Fighting the current of life.
I found an important book about how bipolar affects families. It’s called Family Experiences of Bipolar Disorder, by Cara Aiken (link to Bookfinder – support independent booksellers!). The book talks about the experiences of bipolar from the point of view of the affected individual, their children, and their adult relationships using a series of vignettes from actual family members. Some of the first-person accounts seem very similar to bloggers writing their experiences.
I was particularly interested in the parenting chapter and the children’s point of view. This gives a listing of the many ways kids can be affected by the parent’s bipolar. Some of the effects include:
There are more effects, but these specifically have weighed on me over the years. I’ve always known that my condition has had an effect on the kids, but I’ve never had anyone state this in a carefully laid-out way. And like she writes, the discussion of the kids’ needs can be both a motivation to seek help and stick with treatment, and a source of guilt and depression for having had a negative effect on the kids. I have felt both of these, and have written about it in the past (most recently in this post, and here and here in the old blog).
The essays written by the children of bipolar parents were especially difficult for me to read. These accounts give me a clearer picture of the effects I have had on my kids, and I don’t like it. At the same time, I can see their resilience and how things have improved since I have become more stable.
Many of the essays and discussions in the book are based on the bipolar parent being the mother. I would agree that in many homes the mother is the more important care-giver and therefore has a great effect on the kids’ lives, but there are a different set of experiences with a bipolar father. A father’s anger during a dysphoric state may seem more frightening to a child because of the yelling and breaking things and possibly the threat of violence. I don’t know this, but I wonder if seeing the depressed father as weak and powerless has more of an impact than seeing the mother in the same way. Would the child feel more empathy toward the mother and more disappointment toward the father in the same depressed state?
At the present time, although I know my kids have been affected by my disease, I think they have successfully dealt with it. The girl has a more personal understanding due to her having bipolar as well. The Man-Child, who being older saw much more of my instability, had his personality shaped by not having me to depend on for a while. However, he has changed from being borderline depressed to being someone who loves being with friends and who finds great comfort in his religious devotion. I feel like he prefers those parts of his life more than being at home, and since he is almost 19 I can see him reaching for more independence. He is naïve, but he’ll be okay in the end.
Right now: I am so loaded on Percocet right now and I’m really sleepy, so this may not make sense. Also I’m really hungry, but the thought of blood-flavored yogurt makes me a lot less hungry.
Backing up: I’m really embarrassed about my teeth. I just don’t take care of them like I should. I don’t know why, I guess it’s the same lack of maintenance I perform in all facets of my life. I don’t change the oil in the lawn mower, I don’t get my tires rotated every 6000 miles, I don’t vacuum the coils of the refrigerator, I don’t get any exercise. This is the reason I don’t drive the mower thru the fridge with rotating tires, or something like that (that’s the Percocet talking).
Moving forward: because I don’t take care of my teeth very well, I have had a few root canals over the years. One of those teeth broke, so I ended up at the dentist this afternoon. One extraction later, I left with one less tooth and a numb face. It takes a lot of novacaine to get my face numb, and it lasted several hours. Now the numb has finally gone away, and I feel pain with every heartbeat, and I wish I was dead right now.
Backing up: I am such a fucking dumbass. I don’t know why I have developed bad hygiene habits. Maybe it goes along with the “I don’t give a shit about myself” attitude. I’ve let myself get too fat, I’m lazy, I can’t commit to therapy to help with some of my emotional problems. Yes I take my psych drugs every day, because I’m scared for what would happen if I don’t. Maybe this dental experience will scare me into better habits.
Fast forward: I had big plans for this summer. I was planning to go to Washington and Philadelphia on a quick baseball trip to see two new stadiums I haven’t been to. Instead of that little adventure, thanks to this dental adventure, I will be giving my baseball money to the dentist. Fuck. I was really looking forward to that trip, but thanks to my own stupidity, no fun for me this summer.
