’s not an electricity power point needing replacing it’s the hot water system in the roof calling it a day or the guttering on the garage detaching from the bricks and hanging down in a very undignified way.

But basically after I’ve reported the needed repair someone else has to sort it out. This doesn’t always happen straight away and if it drags on the Minor Mishap loses that urgent quality, and I stop noticing it.

A computer-based Minor Mishap is arguably worse than many others because sometimes, although you know something must be done, you don’t know exactly what. You’re like a detective hunting out the clues. You can call on experts but there’s no guarantee they will know either.

The Mishap strikes

One day last week at about 7 am, I turned on my right arm, I mean my computer. The green light went on but, apart from that, nothing happened. It was no longer a computer but a worthless box of tin. Or so it seemed.

I had reason to be devastated. A similar incident had occurred when I first moved into the place I’m in now, five and a half years ago. Back then, when I first set my computer up and switched it on, a flame briefly leered from the top back section where the fan is, and my computer died in a puff of smoke. I still have the disk drive, but such was the damage that it wasn’t apparent whether or not the files were retrievable – a specialised company charging a megafortune would have billed me for even investigating the drive to see if they could retrieve the files, and I wasn’t going to risk it. So when this second computer malfunction happened, I assumed at first that computer Armageddon had occurred for a second time.

Because I knew the nearest library had plenty of computers for public use and I had a file to send to a client (luckily saved onto a USB key), I planned to go there tout suite. But the library didn’t open till 10. In the meantime, I went to mum and dad’s, where my technologically challenged father, currently using a hard drive so ancient it is a priceless antique, has had a slightly newer hard drive sitting in his ‘study’ (storeroom) for a year waiting to be connected. My brother-in-law got it free from his work when they were upgrading. None of us had a clue what state it was in.

(As a bonus, I saw my recently born nephew Billy, as my sister from the country was staying with my parents. Last time I saw Billy he was too new to make eye contact: this time the bald-headed angel looked straight at me with friendly curiosity before his face crumpled as if he was about to burst into wails.)

I lugged Dad’s heavy hard drive to my place and set it up, hoping I could use it to send my work file. The screen came to life in a blaze of incomprehensible text. In my Windows-primed brain, I had simply assumed that I would see the familiar aqua screen with the reassuring software logos on it, good old Explorer and Word. Nothing of the sort. It was speaking to me in computer language I didn’t understand. At least I now knew that the problem with my own computer had nothing to do with the monitor, seemingly nothing to do with the external electricals, and was almost certainly in the hard drive.

In pouring rain, feeling alone and sorry for myself, I managed to get to the library and send the work file with a great deal of fuss and panic; so scrambled was my brain I had to make two trips because I’d left the email address at home.

Luckily my dad knew a computer man in a cheap part of town who’d sold him a monitor and also did repairs. It turned out to be one of those reassuring small shopfronts with disembowelled computers and equipment strewn all over table tops and the floor, a bit like body parts in an operating theatre. The very nice man, Mark, told me it was a simple electrical part in the hard drive that had died and he could fix it in ten minutes for only $75 – he actually showed me my computer firing up using his own electrical equipment: my files were safe! Normalcy, sweet normalcy, beckoned.

But then. When I took the hard drive home after Mark had fixed it, it did exactly the same thing as before. I rang Mark back, carefully presenting the scenario as an incomprehensible problem and not his fault. He told me to bring it back and he would test it again.

He tested the drive twice while I watched, using his own monitor, and it fired up beautifully. He was genuinely bamboozled. The plot had thickened.

Luckily, waiting to be served in the shop was a tall, solidly built man wearing an old blue singlet and shorts, with greying hair skirting his shoulders and the intense but calm gaze of the computer literate – the sort of man that you just know loves both computer games and a beer. He could hardly ignore the desperation in my voice as I spoke to Mark and to the concerned woman who I think was Mark’s wife. I can’t remember who said it first, but either he or Mark said something like ‘Have you got surge protection?’ The penny dropped. I did have surge protection – a power board that would presumably cut out in a storm surge. For some reason, it must have decided the power from my computer was a threat, and shut off the electricity to it while allowing power to the other components.

‘Just get a normal power board’, the blue-singleted man said. ‘You don’t even need surge protection unless you live out of town or in the hills.’

