Dalvado's World

What a brilliant bit of planning that was. My previous post was meant to include my plans for the new year and I ended up talking about 2008 and vaguely hinting at 2009.

Obviously, getting up to stage four was mentioned as a target but it wasn’t my only one. Actually earning some money and working is something I look forward too (I’ll not go into the possibility of trudging away in a soul crushing job or having issues finding one). I hate doing nothing and I get bored if my mind doesn’t get a workout.

Another thing I really want to do is expand my social circle to include people who live nearby. Maybe I’m not going to be the wildly sociable type who parties every night and has a friend around every corner but I would like some closer contacts as my current circle doesn’t go beyond two feet. The thing is I have to get over the whole introduction thing and the amount of time I have to get used to someone before I come out of my shell. At the moment with new people I’m too quiet and reserved and as you read previously I have a few quirks that need ironing out. I act completely differently when around my closest family and the ones I’ve known the longest online, it’s mostly that personality that I feel is me. I’m fairly quick to respond in a conversation and my jokes usually work. Except I do cringe at how much of an annoying Colin Hunt-like character I can be when I try too hard. OK, maybe I get away with it if I say I’m being ironic. Yes, what a good idea that was writing out that thought.

Unleashing my creative side is another target I have. I really need to capitalise more on the free time I allot myself to write down the plans I have swimming around my head for several projects. Like the Surreal FM game I promised such a long time back and writing for a certain podcasting project. I’d even like to go back to writing short stories or full on novels that I wanted to do at one point a long time ago. I had a few things in draft form from the years before my depression set in. Again, I have ideas floating around in my head and it’s trying to encourage them to come out that has been difficult. Things have started to change in that area and I do get more ideas for stories or sketches that I used to get all that time ago. Hopefully I can carry on and start writing things down instead of just leaving it in my head.

I might also look into finding an amateur dramatics group and see if I can get the acting bug going again. If there’s one thing that’s helped (after clearing away other issues) with getting things going it’s treating going out and meeting people and serving people in the shop as a performance. I enjoyed drama classes at school and the escapism of it all so I hope maybe I could get the courage to go along to one. Now I hope no one thought I meant I was being a different personality or acting overboard or faking who I am with talk of performing there. It was merely the way I see myself projecting the confidence of the person I want to be. As bizarre as that may sound. Maybe I shouldn’t be digging any further…

There’s also hope here that I can get some more exercise done and in turn lose some weight. I wanted at one point to be walking in the local park once a day to get myself going. As you know that hasn’t worked out and my excuse has always been that I have to walk back up a steep hill to get back home. That – as everyone knows – is what you call willpower. I think I’ve finally gotten to a point where I’m used to the climb though and I think I might just manage a few more walks a week.

So there you have it, not your usual New Years Resolution list until the losing weight and exercise bit at the end.

Have a good 2009 everyone.

Here I am, typing away on New Year’s Eve and I’ve taken the time during a few spare moments this week to reflect on what’s happened in my life and overall while it may not have gone completely to plan, I could be fairly pleased what’s happened.

If anyone has read my four step plan in previous blog posts, then they’ll know that now I am sat right down on stage three. Although, strictly speaking stage two left hovering around for a while and told to get lost because it was holding everyone else up the making them uneasy to boot. In other words I hadn’t quite completed the “get going out every day and get a daily routine going” but I had built up the necessary stamina to be able to move onto Stage Three: Voluntary Work. Truth be told it was needed as I was feeling that I may have been dropping back into old habits and starting to lay stagnant in that stage.

Everything started surprisingly well after a long delay to the volunteering. I was starting to get into three afternoons a week and I was enjoying myself. As you know though, I hit a rough patch and dropped back a bit. I’ve been on and off during the last few months but at the beginning of December I was feeling better about things. My low days weren’t cropping up again and I was managing my bad mornings better than before. While I may not have been much during the last few weeks, I think that come the beginning of January I will be back to normal.

While the new year is a perfect time to reflect on the past year, I had been assessing myself a few weeks before anyway. Come January my six month assessment will be coming up and I’ll admit I don’t know what to make of things. On one hand I am able to go into a working environment and perform well enough. I’ll say “well enough” as you might know by now I’m not the best judge. With regard to how I cope with other people, it’s a bizarre situation. I’m able to put on a smiling face and friendly demeanour to customers yet I’m frustratingly shy towards other members of staff and volunteers in the shop. OK I keep friendly at all times but something is different. I also am terrible at introducing myself to new volunteers, I say hello but sometimes skip on the introduction. I use my trying to get my coat hung up, belongings in the locker and onto the shop floor as an excuse not to stand around. This then bugs me for the rest of the day as I appear rather rude towards said person. It must look especially odd if they see me merrily attending to customers at the counter. Such thoughts earlier on in the recent dip didn’t help me, along with the thoughts I was letting people down by saying I would turn up and subsequently not doing so. I absolutely hated having to phone up the shop and say I couldn’t make it. In fact I got into the terrible habit of not ringing up and then wanting to apologise about it. That’s another one of those circles of anxiety there for you folks. Thankfully I have people who are understanding of my situation, which helps me get back into things.

I mentioned the six month review earlier as that would be the milestone that I look at myself and asked the question “Could I move onto Stage Four: Employment?” It’s a very tricky situation at the moment as at this very moment in time my benefits review is up and I have a medical assessment at the beginning of the month. I’m anxious at being pushed too soon but I am also asking myself “Am I ready?” and “Would anyone else feel I’m ready?” I might take the plunge to see what can be done with a job broker or DWP programme to help me with work (Of course that won’t be easy with the looming period of unemployment coming up). I’ll admit that my September dip and the struggle to get back to where I was (along with the gloom everyone has with the recession) doesn’t make me 100% confident but I also think that when I am going into the shop, I’m happy enough and distracted enough to get on with things. I may not be as happy as I want to be (and that’s not the unrealistic 100% ) but I might be OK. I don’t know what to say really and the uncertainty causes a bit of anxiety when I start to think about it. As I keep saying on this blog, “I’ll just have to see”.

So 2008 has been OK for me progress wise. I did have to say Goodbye to my Great Grandmother and that was a very sad time for me and something that didn’t make it as good a year as it could have been. Here’s to 2009 being as good a year for everyone as it can be.

Happy New Year Everyone.