Please Mrs Butler...Do I Have To Go Back To Work?

In the latter part of Christmas, this was me...

*

In fact, they were a mixture of small and large plates, 

jugs, pouts and more in my refrigerator.

One of the walking routes I grew particularly fond of is the path from sofa to fridge to sofa to bed to sofa and back to fridge... Ahhh. But through my #12DaysofXmasMH as I mentioned in my reflection blog post, I learned a lot about myself and the importance of checking in with myself about how I feel on a regular basis. I found myself getting the itch to go back to work in fact, in a way best expressed by one of my favourite poems:

Alan Ahlberg, this has been completely relevant
for me through school, university and work.

After adopting the useful check-ins I ended up realising that sofa-to-fridge and back is not the best way to sustain reasonably good mental health. Christmas is challenging for me for many reasons I've already written about in previous posts, but what I hadn't realised was, that while rest is important, activity is also important. I guess I should have been hitting myself over the head with one of those  foam mallet things to remind myself that the word "balance" defines everything that helps my mental health, but clearly I was in some kind of major food coma after consuming at least four packets of those yummy cheese and bacon bites that Marks and Spencer needs to stock UNTIL I DIE because it is key to my Christmas Staple Foods.

Ah yes. Must remember!

You may noticed that there have been a few changes to the blog since you last saw it - and this was part of my activity list. Sort non-work stuff out. And because I can't do jigsaws since I still have to keep the house looking like I don't live in our flat.Conversation with myself: Not only was I telling myself, "You have a campaign to run. Do something about it!", I also noticed that I if I did fill my days with some low-level activities and also kept running or walking, my mood would stabilise. Thank you! And for all the resolutions I made, there was still this persisting thought in the back of my mind.

Yep. Smells the same. Looks the same. Is, in fact, the same.

So in some ways I was dreaming about going back to work and very excited for it. There are loads of projects going on that I'm eager to get involved with about and the Learning Academy is such an exciting place to be right now. When I have time to reflect, headspace if you like, I finally have time to think through everything that goes on when I'm in back to back meetings.

I can think of fewer situations this *doesn't* apply 

to than ones to which it doesn't. Oh dear oh dear.

But there is one aspect of going back to work that I absolutely loathe. It's totally ridiculous, I know, but this is the reason I have a slight sense of dread about the first day back: it's because everyone will ask how it was.

"How was your holiday?"
"It was good, thanks, how about yours?"
"Great thanks, so relaxing, really good."

I'm the person in the middle here. I'm okay for the first few of these - one or two exchanges. After that, with each one my stomach starts to tighten because I feel confused and under pressure to have had a brilliant Christmas.

Every week. Every single week.

I feel incredibly self-conscious about it. I can't help thinking in the back of my head that my answer should be a lot more impressive, and worse, that I should feel absolutely amazing about it, for example: "Thanks, it was the most amazing holiday ever. I won the lottery, we flew to Lapland and met Santa, then we dined on caviar and drank Champagne every day, we went on several holidays abroad and at home, staying in luxury five star resorts where we were waited on hand and foot, oh and by the way here's my resignation note since we won the lottery I shan't be coming back. Have a lovely year." With no mention that in addition to all of the above very much not happening, it's now Broke January, and the immense joy of being paid on 22nd December is now replaced with intense panic that I will run out of money by next week.

I will be more assertive. If that's okay?

At the same time I know I shouldn't worry about it, so based on being more authentic and not feeling like I have to conform to any kind of (completely self-fabricated) notions of what Christmas should be like. I noticed this (thanks Mindfulness and check-ins!) so I changed my answer to be more honest, Everytime I'm more honest I feel like a weight is lifted off my shoulders. It is such a relief to be myself.

Yes, Jessica. Yes.

I said "Good thanks. We didn't really do much." And it was surprising how many people answer, "Same here", or - alternatively - "Oh God, the total opposite, I've come back to work for a rest!". (Those are the people with young children.) It's another one of those humps that I have to get over.

I was one of the people thinking this at the end of this week.

And some people were probably thinking it over Christmas too.