I thanked them all profusely and took my now rather scratched hard drive home again. This time I didn’t actually believe it would fire up – and it did. I’m now typing on it, but I’ve noted something else about a Minor Mishap – when normalcy returns, it takes a while to actually feel normal. My whole world had swayed and threatened to collapse. Without my computer, I now realise, I don’t feel quite whole – and I’m still recovering from the shock. Sad but true.

(I’m fine about spending the $75 – the part Mark replaced was five years old and usually dies after two, and he kindly removed all the dust from the insides as well – and there was a lot.)

Throughout my semi-ordeal my friend Simon was a calm voice on the other end of the phone – I rang him at least four times. He kept directing me to find out what the problem was rather than assuming I had entered the computer stone age. I think he has missed his vocation – with his sane, logical approach he should definitely go into counselling (he can practise on me any time!).

The other thing I learned from this experience, as I contemplated the possible need to get a new computer, is that I am a hopeless Windows junkie. No matter how alluringly the Apple shop beckons, with its blue-T-shirted, smiling dudes coolly offering me their insanely customer-focused tuition and support options, their impeccable and reasonably priced back-up software, and no matter how the pearly surfaces of the iMacs gleam as they power silently and wirelessly through their beautifully constructed programs, I cannot change, not yet anyway. I am yours, Windows. Another unavoidable if regrettable truth.

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Buying less, caring more: towards a sustainable, non-growth economy

Woke up early this morning with a blog entry clamouring to leave my brain and get onto the page.

There are two different knotty issues that I’ve been thinking about a bit lately and wanted to place side by side because I think they could illuminate each other. I’m not trying to solve these problems so much as simply start to look at them in tandem. Before I do that I want to warn that I’m just as much a part of the problems as anyone. In fact, it’s my own inconsistencies that lead me to contemplate these issues – the gap between my ideals and how I live my life!

So here goes.

Buddhists tell us that all living creatures want to be happy and enjoy the world. Yet our fast-paced capitalist society treats the earth, as well as human and non-human animals, as resources that need to be productive or at least managed. The effect of this is that we all overlook just how much care and nurturing the earth and its creatures need. In a sense, the whole set-up in many Western cultures requires us to do this if we are to function ‘properly’.

I suppose I’m talking a bit about sustainability here, but with a living creature component.

In his popular blog Rocky and Gawenda, former editor of The Age newspaper Michael Gawenda writes about the effects that his tiny, mischievous dog has had on his life. Since Gawenda’s retirement from full-time journalism Rocky has become his close companion: every morning they rise at dawn and go for a long walk along St Kilda beach.

But Gawenda still has many work obligations, and in an article in The Age a few months ago he wrote of his reluctance to acknowledge the depths of despair that his regular abandonment of Rocky produced in his beloved mutt. He feared that one extended absence had led to an estrangement so great that Rocky would never fully recover the depth of trust and affection he had once displayed towards his master.

In the article, Gawenda reluctantly grappled with just how delicate the emotional make-up of a non-human creature such as Rocky might be, and how much such a creature might require in care and attention.

When we start to be willing to look at a situation like that, the needs of the world can seem too overwhelming. In fact, it is nothing more than an invitation to put living beings before gain – an invitation that the world constantly tries to draw us away from.

Michael Leunig is a Melbourne cartoonist, illustrator and artist turned writer. In his regular pieces for the Age, Leunig contemplates life from the slow lane. Living in the bush, he is alive to its nuances, and documents with great honesty the rhythms of his own emotional life as he relates to an increasingly dysfunctional wider world.

Leunig is far from perfect either: his failure to see the sufferings of women denied agency and power in the world, as well as his inexplicable hostility towards Australia’s embattled intellectuals, not to mention thought itself, are baffling.

In 1995 he produced one of his most controversial cartoons, ‘Thoughts of a baby lying in a child care centre’. A tiny newborn lies in a crib at a child care centre. The child is in despair because it believes that its mother has abandoned it, and it then turns that despair in on itself, deciding that it must be unworthy. Feminists were furious.

No doubt one reason for this cartoon being controversial is that Leunig was pointing out an unpleasant truth: our society does not really want to think about the complexity of the needs of a single child, and instead puts the work ethic and the dollar first.