Right now: Fuck my face hurts, and the gaping hole won’t stop bleeding. I’m awake way too late (4 hours past my bedtime) because it hurts too much to sleep. If I do fall asleep, I will drown in my own bloody saliva.
Future: Don’t drown in bloody saliva – take care of your teeth.
Being a pessimist is a full time job. There’s a lot to worry about, and a lot of bad shit can happen in a hurry if you’re not ready for it. So I was relieved to find all my pessimism would disappear because I found some downloadable mood-tracking software:
This will install Optimism 3.8.3? Awesome! I can’t wait for Optimism 4.0, but then there will bugs, and it will destroy my files and my self-esteem in one brief moment. Then my life will suck again, and I’ll probably jump in front of a bus.
-o-
I heard a good joke: what is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist at the drug store? The optimist buys a 12-pack of condoms and a pack of cigarettes; the pessimist buys 1 condom and a pregnancy test.
-o-
I’ve started using this Optimism software to chart my moods. I’ve never been good at bothering to fill out spreadsheets for mood charts, but this program is really easy. And it’s FREE. It records everything as you do it, it’s somewhat customizable, and it makes pretty charts (click thumbnails to see screenshots). Yes I missed a day, but it works just fine, unlike pissy Excel graphs.
I find the software’s name odd just because bipolar mood swings or depression episodes are not necessarily correlated to pessimism or optimism. There’s a difference between a life-long pessimist and someone who’s a little pessimistic only when they’re depressed. I think the software was written by an optimist and they wanted me to feel that little ball of happy sunshine in their soul. Yeah, your little happy balls can bite me.
I wouldn’t call it an epiphany, but I came to a conclusion a few days ago. I have decided to not be depressed anymore for things that happened during childhood. I’m still pissed off, still angry, still shamed and damaged. I still remember these things, and forgiveness is out of the question. I’m just not sad about it anymore.
Long-time readers (all 1 or 2 of you) might recall me talking about the boxes in the dark corner of the mental attic, boxes that held all the things I was afraid to confront or remember. Over the years of blogging, I unpacked the fear and anger and sadness and wrote about those things so I could put them aside. I finally reached the end of the boxes, but I was still burdened by the remaining pile of crap.
It has been months since I have thought about this, so apparently I’ve taken a break from the obsessive thinking. I realize I seem to have accepted the pile of crap for what it is, leftover things from a past life I feel no connection to anymore. Having looked at everything many times from every angle, I guess I’ve just run out of sadness for those memories. Those things from the past that once haunted me just don’t have the power they once did.
I have mixed feelings about this, and I’m not sure whether this is a positive step in dealing with the past, or simply an avoidance technique to bury old feelings. I’m hoping that I look back and remember this post, and choose not to cry over this crap any more. (Having said that, I know I can still never go back to Goldville again, because I would just be overwhelmed by everything there.)
Don’t worry, I’m still the same scared, broken, depressed, angry person I’ve always been, but the load is just a little lighter today. I still have plenty of issues and insecurities to deal with. I’m still deeply affected by things I have done to myself and others. I have zero confidence or self-esteem when I am in real life. I continue to have problems with obsessive thinking and ruminating on recurring themes. I still have significant depression to go along with the bipolar swings and spirals.
I think I am in the midst of a depressive mood swing, so right now I’m feeling down for no real reason. Yesterday I felt dead at work, just surviving the day, not really feeling anything. What I really want during these times is to be alone for a few days, but of course that can’t happen. I’ll just have to deal with it on the inside, as usual.
At the risk of self-diagnosing myself, I seem to have a mild case of avoidant personality disorder. Just like my other problems, the severity seems to correlate with the mixed state bipolar mood swings. It seems like researchers are starting to correlate BP to cluster C anxiety disorders, which matches my symptoms. I am interested to know if other bipolars have similar experiences.
