You Could Not Make It Up

I was recently asked what the mood in my office was like, following The Team Meeting. "Resignation with a side of gallows humour" was the best answer I could think of; we've reached the point where when someone says "I find gallows humour helps me cope", someone else says "Don't say that too loudly, next week there could be an actual gallows".

We did laugh quite a lot recently though, when it turns out that this month is Health and Wellbeing month in the office. We were all given a piece of paper and invited to write down three things that would improve our health and wellbeing at work.

I had to remind myself that you should only quote The Thick of It among other people who've watched it, as I think I shocked a couple of people by remarking that my employer expressing concern for my health and wellbeing whilst proposing to make half my team redundant in three months' time is a bit...

God or No God Alley

When my church discussed how we could promote ourselves to others, one popular idea was to have a stall at the Newcastle Community Green Festival, where we might encounter like-minded individuals who would be interested in hearing about our message of religious and spiritual liberty, and cake.

Now in its 19^th year, the Newcastle Community Green Festival happens each June in Leazes Park in Newcastle upon Tyne, and exists to “spread a message of environmental protection and social justice”. Last weekend, along with many others, we rolled up at Leazes Park beneath an ominous sky, and set out our stall of posters, leaflets, free cake, badges, and Unitarians happy to talk about our faith.

Three hours later, the heavens opened, and from then the Saturday became something of a mud bath. Nevertheless, we were having a great time. Based in the big blue Information Tent, we encountered many people, from the genuinely curious, to those who had dashed in to avoid the weather, to people who were happy to stop, pick up a free badge and some cake, and have a chat about Unitarianism into the bargain. The most commonly asked questions were “What’s Unitarianism? I’ve never heard of it” and “What are your core beliefs?” Most people were open-minded and happy to hear about it, even if one or two decided it wasn’t for them.

As if to make up for the preceding day, Sunday was warm and sunny, although the ground was reaching Glastonbury Festival levels of mud. Everyone in the tent helped put straw down to make the conditions underfoot a bit easier. Meeting the other stall volunteers was a very enjoyable part of the festival.

We encountered people ranging from Sea Shepherd to the North East Humanists and the Green Party, several of whom expressed an interest in Unitarianism, or at least in hiring the church’s rooms. The Humanists had their stall opposite ours; we could only wonder if someone with a sense of humour allocates the stalls (at one point we were referring to our part of the Information Tent as “God or No God Alley”).

I also took the chance to wander around, catch up with several of the Newcastle crowd, and watch a few bands. Fun and pizza was had by all.

Intermission

This blog took a break last week, as I stuck my work-related woes on the shelf, took some leaflets and a banner down from the shelf, and went off to run a stall at the Newcastle Green Festival. Write up coming soon. Here's a picture!

What to call this post?

The original title of this post was "Time to Depart?", but when you suffer from depression and your friends know it, you should probably not create posts with names like that, nor go on Facebook and post enigmatic-sounding depressed posts which cause people to run around worrying, texting you and leaving messages of support and pleas to know if you're alright.

The inspiration for it was the uniquely nasty experience of sitting in The Big Meeting About The Future Of The Team, AKA The Redundancies, reading the proposal for the team you work in and thinking "Actually, this doesn't sound too bad, I could get on board with this" and finding, hidden away in the middle, the sentence which indicates that the thing you do, the particular thing you've spent ten years doing and studied hard to learn how to do? Your team won't be doing that any more.

That doesn't mean I'm fired. There will be jobs, and I could probably apply for one and get it, or at least stand as good a chance as anyone else of getting it. The question for me, as for everyone else, is whether I actually want to do it. There's not really an easy answer to that one.

When you're depressed, you have the little voice whispering in your head youareastupiduselessuglycunt or Thereisnohopenotformenotforyounotforanyone. Sometimes there's another voice, suggesting something like Did you ever want to take a hammer to your life, smash it up, throw the pieces in the air and see what pattern they made when they landed? If you went somewhere else, somewhere without all the scars of the past places where you've let people down, failed and disappointed them, somewhere no-one knew you or had any expectations of you, would you be happier?

The truth is, I have no idea, and now is a bad time to decide. So I will do what needs doing, I will complete what I have committed to between now and September, and the decision will form itself in my head. I'll still be here.