But what I think made feminists angry was the assumption that only one half of society was responsible for this grave failure to care: women. For one short moment, Leunig was able to contemplate the giant need and great loneliness of a single child; but it was too painful for him. Rather than remain in uncertainty, and invite the ‘negative capability’ that Keats suggests and that he himself claims to be comfortable with, he simply reached for a convenient scapegoat. If he could blame women for the problem, he no longer had to deal with its full implications.

Jeff Kennett was the conservative premier of Victoria from 1992 until 1999. Gung-ho, aggressive and revengeful after many years in opposition, and having inherited a huge debt from the outgoing Labor government, he seemed to take great joy in shutting down hundreds of government schools, carrying out mass sackings of public servants, and privatising the electricity industry (which caused massive job loss).

But since retiring from politics, Kennett has changed. A former chairman of beyondblue, an organisation that publicises depression and assists sufferers, he now regrets his failure to consider the social effects of electricity privatisation. This infamous right wing warrior made the following admission in The Age of 12 December:

It’s very easy to change the natural order of life but it comes with a huge social and economic cost. If I was in office ever again and implementing change as I did in the past … I would make sure that I had a lot of education in place … I would try better to understand the impact of change.

Although many people see the categories of right and left as outdated and meaningless, I don’t agree. It’s been said that what distinguishes them is the left’s willingness to actually consider the effects of political and economic decisions on the ground, for individuals, communities and particular groups, to look at the micro as well as the macro. Through his involvement with beyondblue, Kennett has learned to do this and is a wiser human being as a result.

So – what’s the other issue I wanted to look at? I know this post is getting long, so I’ll try and keep what is an infinitely complex topic outrageously short.

The journal New Scientist had a great collection of articles in its 18 October 2008 issue on why the continued growth model of economic development simply wasn’t possible any more. It’s not a matter of ideology – the earth can’t sustain continued growth any longer because its resources are finite, and they’re fast running out. Rapidly rising population is a large part of the problem.

In his contribution, Tim Jackson looks at the sustainability–growth issue in terms of the need to reduce carbon emissions. He warns that if we factor economic growth (which itself seems to require increasing population) into the equation, ‘the idea that technological ingenuity can save us from climate disaster looks a whole lot more challenging’.

Jackson goes on to calculate how low in carbon emissions our economies would have to be by 2050 if we a) want to stabilise greenhouse levels in the atmosphere at ‘a reasonably safe 450 parts per million’ and b) factor in projected population increases, continued economic growth and the need to eradicate extreme poverty. He demonstrates that to achieve such a stabilisation, ‘the carbon content of economic output must be reduced to just 2 per cent of the best currently achieved anywhere in the European Union’. It would, in other words, necessitate more or less ‘complete decarbonisation of every last dollar’ – a well-nigh impossible task.

But if economic growth is the problem, adopting a different model would represent a change of gargantuan proportions. How is it to be done without causing widespread suffering? In fact, reducing growth in a chaotic fashion already has increased poverty and death – In March 2009 it was estimated that the recent global financial crisis would lead to the deaths of an additional 200,000 to 400 000 children.

Any discussion on changing our economic system to one that doesn’t rely on growth must look at how we can reduce consumption without increasing unemployment and causing widespread hardship.

What would a sustainable society and economy look like? Because goods would be built for the long term, maintenance and repair would become major industries.

There would be major government investment in services that have been sorely neglected for years such as public transport and social housing, as well as huge investment in renewable energy. But let’s not forget that, worthwhile as these investments are, they will still rely on the world’s natural resources to be farmed and dug from the ground (eg iron ore).

The need to care more, which I’ve identified in the previous section of this blog entry, is perhaps one of the solutions. Caring could be a significant form of employment in a sustainable economy. More teachers in classrooms. More childcare workers in creches. More psychologists and psychiatrists and counsellors in psyche units, community health centres, mental health outreach teams and jails. More nursing staff in aged care centres. More doctors in the western suburbs, new suburbs and rural areas.

But a lower consuming society would also leave more time for its citizens to care for each other, which wouldn’t cost anything, but would save a lot of money.

In the long run, this would lead to a reduction in crime and incarceration. Community bonds would strengthen.

Caring for the earth, through environmental employment projects and community vegetable gardens, could also increase.

I’m not an economist and can’t even begin to discuss here what the nuts and bolts of a non-growth economy would be, how it would actually sustain itself, pay its workers and feed its population. My point is that we need to start discussing what such an economy would look like and how we could move towards it. And perhaps the fact that the world demands so much care and attention – so much more than we can currently give it – is one reminder that something needs to change.