When I am in between phases, I can be less avoidant if I decide to make the effort. The voices in my head (negative internal dialog, not schizo) are quieter, and it is easier to believe that I can interact with people and that they are not being malevolent. On those days I suppose strangers would see me as just a little quiet or introverted, but not avoidant or phobic at all. I still have the defense mechanisms, and it is still draining and stressful, but on some days I think it’s worth the cost to step outside myself and feel a little bit of what normal people have. I like that feeling, but it also scares me because I know what’s coming next.
When the mixed state inevitably comes, I get a little loose and agitated and random. This covers up the avoidant tendency by making me less inhibited, but instead of buying stuff and having sex, I become an asshole. I talk too much, I’m argumentative and impatient and angry, and basically act like a jerk to everyone. Then at some point I realize what’s going on, I become extremely embarrassed and ashamed and self-loathing, and I imagine all the negative things everyone is thinking when they see me.
This almost always leads into a depressive spiral, when the avoidant behavior is at its most severe. I am literally scared of people while in this condition, and if I am forced to deal with people it is very difficult and stressful, then I hide and collapse in on myself when I get the chance. All my fears and insecurities and anxious thoughts are screaming at full volume during these times, and I have had a few panic attacks in this state.
When the spiral ends, I cautiously start allowing myself back into the world, trying not to trigger another cycle. My normal state is moderately depressed and moderately avoidant, but I’m still able to pretend for everyone when necessary. I avoid as much contact as possible because I know that the emotional cost of dealing with people will start the cycle again.
Also: see this post (written during a depressive phase).
I have a hard time listening to people for very long. This has become more of a problem in recent years, partly due to the changes to my brain wrought by bipolar and the oh-so-helpful medication which keeps me from jumping in front of a bus. The other reason seems to be that I really don’t give a shit about most of the things people want to talk about.
If you want to tell me about your experiences and thoughts on life that is fine, and I will do my best to pay attention until I see something shiny. If you want to talk about our relationship or vacation plans or buying a car, that would be something worthwhile. But don’t tell me gossip about people I have no interest in; don’t tell me why certain groups of people should be punished or killed because you don’t like them; don’t drone endlessly about the same topic day after day with nothing new to add.
I’m just sick of listening to people unless they have something important to say. When they do tell me something of interest, I wish they would get to the point sooner before I become distracted again. And yes, I realize the irony, given my tendency to write long, wandering blog posts which sometimes have no point at all. But you can always look away from the written word with no cost; when you turn and walk away from a conversation in progress, people tend to take offense, or don’t get the hint and follow you to continue talking.
At work, there are inane or insane conversations every day. The Bear and the Prairie Dog are the worst offenders, but the Retriever and the Squirrel are also full of empty words. I have started keeping statistics on the number of stupid conversations every day; I will report those to you at a later date. As if you give a shit.
Nothing bad happened, nothing traumatic or stressful … the feelings just start rising like the tide, and there’s nothing you can do but hold on to the rocks and hope you are tenacious enough to resist.
All the familiar inner dialogue, bad memories, dredging up old feelings, dwelling on past mistakes and losses and shame … so much shame. No wonder I push myself into these spirals.
Bipolar sucks.
I’m constantly plagued with doubt and indecision, nowhere more than at work. My confidence level is below zero, and I am in constant fear of making mistakes. I am so afraid of being wrong at any tasks assigned to me.
The worst part is when I can’t find the answer myself and need to ask someone else. I’m morbidly embarrassed to ask questions, but not for fear of looking dumb; I’m more afraid of the social interaction required to get the answer. I’m okay with getting help, I am just too avoidant to want help. When I get stuck at a question I freeze up and do nothing, or work on something else until I get stuck there. Then I get 10 projects where I am stuck, and I feel so foolish when I have so many questions to ask.
One very frustrating example: I am forced to use an outdated project tracking software, and we are told how important it is to use it correctly. Unfortunately for me,with no training I am expected to check off steps 1-25 to complete my part. I can check off boxes, but I don’t know what the fuck half of them mean. Imagine the anxiety in my chemical-ridden, perfectionist brain as I try to walk that edge. I’ve done as much as I can, but now I need answers to a dozen questions I should already know.
