On the weekend I wrote an outline for a post on being a Lazy Librarian (perhaps something along the lines of slow food vs fast food). This was interesting because
- I wrote an outline, rather than writing stream of consciousness
- I wrote my outline with a pencil on crisp white unlined paper in my notebook/journal
This would seem to be a bad sign. And, were you a potential employer, you may be tempted to say "the man writing this post has just told me he is often crap at things which would impact on his work". However, this is untrue. I just have these days, you know. But having had these days all my life I have discovered ways of dealing with them. So, today I am not working on any long term planning documents. Rather I am browsing all sorts of library things and reading emails from teacher librarians which I have in the past flagged as worth reading. I have been up and opening boxes on high shelves which I haven't looked at before and working out whether to throw out their contents.
It just means knowing what to do on these days, and luckily a librarian has a variety of tasks so I can choose what to do on a mental health day rather than just phoning up and saying "I can't come to work today because I am useless"
5 comments:
When I have my off days, I am glad I am sequestered in my own office because I sigh loudly, stare at the wall for minutes at a time, stretch repeatedly, jiggle my legs, push things around on my desk... Usually I'm thinking about stuff and not sure what the next step ought to be. Or I need to write something and everything I type comes out sounding nonsensical.
This was so useful.
Seriously. I always try and plow through these moods, sometimes stupidly deciding I MUST do something longterm and serious.
Now I am going to see them as days where I get all the little things done ... Perhaps the filing tomorrow!
If everyone in libraries who was useless phoned in and didn't come in, we would have a few empty offices - and some chairs that are permanently empty.
You just told a potential employer that you have some up time and some down time.
When I was in a job that needed more thinking work, I was very lucky that I worked two days from home. My brain just refused to switch on until 5:30pm and between 9pm and 12am it was just on fire - unfortunately not a great way to have a life outside work...
It's useful to hear how others deal with inability to focus. As the majority of my job is in front of a PC and my contact with colleagues is mostly email or phone - I walk. I use the time to finally drop stuff up to HR or finance, to do the physical errands. This gives me time to dissipate my fidgeting and twitching, while I get back in the loop re things happening elsewhere in the building.
I have been on anti-depressants for about 5 years now and it has taken me nearly that long to work out how to manage my off days, or down time or the other lovely ways people have described it here.
Gradually I have learned to tell when it is coming on, whether I really need to curl up in bed for the day and just let it pass or turn up for work and occupy myself with harmless (and probably only mildly productive) tasks. Thanks for such a great post, your honesty is humbling :-)
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