Reality check: lots of people are feeling the same or have had a Christmas that is normal - i.e. up and down! Stop beating yourself up about the fact that you've had a normal Christmas and nothing dazzling or amazing has happened. Just because Orlando Bloom and George Clooney did not decide to leave their partners in order to beg for your hand in marriage does not mean that I'm a total failure as a human being.

Fair enough George, you're married already, it would be complicated.

Orlando? You've got no excuse!

And then there's the stuff that comes next. I took Monday off because I was hoping this would ease me into the year more gently. What actually happened was that I had to make myself not check emails that day as I saw the number against the mail box growing and growing. The temptation to look was very strong, but I had to gently remind myself with a stern word that I had taken the day OFF so I should be NOWHERE NEAR my emails.

Yes, clearly I should have been ignoring emails and focusing on 

this much more urgent activity!

Now I've been back at work a week and yes - I could do with a breather - no surprise there then. Christmas feels like it was a year ago, my best efforts to start the year with everything organised are just plain unrealistic.

Speaking of which...

*Food break*

On the positive side, I've made some progress and have organised a large number of things to do with my campaign and the year ahead at work, increased my exercise and have limited my meals containing either the word 'burger' or 'pies' to only about one a day rather than a wall-to-wall-pastry-fest. There are good things.

Absolutely. 

Is it working?

I have to keep working at telling myself to check in, see how I am and I have to keep telling myself that I can't possibly achieve everything in a single day, maybe not even in a year. But I can do something. And dealing with 'challenges' (which, by the way is work-speak for "WTF. Seriously?" moments)... there are always the nice email replies.

I actually don't mean this when I say thanks. 

But 'outstanding' is my favourite word to describe a day. That Has Gone. To. The. Dogs.

So, yes, a week back at work and I could do with a holiday. In the meantime there are weekends. (Thank you. THANK YOU, the inventor of the weekend. You are awesome.)

Evening schedule. And weekend schedule.

And possibly schedule at other times too. 

You won't tell anyone, will you?

In the meantime, with at least a few hours of my weekend to go, I might just go back and have a read of some of the other poems I love. Eat a nice meal, go for a walk, Just enjoy the weekend. And on poems, the headteacher of my primary school, Mrs. Evans, taught me to love poetry with her expressive performances of many of the poems she read to us - aged five. Although she was incredibly strict and not terribly nice to the older children, she let herself be seen for the passionate literature lover she clearly was when she worked with the smallest children in the school. My love for her poems (as that is how I remember them, even though other authors had written and published them) remains and is testified by how vividly I remember those readings. Humour and creativity - whether music, writing, reading poetry or prose - make a huge difference to my mood, and a lot of poems are small enough to fit into even a really busy day.

Please Mrs Butler. A Poetry book everyone, 

children and adults should read. It's brilliant!

So that will be what I do before this starts again...

Whatever you're up to, take care and take it one breath at a time. (And for more on that, read this article on mindful breathing at work, I really enjoyed it.) See you soon! x

*A very big, #redefiningresilience thank you to VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) for the tweets I used in this post. Your tweets are often the #smallthings that make a #bigdifference to my #mentalhealth. Thank you.

Reasonable, Real New Year's Resolutions for 2016... The Balance Between Ambition and Self) Acceptance

It's 16:25 on New Year's Eve 2015 and I've now made a few resolutions now that the precarious time that is - for me - Christmas - has passed.

One of them is, next year, cut down on the number of articles I read about making or breaking new year's resolutions, since it has taken me the whole afternoon and my iPad has nearly run out of juice watching back-to-back episodes of Jessica Jones on Netflix to figure out that - big whoop - lots of people make similar new year's resolutions, quite a lot of us do it when we're drunk, and many of us find that by January 5th (that's one day after returning to work for most) we're clambering for the chardonnay and shunning spin classes left right and centre.

Common resolutions as per Time 2012

And here are the favourites from this year, as per Time magazine. It seems that many people are, at this very moment, steaming broccoli and lentils (if you are, stop - you'll be bloated in your sparkly dress / dinner jacket later!) whilst writing their letters of resignation, practising deep breathing and mindfulness (that's assuming you're reading a self-help de-stress website and not taking a bath at the same time as you try and cook stuff), and juggling the steamer and the crochet needles. Good luck to you, good people. Hey, at least you'll be going out soon and can leave alone these worthy activities for a few paltry hours.