I get angry with myself for not knowing everything right away, though it might be a little unreasonable. I don’t care how often people say "you’re doing well" or "you’ve learned so much" or my favorite, "don’t be too hard on yourself." Being hard on myself is how I have survived over the years. I am a master of being too hard on myself, and at setting impossibly high standards for myself and others. Why do you think I disappoint myself so much?
But I don’t care what they say supportively, I just don’t want to make mistakes. Mistakes lead to more attention from management, and as I whither under that microscope, they will discover just how ineffective I really am, they’ll see past my bullshit facade. They’ll find me a fraud.
My anxiety level is through the roof lately. Headaches, fidgeting, eye blinking, muscle spasms, poor sleep … thankfully my stash of Ativan is still large, but I think I need the Pdoc to give me something to help me cope with this stress. I don’t want to fuck with the Lamictal and Abilify, they are working right now. It’s not a stressful job for normal smart people, it’s just that this smart person has a few other issues going on right now, and the end result will eventually be an aneurism.
In reality, I know I can and I have done good work and have given the company a lot of value in a short time. But right now I am struggling to maintain that high expectation level as deadlines approach and overtime is requested. I NEED my time away, I can’t spend much more time at work.
Then again, I could be driving 500 miles a day and be working 80 hours per week for less money. Silver lining, I suppose.
You can never reveal too much of yourself to strangers, co-workers, acquaintances, outer-ring friends, or some family members… and sometimes not even the closest family and friends.
You always have to keep the mask in place. You always need to remember that when someone says “Hey, how are you doing?”, it’s for their needs, not yours; they don’t really care.
-o-
How can you tell someone you wish for death sometimes? If you can’t win the lottery, you don’t have the freedom to do one final sightseeing tour around the world, you’re sick of being who you are, and you don’t want to live your life … what is left? Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Someday, probably, but not now. When I do decide to go, I have a pretty good plan in place … no mess, no gruesome discoveries, just going away and not returning.
Now this seems overly dramatic … this is the depression talking again.
-o-
I’ve spent this whole weekend doing jack shit, feeling like crap, laying around, avoiding chores, mostly sitting on my ass. I wanted to do something enjoyable for myself on my day off Friday, so I drove to a park to do a little hike (over 4 miles), but it was boring and stupid. I should have enjoyed it, but I keep finding reasons to think it sucked. The trees are still mostly bare, the stream was ugly, the cave was off-limits, the pictures I took were uninteresting. Whiney whiner blah blah blah.
I hate this post, but it’s your fault for reading it.
Just barely conscious, I realize the stranger is standing beside my bed, and I smell fresh death. I want to scream for someone, anyone, help me please, but no words can form, only a guttural, strangled gurgle as if my throat were slit. I want to lash out to strike him but I am paralyzed, my movements aborted twitches in this fugue. As I lay unable to respond, the stranger glides through the pressing darkness and into the hallway, the kitchen, the den. As he moves his power over me ebbs slightly, and I can move with awkward steps toward him, but my voice is still powerless to raise a unnecessary alarm for the others. In a flash the lights are blinding me, but I feel the stranger trapped beneath me as I kneel on the floor. Still trying to call out but only croaking uselessly, I start punching the stranger with feeble blows to his head, his chest, his stomach. I feel my strength returning, and my fists begin to make solid contact. Like a bell, a clear voice in my head urges me to continue my counterattack. The voice distracts me enough to clear my vision, and now I see my assailant-turned-victim is my son, powerless and pleading, refusing to fight back. The voice tells me “go on, do it”, and a smile tickles the corner of my mouth as I continue abusing him. I feel the duality inside me and it snaps me back to reality for an awful moment. I move off my now motionless child and with full voice scream out in horror … what have I done?
