Kudos building

Still in the fever of initial enthusiasm, and also I am in the grip of my new project.

I am doing a writing course through the OU. Giddily enjoyable, after enduring last years course.

When I started the course, our first day was a day school, where I was amused to find our little group all looked like they needed some fresh air, and were potentially anaemic.
Odd, then to discover, there does seem to be a type. I attend a Laura Marney workshop on character building, and enter a room with the realisation we all look pale, and that a jumble sale approach to clothing has been adopted by all. Not one of us looks like we could pay our Council Tax (by that, I mean, on time, without reminders, maybe even venturing into direct debits).

So, I don't know whether to be relieved or not - I mean, I fit the look described - and we are all the most serious looking cerebral bunch.

Anyway, the course has come at a good time. If you name any arena of my life right now, it has a question hanging over - I do not know by the end of this year what job, house, lifestyle I will be in.

February has not been known to be a fab month in the year for many previous years. After the welcome mid-term break, I am frustrated by a sudden increase in needle sharp pains in my back, and fluey bone weary exhaustion. I go to work, knowing I am not ok, to discover in the tiny team that looks after the pixies, that all of us are not good well this week.
One of them is diagnosed with 50% chicken pox, and that's the moment I know I have to tell my boss I am not ok, because I start to do what all managers secretly do - I hide in the cupboard so people don't know I am crying.

When you work and you have ME, the fact you look better than you feel is your calling card into employment. When you have bills to pay, then you know that losing your job is going to mean going back through the benefit system. Deciding when it is that you are risking relapse by working is very difficult. I have had very little sick leave during four years of working - if it takes all my energy to stay in work, then that is what it takes.

So, I measure when it is time to say, I cannot come in today on the basis that if I don't my friends will shout at me. With temperature spiking, and floors wobbling on them as Iwalk being the final triggers - I take two days off. I get very vivid dream sleep normally, but this week I've had a full orchestra, french radio, dreams I'm not well, and last night - I removed all the pus from my third eye. You know, the one you have dangling from your pouch.

And I feel awful. My friends are alerted, and I have to remind myself all the time not to panic, this is just a blip, I will get better.

It is less durable as I have been wrestling constantly with a job I really enjoy, but is three hours a day of intense physical and emotional out put. I love the pixies, even when they say they hate me, think I'm mean, etc.

The employment situation for ME'rs is fraught with difficulty. How many jobs can you do for 3 hours a day? There are potential areas I could work in - but they don't fit my particular symptoms. Most people do not need to sacrifice their social life, and evaluate how they use each particle of energy just in case they use too much and risk their livelihood.

Although doing the writing course takes up a lot of those particles, it really has opened up an outlet. Highlighting actually, that if a job with less responsibility arose, then writing would fill the uneasy gap that goes 'but being in charge is rather good for the kudos.'

A recovering bloggist

So, what you do in blogland, is you make a blog, and then you admire it for a while, and then you forget you had it, and a year later refind it.

I finished management, and then I got a certificate. Well, a letter saying, you have a certificate, and then when I get the real one, the nice shiny well done one, then I will parade it on my walls. I am a big believer in being given bits of paper to verify achievements.

So, in the last year, I could have had on my walls the following;

1. A Well Done, you survived being homeless certificate.

(Ok, the family I lived with moved, I was recommended to declare myself homeless. I did. In the kind of centre that has very thick plastic between the staff and the client. Then I was shunted into a high rise flat. The kind of high rise that gives you high anxiety, and shifty neighbours. Finally, I was decanted into a disgusting flat, so damaged by the previous smoker, it had third degree filth burns. I mean, we are talking SO BAD you wonder if you have fallen into a horror movie of your own life BAD.
Anyone else with ME will tell you, this is diametrically opposite to being a healthy recovery accommodation recommendation. You want to test this theory out - ok, well fill the flat with cleaning products, and new paint, and new carpet. If you are allergic to all of these items, you will be wincing by now. Man alive, what an impressive relapse that induced).

2. A Well Done, that was an Impressive Relapse certificate.

3. Followed by, a Well Done, you bought a flat and did not stay in the Pet's Wee flat certificate.

4. Certificates would be allocated to all who kept me sane, during that time, to some very special people. I lived in 5 different places (is this a cure for ME? No, I can reassure the tempted - it so is not).

5. A Well Done, you somehow got back to work certificate.

6. A Well Done, you got Divorced certificate. You get two certificates then, especially if I could find where I've put it. Not many people put this as an achievement, and avoid the, do you think I could slap this into my CV route? So, in a counter culture move, I might just put it up on the wall, and look blank when anyone asks about it. In the university of life, getting divorced is remarkably crap - makes you simultaneously both thicker and thiner skinned than you could have believed possible.

7. Finally, a Well Done, you finished the year in Spain, during the kind of disorganised and yet uniquely enjoyable holiday only those of my dad's caliblre can achieve.

In fluctuating style, I hope to return to blog again, and will endevour for it not to be one year hence.