Yesterday I went to Work

Yesterday morning I woke up at 4:45 and didn't get back to sleep properly because I was worried; worried because I was going to work. Normally going to work isn't a big deal but yesterday was my first day back at work since early November when I had some form of mental breakdown. Going back to work was one of the big steps back to normality and I was worried: worried about how my colleagues would react and worried about how I would react.

Of course it went OK; most of the things we worry about never happen anyway. We had moved office while I was off so I spent part of the day unpacking 3 crates and working out how to fit it all into one desk, a lot of time clearing some of the 979 (approx) unread e-mails and a short time talking to my boss. All in all it was a gentle, stress free day and yet I had been worried about it.

Was I right to worry? I don't know. But what I do know is that God was with me and I was supported by a lot of prayer and without them I would have struggled.

When I was first ill I thought work was one of the main causes of my situation but I have now come to see that most of my work stress was self induced. It wasn't the work that was wrong but my reaction to it. A reaction born out of situations that have existed from as long ago as my childhood. An understandable but wrong reaction.

It's still early in my journey back to normality (whatever that is) and I'm only working part time at the moment but the great thing is that I'm on that journey.

When I started this blog one of the subjects I said I was going to cover was living with disability. At the time I defined that as being 'dyslexic with knackered lungs' but I now realise that my biggest disability is living with depression. Of course I'm still living with lung disease and dyslexia but it's the depression that has the biggest effect on me and, more importantly, those around me. I hope that in my future posts I will be able to shed some light on what it is like to be a Christian living with depression.

Bathroom

I am currently meant to be making sure I don't get stressed; this is not working.

The first reason is very simple - my daughter gets married in less than 2 months. Now this, in itself, isn't stressing me at all but it is the female half of the house and this does seem to have a knock on effect.

The second reason is that with the house rapidly turning into a pressure cooker it seemed the obvious time to have the boiler changed and the bathroom re-fitted. The bathroom currently looks like this:



They tell us the work will only take 2 weeks but given that this is the end of week 1 I'm beginning to worry. The real problem is that I have to be around while the work is going on so I can't go out or go back to bed if I need more sleep.

With any (a lot?) of luck in a weeks time I will be posting a picture of our lovely new bathroom but until then...