Time's Most Googled Resolutions 

Seriously, people, kale chips? Just go and buy some if you're that desperate.

Just as not everyone has a great Christmas day, a whole lot of people hate New Year's Eve, and I can't say it's always been my favourite night of the year either. For one thing, the stamina I associate with a) standing up for any period of time and b) staying up past 8pm is pretty much beyond me unless I've broken my psychiatrist's golden rule of substance misuse and hit the caffeine like a fiend. And, just so you know, since I am going out tonight, I have already made it two thirds of the way through my first 500ml Coke Zero. Spoiler alert: I may make it to midnight, with a few more of those under my belt.

AT LEAST this many and I may make it

The second reason is that I've still spend most of my life as a single person, albeit that for the first fifteen of those, it was definitely acceptable, or let's even say appropriate for that to happen. I'm sure I don't need to explain that it's not exactly fun to go out on the night of the year when everyone's focused on having 'the best night ever' when you're single. That's a night built up for failure without a kiss at midnight. You've donned your sequins, followed the tutorials on how to make yourself into a new year, new you woman for the night, and you've spent far too much money for some flouncy event it'll cost you a fortune so get home from. And this is not New Year's Eve, the movie, so the likelihood that you'll meet Ashton Kutchner in the broken elevator is pretty slim (though, if that does happen to you, fair play!).

Oh Ashton, not even you can pull this look off. Enough now.

I don't know where those house parties are that have a bunch of random single people who've never met each other before. To me that's just called inviting complete strangers into your home and feeding them alcohol. Forget new year's resolutions. Just don't be a complete dimwit! Anyway, those are the parties where across a crowded room a young-ish woman (anywhere between 16 and 45, let's say) can expect to glance across the room with her newly smoky-ed luscious lids and lock eyes with someone who's vaguely in the sphere of being good looking, isn't wearing a wedding ring, and in any case looks a little bit like James Bond (i.e. is wearing black tie, which means even the pimply and puny stand a chance of romance).

Line up fellas. Tonight you too can be 

any of these short Hollywood celebrities.

My best worst NYE: 1999-2000. Not only did all the computers make it through just fine as the clocks struck midnight; not only did the 'river of fire' in no way ignite along the Thames that night. Worse. I lost one of my Patrick Cox loafers in the muddy banks of the Thames. If you're listening, old river, you owe me a loafer. I hope you're enjoying wearing it in your watery depths tonight. I can tell you it was not that much fun walking all the way back to Kennington from the south bank near Vauxhall with just one shoe. Not much fun at all. And no kiss at midnight. No Champagne either. More like a can of Tizer and a freezing cold and altogether underwhelming night. Happy New Year? Oh F off.

Seriously Jools, I think you're great, but I might just call it a night.

(Joking aside, there are much worse situations. If you're with someone you don't get on with, or who is even abusive either mentally, verbally or physically, that's worse than being alone. If you are in that situation please try to keep yourself safe and contact Refuge for support. You deserve better.) If you're in an unhappy relationship that can be a lot lonelier than being alone on any night of the year. I am lucky to be blessed with my wonderful husband. I'm so grateful to have someone by my side through all this life.

We really need to think about our priorities

Fun is fun, but we could all get a laugh watching

the Oban fireworks catastrophe of 2011

Last year I talked about the pressures of the season - that five seconds after being encouraged to shove every fatty, creamy, stodgy food down your gullet you're expected to squeeze yourself into sexy, slinky spandex and strut your funky stuff in stilettos that are far too uncomfortable to be worn even sitting down, let alone with the extra five pounds of lard you've casually added to your girth over the last few days. And that would be my own personal third reason.

You said it, Sali. 