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My diagnostic disaster: part two

In my last post I began relating the story of my odd encounter with a rogue psychiatrist, Dr Field (not his real name). Below is the second instalment.

When I left Doctor Field I never intended to go back. But eight years later, my brilliant career as an editor was floundering in a sea of uncertainty and self-doubt. I was at a crossroads: publishers were paying less, and wanting work done that was often beyond my expertise. I was weary of the chronic exhaustion and anxiety, not to mention loneliness and isolation, that large jobs forced on me. I wanted a style of work that was sustainable. Refusing the big jobs for the sake of my sanity, my savings were getting run down.

I needed some government help. I wasn’t going to stop working but find a niche that suited me, with a safety net underneath – a net flexible enough to allow me to work part time, as the particular payment I sought would do.

I was finally ready to admit that I had a serious, complex condition and that I couldn’t make it on my own. I was going to put my hand out.

But first I had to get the necessary documentation. This included a complicated form that had to be filled in by a doctor, stating the seriousness of the patient’s condition and that it was either stable or being treated.

This presented a dilemma; I had seen two psychiatrists consecutively for long periods of time, and I didn’t want to ask either of them to complete the report. Neither had ever presented me with a diagnosis, probably because they did not want to encourage what amounted to an obsession with self-analysis. But nor was either of them a specialist in anxiety disorders, and they had shown little or no interest in imparting skills to help me manage my anxiety. Despite this, all three of us had assumed that the goal for me was more or less normal functioning where work and love were concerned. I could not go back to either one of them and admit my ‘failure’.

Then I thought of Dr Field, and the results of his test. I rummaged around in my filing cabinet and found it: it was all there in black and white, the extent of my pathology. This could furnish some supporting evidence, but I would need to get it from the horse’s mouth. I would arrange to see Dr Field purely for the purposes of getting a doctor’s report on my condition. And, as our approaches to drugs and psychiatry were at such variance, I would make it clear that I did not want to see him on an ongoing basis.

The determination to foreclose ongoing treatment was my first mistake. There would be a few more before Dr Field and I were through for good.

I rang up his office and his receptionist answered. I bluntly asked her if I could make an appointment to see Dr Field on a short term basis. I made it clear, probably sounding over-determined, that I did not want to see him for long term treatment.

That’s the point at which the pathologising began. The receptionist passed on this message to Dr Field, and once we were in session he mentioned this reluctance as an instance of my pathology. Already there was more than a whiff of the 1950s approach to psychiatry in Dr Field’s attitude towards me. What next, a lobotomy?

The first minutes after I sat down in front of him, however, were quite okay. The room was small with an untidy shuffle of papers and a television in one corner, the walls painted a pale apricot beige, but the vinyl armchair that I sat in opposite him was low and comfortable. I had completely forgotten the look of him, and now recalled the unexpected cuteness, the expensive suit. Perhaps it would all be alright. I told him about my editing dilemma and he tipped his head to one side, quickly, in that rather appealing way – could it be he was really listening? ‘You’ve thrown in the towel’, he said. I nodded and had to stop the tears from welling up. Was he offering sympathy? understanding?

Half an hour later he had diagnosed me with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and told me the only hope for treatment was regular doses of dexamphetamine (otherwise known as speed). He had also apologised for diagnosing me with bipolar eight years earlier. Since our last encounter, he explained, he had discovered that many patients with what he’d thought were the symptoms of bipolar actually had ADD or ADHD.

So much was going on in my head as I smiled back at him. What was the point of trying to explain my chronic low blood sugar, the brain fog I already experienced from food intolerance, my battles with caffeine and the fact that my body reacted badly to any kind of drug? How could I possibly try and crack open that wall of medical certainty and blind faith he had in the efficacy of drugs to cure all mental ills? This combination of the old-fashioned and the maverick in him was bewildering. A psychiatrist like him, willing to be on the diagnostic cutting edge, should have been as focused on the body as he was on the mind – wasn’t that the point of psychiatrists being medical doctors as well as specialists in mental disorders?

At that moment I started to become what he had set out to portray me as – calculating and false.

But at the same time I was also knocked sideways by the actual diagnosis. Somehow it made sense. The literature he gave me to read later brought it home even more sharply.