-o-
I sit upright in bed, heart racing, pulse pounding in my ears. I think I am awake, but in the gloom I’m not positive. I swing my arms, testing my motor skills, and say a single word to hear my own voice … his name.
I know my writing has been affected by my mental state at the time, but now I also wonder if my writing has been affected differently with the different drugs I have taken. Just as each drug has a slightly different effect on brain chemistry, it is possible that those changes affect how the brain processes language.* Does each drug have its own voice, its own way of expressing the thoughts and feelings of the person doing the writing? People have long taken drugs to stimulate their creativity, and said it was the acid or the pot talking; maybe we have just substituted psychotropic drugs for the recreational drugs of previous decades.
I have a roll call of the drugs I have tried over the past 8 years: Celexa, Zoloft, Risperdal, Effexor, Lithium, Invega, Provigil, Ritalin, Ambien, Wellbutrin, Ativan, Seroquel, Lamictal, Abilify. Some of these were effective, some not. But they all changed my chemistry in some form, and if our thought processes are caused by chemical reactions, then it certainly is possible that each drug changed the way I think. Recently I have decided the part of my brain responsible for writing and language is not as creative as it used to be.
The words certainly don’t flow for me like they have in the past. I’ve never written professionally, so I can only imagine the frustration when someone who spends their life writing suddenly can’t think of the right words. I think I was a better writer when I was unstable, either when I was unmedicated or when the drugs weren’t working correctly. When I first started blogging, I could write for hours while in a mood swing, whether dysphoric mania or deep depression. It was the only real outlet I had for all the shit in my head at the time. I think I was better at capturing the darkness and sadness I was living with at the time with power and intensity. Now that I am relatively stable, it seems difficult to relate those feelings as well as I once did. My current drugs take away the edgy creativity I think I had when I was unmedicated or just unwell.
I’m not going to quit writing, because I enjoy doing this, and because blogging is still therapeutic for me. Maybe I will need to be more economical with the words, maybe I will spend more time rewriting and being a better editor for myself, or maybe I’ll start reading more for inspiration. Or maybe I’ll just post more photos of beautiful landscapes when the words aren’t there.
*this concept is borrowed from Chase Twichell in Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression
I have nothing interesting to say at the moment, so I’ll post some pictures. These were taken in 2004 in the White Mountains in California during one of my bipolar road trips. That trip was one of the best times of my life.
Bristlecone Pines, some of the oldest living organisms on the planet.
Twisted, gnarled branches
Cactus and volcanic rock at 11,000 feet
I like to mess with people sometimes.
I like to walk past someone on the left side of the corridor or sidewalk. Most people are conditioned to keep right while walking as if they were driving, so sometimes I walk on the left side just to see what happens. When someone is walking toward me, they try to stay on the right, but then they are walking directly at me. Most people shift uncomfortably to their left, pass me, then move right again. There are some people who absolutely will not move left. They will move further right, even at the risk of brushing against a wall or falling off the sidewalk, to force me to move over to my right. Then it becomes awkward, and I hate them.
This only seems to happen where there are only two people walking. If there is a pair of people coming toward me, they will both move left without hesitation. I’ve also noticed this doesn’t happen in cities with crowded sidewalks, or at a stadium, or the county fair; people just walk wherever there is space.
I’m curious if the Brits prefer to walk on the left side, or if they don’t care.
I’ve been in a slowly increasing depression for several days now, and there is always that feeling that something is coming around the corner. No, not a bus, that would have been a good thing today. I just mean a small, seemingly insignificant event that will give me that little nudge in the wrong direction and send plunging into the pit again.
Of course something happened.
Our large company has a question and answer form on the intranet, and one day I put something about how working there was my best career opportunity ever (which is true). It never occurred to me that anyone monitored the responses, or that mine would get someone’s attention, or that the company might want to use me in a promotional video because of a one-off remark. She explained that I would be on from 15 to 60 seconds talking about something (I stopped listening at this point) and that my supervisor and his supervisor recommended me for the video.