(And apologies if you hate this avatar, 

Bitstrips didn't turn out to be quite the easy (or accurate)

avatar creator that I thought it was)

(Link to Sali's article on The Pool) I told you I'd done my reading :)

Anyway, back to new year's resolutions. What I realised reading through all the articles this afternoon is that, like everything else, new year's resolutions could do with a bit of balance to be effective. So here they are:

Overall: be more mindful and take care of my mental health so that I can achieve the other resolutions as far as I possibly can.

Yes indeed. The first resolution is about being ambitious, forward-thinking and aim for progress, but in the end achieve what I can with the right degree of balance to I can be healthy (within my control).

I haven't figured out a master plan, but what I do know is that I won't give up sharing my story with as many organisations or people who will have me. The only way we're going to normalise mental health in the workplace and the world is if we make having conversations about it easier. I believe this will help people find help earlier and easier, and hopefully make for healthier attitudes all round.

Me, jumping over rocks in a baseball cap.

I suppose it could happen.

It's not all that helpful to say to yourself, "Lose weight", or even "Lose twenty pounds by April", in my case, because I don't know whether my body will be able to do it. My medications have weight gain side-effects; my back still gets sore and my mental health is still teetering on a slender pinnacle between fine and failing, so to set targets like this aren't going to work for me.

Again, Tim, I know it doesn't look like you. Sorry. And sorry to your wife too. 

I know who wears the proverbial trousers.

I have made the above few resolutions after some thought about what I wanted to achieve in the next year, but they are longer term goals, more likely to result in success, going by what Tim Dowling suggests in his piece on fool proof new year's resolutions, published today. (By the way, Tim, in the unlikely event that you read this piece, apologies for your avatar. I tried but there's only so many things you can do with Bitstrips' avatars. I know it looks nothing like you. Sorry.)

There's a theme to them, though: that I'm going to try, but I'm also going to try not to be too hard on myself for these resolutions. They don't have definitive outcomes. That's deliberate. I've set targets that are very specific in my life before - both personally and at work, but for the next year given the delicate state of my health I want to have areas to focus on, but not milestones which - should I fall short of them - will fuel the fire of self-loathing or a sense of failure.

I'm spending tonight over the road at my local pub with my husband. The very kind manager has allowed me to reserve a table because she knows I can't stand. There will be a band, which I'm looking forward to, and I'm hoping my husband will grace me with a new year's kiss...and then tomorrow I'll get up and run the parkrun, possibly with quite the hangover. Whatever you're up to, I hope that you have a not-unhappy night, and whatever the year brings your way, please take care of yourself. Sending you love for 2016. x

A Change is No Good Without a Rest: Seeking Balance Through Sleep.

It's been a few weeks since I wrote, I know. I've started two or three posts but haven't been able to follow through and finish one, largely because I've had to prioritise work over everything else because I've been on business in India. More on that in the (finished) future posts.

The fact is, that I had to address serious 'balance' challenges in my life to keep going.

I was supporting the launch of a completely new process, including creating a suite of documents to be used, sessions explaining the process to Indian colleagues so they could deliver it, and making improvements to the materials as they were tried and tested in different ways so that the whole process could be run successfully

And it did run successfully. I should probably add, though, that creating new ways of doing things in big companies is not a small thing.

It's hard for me to explain adequately what my work comprises, because 'management consultant' is a meaningless title unless (and even, sometimes, when) the company you work for has decided to change something and they've asked in consultants to help them with it, whatever it is.

I admit that it's hard to explain what I do, but the easiest way to explain it is that it's about helping people (sometimes a few people, sometimes hundreds of thousands) go through a change that is being made by the organisation that they work for.

For example, imagine if in your company the head of technology decided it was time to upgrade to a newer version of a system. The old one is out of date and has lots of glitches and bugs. It doesn't really allow the business to keep up with the world of 2015. The people you work with, including you, have used it for the last twenty years. You don't particularly want to change because your job is pretty straightforward the way that it is.

Here's where I come in. It's my job to work with others - hopefully a team made up of people from your work and colleagues from mine to help make the change happen. Together we figure out how we need to make everyone understand why the change is happening (in whatever way works best - information sessions, emails, webinars, videos and so on). We also take a look at training requirements and figure out what training is needed to make the new system understandable and a success.