According to the literature, there are a number of forms of ADD. The commonly known ADHD, characterised by hyperactivity and low academic achievement, is only one of them. There is also inattentive ADD, associated with girls and far harder to spot, as well as hyperfocused ADD, but also a couple of others even lesser known. If anything, I had inattentive ADD. I was considered a ‘brain’ at school, but was for the most part a lazy student until I pulled my finger out for the final year of secondary school and got pretty good marks, including a standardised perfect score in English. But I floundered at uni as an undergrad, failing some subjects and obtaining only mediocre or poor marks in most others.

At the age of nine, before I knew anything about mental illness, I’d suddenly come to the conclusion that there was something deeply wrong with me. Later I had assumed that this was just the first stirrings of my neurosis. But perhaps on some level I was aware of some more basic shortcoming in my neural architecture.

On the other hand, my ADD symptoms might have been environment related (as I’d always assumed), an attempt to respond to and escape from the conflicting emotional demands of parents who were respectively resentful, depressed and emotionally distant (my mother) and needy, obsessive and controlling (my father).

Regardless, Dr Field’s methods of diagnosis were lazy and reductive. One Australian ADD site has a list of other conditions that may present as ADD and should be eliminated before any diagnosis. Dr Field did not bother to eliminate any of these. What about my chronic low blood sugar, for example? Couldn’t that have been a culprit? (In my case, I believe it’s a separate condition, but who knows how it contributed to my adolescent difficulties?) When I asked Dr Field about whether I could get a brain scan to confirm the diagnosis he said a SPECT scan was available, but waved dismissively as he said it. (I decided not to – a confirmation of ADD would encourage my self-obsession).

A few more things about ADD before I leave the subject – I’ve done a bit of reading on brain plasticity, and I believe there are many types of brains, as well as many ways people can improve brain functioning. The fact that I’m an editor suggests that my brain has changed quite considerably already simply by the work I’ve done, and practices such as meditation and mindfulness, as well as life skills training, can help further.

Even if I had no physical health problems, I don’t believe the kinds of drugs that are prescribed for this condition – basically stimulants – should be the standard alternative in most cases, but rather a last resort.

Standard treatments for ADD that already exist and should be tried before drugs include behaviour modification, cognitive therapy, anger management, social training and family counselling.

To some extent these treatments seem to support the concept of brain plasticity (the brain's ability to alter itself to develop new capabilities), but more cutting edge treatments that further acknowledge plasticity, such as software that literally retrains the brain, are already available for disorders such as dyslexia -- why not for ADD?

It scares me to think of the number of children being diagnosed with this condition who may simply be suffering from food intolerance or low blood sugar. However, that doesn’t mean the condition doesn’t exist.

Anyway, just as the literature suggested was typical for an ADD person (the extent to which I fitted some of the ups and downs and brain states described was chilling) I caught the tram home thoroughly discombobulated. Dusk had fallen and as I stood in the swaying, brightly lit tram among the suited commuters clutching their mobiles, my mind was busily rewriting my entire life story – my difficulties, social and otherwise, made more sense than they ever had.

But in my bag was a prescription for dexamphetamine.

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Tripping myself up again -- a work and anxiety setback

I've been away from this blog for a little while because of broadband issues (all fixed) and work busyness (ongoing, although workwise I'm in a state of suspended animation at the moment.) But while I haven't been writing the blog I've been dreaming up possible blog posts. And every time I think I have one ready to write, something in my life changes and I have to rethink what I was going to say.

The most recent change was a little 'setback' I had in a work context recently. And this has made me take a fresh look at how I approach my life in general. Even as I'm writing this I'm not sure how to change. I just know I have to.

When I have a setback such as the one that occurred (perhaps later I'll be able to describe it in more detail, but it's too close at the moment), a familiar process follows. I go through a a day and night of utter self-loathing and despair. I become a dual personality -- the 'naughty', shamed child who sabotaged a combined parent-and-adult figure, and the angry parent-adult who sees the child's 'misdemeanour' from the point of view of a shocked, judgmental world. The 'parent' feels the shame but has to somehow bear it, and try to mediate the consequences of the sabotage.

As I write this, I understand that the anger of the 'parent' is part of the problem. I also know that the 'child' badly wants attention. But how do I square my psychodrama with the need to appear adult to the outside world? I know I'm supposed to love my inner child, but what does that actually mean when it has an embarrassing 'tanty' that appears to threaten my already limited professional life (and certainly my image)?