Holy shit, a promotional video? I politely declined, saying something about not being good with cameras. Understatement of the century.
Of course I can’t do it. There’s no way I could ever do something like that. I think I look horrible on family videos or in pictures. I would fumble my words and look really stupid. I would have near-catatonic stage fright. I was starting to panic during the phone call, how bad would it be in front of a camera? I can bullshit my way with people, but the unblinking camera eye sees right through to my deepest insecurities.
Now I’ve been beating myself up for the last 2 days, telling myself how damaged and stupid and fragile I have become, berating myself for not being normal, wanting to cry it out but the tears aren’t there. I’m popping Ativan like crazy, and chewing the shit out of my fingers. In the meantime, I’m slipping deeper into the hole, making it that much more difficult to work or talk or be around people. Just let me sleep.
And sometime soon I will have to tell my boss some made-up reason why I couldn’t do their stupid video after he recommended me.
I’ve done multiple purges and binges on Fakebook, adding people in bunches on slightly manic days, then when in a depressive spiral, deleting all my friends along with disposable acquaintances. The most recent time I purged my friend list all the way to zero, then completely started over with more stringent friend criteria.
I looked carefully at everyone I had deleted, and decided they could be my FB friend again if a) they weren’t blatantly and obnoxiously conservative, b) they weren’t blatantly and obnoxiously religious, and c) if I could trust them enough to tell them I have bipolar disorder. Three simple rules eliminated all but a couple dozen people, and now that I look at the list again, some people have sneaked in who need to be eliminated.
Another consequence of my purges has been that I have once again lost contact with everyone from high school. There were a few contacts who were very important to me, including Lisa, the girl who saved christmas. During the purge, my depression was telling me that nobody really cared about me anyway, so it was easy to delete everyone. After the spiral ended, I figured that if/when people missed hearing from me, they would just add me again. None of my former friends has added me again, giving me more reason to believe what the depression tells me. They really don’t care, or they just didn’t notice I was gone. I guess embarrassment keeps me from reaching out to them again.
I guess the worst part about Fakebook is that it is too much like real life. I stand on the periphery of several unrelated circles of people, connected but separate, hanging on to each group but never being the glue that binds anyone together. I could never be the focus of a group, and I don’t want to be, but I’ve spent my whole life being the wallflower in the corner. It’s just nice to be invited to the conversation by someone else who is interested in what I have to say.
I both like and hate the feeling of compartmentalization. I hate my apparent need to feel and act differently for each particular situation or group of people. I hate how I can change personalities for the moment but still lose the part that is really me. But I like being able to hide things from people. I enjoy keeping secrets from people in real life, then displaying (almost) everything here for the world to read.
It seems somehow selfish or disingenuous to hide myself from everyone. Selfish, but necessary: I want to be the one who controls what different people know or think about me. Like an oppressive government, I want to censor what I show the world.
Everyone gets a little piece of me, but no one gets all of me. I am loosely attached to several groups of people, each with its own set of permissions giving them access to only certain parts of the whole picture. Family, bloggers, work, a few friends, and my doctor each have their own picture of who I am.
Believe it or not, I think the bloggers know more truth about me than anyone else, including family. Is that a bad thing? Should I feel guilty about that? I don’t know the answer.
After everyone has taken their little piece … the lonely part remains, and I won’t share that with anybody.
Right now I’m at home alone, enjoying a nice quiet house, but slipping into a deep melancholy. Thinking about old friends, lost times, simpler lives, etc., all the usual crap. I know this is not good for me, but I do it anyway. Maybe I could drink/drug myself to sleep to stop me from wandering into the dark corners of my mind. It’s tempting, but I don’t want to go down that road.
If I were alone, this is probably what I would end up doing every night: fucking around on the computer, doing nothing to make myself or the world better, and feeling gloomy. Quick, think of something to do for a few hours on a weeknight evening … me either, that’s why I’m here. No friends, no hobbies, no inspiration. Ugh.