Gradually you move the employees - the people going through this change - through the 'change curve' from not even being aware that something is happening, to the point where everyone has been through the training, has started to use the new system and eventually it's as if nothing ever changed.

Helping people change inspires me with hope that the world can be positive and worthwhile. I hope I use the skills I've learned as a teacher and in business when I speak up about mental health, when I write about it, in my campaign, so that people do change their negative attitudes to mental health. Also, I should note, I hate change. I'm terrible at going through changes myself, and this makes me a sympathetic and empathetic ally when it comes to supporting changes. I 'feel your pain'.

What comes alongside this, though, is that even the decision makers from the business have to reconfigure themselves to accept and adapt to the change. So change affects everyone. Everyone has to understand what the change (whatever it is) really means so that everyone can play their part and explain why it is needed help others 'get it' as well.

Anyway, the upshot of all the above is that I spent the last month trying to make a change happen starting on the inside of a part of my business and then using all the documents in the process in anger.

We did it, working all together in our different roles. However, a success like this comes at a cost: work life balance; anything like it.. I got up at 5 most days to get in two-three hours of work before taking a taxi to the office from the hotel, where after another nine or so hours I'd come home and keep working for at least another couple of hours before or after dinner (or during) and then crashing down for a sleep. I chose it. I wanted to do this. But if Mrs. Robinson taught me anything during Economics GCSE lessons, it was that everything you choose has an 'opportunity cost'. You have to give up something else for every choice you make. I had to give up something.

I don't advocate working like this. I decided to do it because it was a challenge I wanted to see through, and I don't see why I shouldn't accept challenges like these if I want to even if I have depression. However, I have to focus on keeping me healthy outside of work, and nothing else. It's a little bit like training for an athletic event. You put everything into your physical exertion, and you have to make sure that you are eating and sleeping appropriately to be successful.

Work - Eat - Sleep. That's it.

The French say it best

This is the only way that I could operate to have a chance of carrying on. No mental health advocacy, no preparing for the launch of my campaign next week, no blogging, not much reading, no TV or film-watching. Just a few hours out for dinner with my colleagues once in a while.

I couldn't and wouldn't compromise on sleep. At the weekends or any other day when my work schedule permitted, I slept early and long, going to bed at seven or eight and waking at seven. Without nightmares (which are a different challenge) sleep totally rejuvenates me. Decent sleep matters so much. It's sleep I notice going wrong when I'm ill - and I do have to take medication to sleep, because my depression interrupts my sleep (and so do my anti-depressants, ha).

So sleep,

Macbeth knew a thing or two about insomnia.

And murder, but that's another story.

Sleep made it possible for me to get through the time away and its intensity.

It was worth focusing on sleep to see the process through.  I made it through the 15 hour days and at the weekends without flagging too much (although I admit that I had to down a few diet cokes on Friday and Saturday last week to keep going...and now I'm handling some 'interesting' caffeine withdrawal symptoms).

I drank all but one of these. Ouch!

I'm now back and back to normal. Normal working hours again, a nightly long sleep and back to blogging, reading, watching and finally speaking up about mental health. I'm still wearing a little makeup to cover up the tiredness.

I may possibly look like a poor impression of Joan Cusack in Working Girl...in drag...but other than that, I'm fine.

Or maybe, if I'm being honest, I look a little bit more like this...

Yeah. This is definitely me right now. 

Tomorrow is my friend Lucy's funeral so I'll continue to reflect on loss and what life means. What is worth living for. I have one answer: mental health advocacy, so that people have a chance at gaining confidence to be themselves, getting help, finding respect for themselves and requiring it of others. Next week is a big week for me and mental health. Thursday is the launch event for my campaign Redefining Resilience,

I'm also launching the Twelve days of Christmas: a video diary per day which you can look at on the campaign Facebook page if you so wish.

 I find Christmas wonderful and difficult in equal measure, so the video diaries will document the different ways I'm feeling and what I'm doing (or trying to do) to take care during that time.

Music helps, friends help...love and kindness help. Whatever you're doing, I hope you are finding balance somewhere, and I hope that you and your loved ones are taking care. Till soon. x