What baffles me is that, despite all the self-growth I've undertaken over 25 years, this dynamic -- a neurotic need for attention that becomes a sabotage -- hasn't changed all that much. (I think this blog entry itself is becoming a bit of a tanty!)

The fact is, I'm extremely high maintenance, and I do try to lead a balanced life, but I probably need to manage things better. This is what I think I'm struggling with. I've been avoiding starting to meditate for months now, and even do a very relaxing mindfulness exercise instead, but there's no substitute. With my many problems, meditation helps me on so many levels. Not doing it is part of a more subtle self-sabotage.

Blood sugar is also an issue. It affects me not just by increasing anxiety, but lowering my self-esteem when I'm vague and forgetful because of it. My diet is limited but I put little if any effort into trying to make it strict but interesting, rarely cook anything remotely appetising, and I've been getting a bit slack lately with the kinds of foods I eat. So it's time to take stock, literally, and start looking after myself in that department. What I've been avoiding, I think, is the realisation that I probably need to eat more meat. As an animal lover I don't like the fact that I have to eat meat at all, but I have more energy and focus when I do.

The other things to do -- and these are the hardest -- are: refuse to beat myself up; talk to myself kindly; and be nice to myself.

I'm sorry that this entry is so self-obsessed. I have planned and half-written entries on other issues. But sometimes I'm shocked into the realisation of my vulnerability, and at such times I need to remind myself of the need to ramp up my self-care -- again!

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Dark of the moon

A time of creeping statis. I don’t want to do anything. I could happily crawl into bed and stay there all day, basking in sleepiness.

It’s the dark of the moon. At this time it seems to me that everything active, yang, and exterior wants to come to a halt. The energies for change, action and movement are low. It’s a good time for withdrawing, for contemplation.

But I’m feeling things beyond that.

Not depression exactly. Grief, partly. The loss of two extended family members in the space of weeks. One sudden and shocking, the other, sadly anticipated, to some extent for years.

I’m also getting over ten days of extreme editing. (‘Extreme Editing’ might make a good business name – why haven’t I thought about it before?) I was asked to edit a long, complex report on a topic I had some familiarity with.

A cold slowly hatched itself, invading my brain with a sullen, quiet exhaustion. The report came in two parts, the first part unfinished while I was editing the second. I was too cottonballed to stress about it.

I hunkered down for a long stretch of concentrated thinking. I don’t know where I drew the energy from to carry on. I’m a low energy person at the best of times, and here I was with a full-blown cold and a tight deadline.

The cold was a textbook one – not, I kept telling myself, the infamous swine flu. First utter exhaustion without other symptoms, then a violent persistent cough that got worse at night (by the third night I had learned to cough in my sleep). Then a hopelessly runny nose for three days. And the horrific body image problems, looking in the mirror at the red rimmed eyes and nostrils, the swollen cheeks, the unwashed hair, and thinking I had never looked so ugly.

Struggling to finish editing the report, I didn’t get beyond the front and back yards of my flat for six days. Towards the end I was running out of vegetables, meat and fish. The last morning I breakfasted on brown rice.

It wasn’t that drastic in terms of actual hours -- I didn’t slave away till 1 in the morning, as I had on previous jobs in the long ago, enthusiastic days when I still believed I could make it as a full time editor. In fact, I got quite good at intuitively knowing when I had done enough for one day. It’s just that, even resting, I didn’t have enough energy in those last few days to get properly dressed and drive to the supermarket.

At times like this that I am confronted by the reality of not having a partner, and the huge practical difference that makes. Ideally, partners can support each other’s careers at different times in reciprocal ways, leveraging the partnership so that both have a better chance of success. I fantasised during this busy time of someone humming away in the background, cheerfully asking me if I was hungry as I slaved away, and what time would I like dinner? Instead, dinner was often fried eggs or a bowl of cooked chickpeas!

My body and mind are now claiming their payment. They demand rest. I want nothing but to stare into space, even though aimlessness terrifies me.

One thing that struck me was how magical, glossy, and delightful were the simple actions of washing my hair, dressing carefully and putting makeup on to take that much-needed trip to the supermarket after I’d finally uploaded the edited report. Bringing treats back home for lunch, and eating slowly as I read the newspaper. I can’t describe the feeling of freedom of those simple actions.