I know I have said many times in the past that I wish I didn’t have anyone around me. Some days would be just fine, but other days would really suck. Sometimes I wish I could have it both ways, having a loving family when I want, yet having the freedom to be alone when the mood strikes. Of course that thought is terribly selfish to those who love me. Having a family means that you make commitments to share your lives, despite the bipolar crap. I’m not good at sharing however, and I am always grateful for the times I get to be alone.
This summer I am taking a mini vacation by myself to watch baseball games in Washington and Philadelphia. I will also try to catch some museum time in Washington. I’ve done similar trips times before, and it was fun. Exploring and baseball are two things that get my mind off being me. I find it more enjoyable to go by myself than with the baseball-haters in my family.
My skin is crawling. I feel like I’m going to explode inside. Heart is racing, brain is racing, my blood pressure is throbbing in my ears. I’m desperately trying to not let it show on the outside …
I see them everywhere. Asterisks, (or asterices?) drawing my attention, watching me. I know this is totally irrational, but somehow it seems logical.
It is taking all of my concentration to sit quietly and not run out the door into the snow and drive until I calm down, get lost, or worse.
* **** * ***** *** … Like morse code in my head.
My eyes are madly blinking, muscles twitching, picking my fingers, chewing my lips, trembling inside. So much fucking tension inside. Seething.
I’m forcing myself to write all this in tiny letters on a small post-it note in the hope it will help calm me down.
It’s not working.
**** ***.
Trying to hold it all inside and not let this blow up into a panic. Let it pass. Let me get home to my Ativan.
Goddamn asterisk.
*******************************
–o–
Writing this from my stick note, now five hours later … I survived the rest of the day, took the long way home, and slammed some pills. I’m not totally okay, but I know it will pass, as long as I don’t let it out in anger. The Girl already noticed my state, and I think she understands.
*
I often end up buying clothes at Goodwill for when I’m not at work. Sometimes they have company or sports logos, but I don’t care, as long as they fit. The frustrating part is when people think they have to talk to you and hear the entire story of why you have the shirt.
It seems kind of lame to tell people I have no connection to the team or the business, I’m just wearing the shirt because that’s all I can fit on my fat ass whale carcass. It seems much less embarassing to make up a story why I have the shirt…
</rant>
The people I work with have a wide variety of personalities. In the interest of anonymity, I’ll give them animal names. Maybe this is like deciding what someone’s Patronus might be (yes, I’m a nerd).
My “mentor” is the Bear, a usually friendly but sometimes garrulous character from whom I am supposed to learn everything he knows. My project manager is more of a Dog, a smart golden retriever with glasses. The department manager is an Owl, focused on his job and keeping the mice from running the show. There are several beavers on the floor who work hard all day, then head home to their lodge at 5 o’clock.
The Squirrel walks fast, talks fast, is waaaay to friendly in the morning, has a hateful ring tone, and has a voracious appetite for soda and fast food. The Prairie Dog is very social, always poking his head up from his cube to find out the latest gossip, and is quick to start up long and boring conversations while getting little work done. The Mole seldom pokes his head up, but he likes to kid around with Prairie Dog. The Stud Horse is a good worker, and married, but women are totally attracted to him. The Buck is a recently divorced 30-something who is already getting serious about a new doe and her fawn. The Chickadee is a social, fun-loving fan of football and alcohol. The Rabbit is a very quiet younger woman who tries to stay out of sight most of the time.
The Shark is another manager who frequently cruises the floor like a hammerhead over the reef, watching what everyone does, seemingly eager to take a bite out of your ass if you step across the line from productivity to idle chit-chat. He seems strangely tolerant of the loquacious Prairie Dog, who becomes more like a Remora while kissing the Shark’s ass.
I guess I’m the Cat in the office, indifferent to the other animals’ doings, paying attention when I need to, not saying too much, occasionally growling or hissing, but sometimes purring a little too. The hairballs are a little annoying, and I wish I could take naps during the day.