The next day I spent almost three hours swanning around the Chadstone shopping mall. Happily surrounded by the anonymous crowd. Wonderful to freewheel, to luxuriate in unstructured time.

Until the next big job of course. I like doing lots of small editing jobs but let’s hope the next major project is at least weeks away.

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The pleasures and sorrows of work (with apologies to Alain de Botton)

I exist in two different dimensions or modes of being. One is when I have no work. The other is when I have some. I am two different selves in these separate universes and what I love best is hanging around in the hallway between the two, anticipating work and enjoying my precious hours of freedom.

When I have no work, which is often at the moment, I am free. I’m in control of my life; admin tasks are done when I feel like it. I get around to clearing my in tray and my email inbox. I freewheel a bit. I walk my sister's dog Jordan any time in the morning that feels right. I work on my blogs. I have long discussions with my friend Simon, a semi-retired semi-single leftie (he thinks this term is obsolete, and prefers to be called 'progressive') about the travesty that is Australian politics.

I start to focus on the small things. Why haven’t I finished scrubbing the mildew-ridden kitchen ceiling, as my anally retentive property manager ‘advised’ me to do? Isn’t the garage horribly cluttered? Why don’t I ever get enough sleep? Why does everybody around me have more money than I do?

I start to worry about money. Perhaps I’ll never work again. What will happen as my savings run down? What about the far-flung future? I’ll be old and unlovable and poor. I go to Target and console myself with a bargain or two. I wait like Penelope for the money to come through from my last job. I abuse the accounts people when they send it to the wrong account (well I did on Thursday and for this and all my sins I am very sorry, and embarrassed).

I develop a low-level depression. I begin to feel disengaged from the world. At a family gathering some well-meaning rellie asks for the thousandth time whether it is hard to be disciplined working from home and I secretly snigger, thinking of my increasingly undisciplined ways and reply (I’m quite pleased with this reply because it hides a multitude of sins) that when the work comes in I do it quickly ’cos I want the money.

Then I get desperate. I resort to pleading with the universe for a small, do-able job that’s within my comfort zone. And I stoop to a new age trick that works every time – I visualise people delivering wads of $100 bills to my door on trolleys, so many wads of green bills that the spare room is chock-full of them. I see myself in this room, dancing around and laughing as I wildly throw bills in the air.

It works every time. But only too well. This time two new jobs came through one after the other, and I burnt my new-ish, favourite saucepan.

There was no lovely in-between anticipation of work. I was right in the middle of juggling and my other self, my other mode of being, stepped in.

I need to explain that something truly terrible happened to me once I became a freelance editor. I have always been angst and anxiety ridden in many-faceted ways, and my difficulties coping with colleagues in the workplace gradually made things worse. So I chose freelancing as a way to avoid this and it seemed to work for a while.

But sadly, the difficult life of a freelancer doing major editing jobs (books, training modules, CD-ROMs) seems to have sensitised me to work-related stress. Now it’s the work I dread, and the accompanying physical and emotional exhaustion. It’s almost intolerable for me to have a large job, for instance one running over three weeks, hanging over my head. Jobs must be small and manageable.

So I just don’t do the big jobs any more. Which is a shame because that’s where the money is.

But right now I am juggling two smallish jobs. And already I’ve burnt a saucepan. What next? Last night I watched a snippet of a late-night movie in which the main character was driving distractedly and crashed into the car ahead. Immediately I started thinking about how complicated my life would be if I had a similar bingle with these two jobs still unfinished.

Sleep is becoming more difficult. There’s work to be done goddam it, says my overdeveloped superego. I’ve started to worry about what will happen as the jobs continue and I get more sleep deprived.

And the most difficult thing. I've started thinking about every single small undone job in my life as well as future routine tasks and every one of them MUST BE DONE NOW. Well, sort of. I ignore this, but what I’m ignoring is a parcel of dread at the thought of my still-untreated warts, the bill I forgot to pay on Friday, the hours that a hair appointment on Thursday will take out of my busy work day, my future neglect of Jordan.

So I guess in the midst of this I’ll knuckle down and do the work. But if anyone reading has any suggestions apart from meditating (sadly I can’t meditate when I am in this state – there’s work to be done!) they’ll be very welcome.

(photo courtesy of Freeimages)

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