Bad Mood

I'm in a bad mood today. For a hundred different reasons. If you don't like the Emo Posts, don't read this.

First and foremost, I've realised that I've unintentionally taken myself off SSRIs for about 5 days. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; I never intended to stay on them forever. But it does mean that I'm having a week or two of bad mood, horribly vivid dreams, headaches, digestive problems, just like the side effects I seemed to have when I first started them. Last night, in dreams I was killed in two nuclear strikes, got sacked from my job, and lost in the Southern Train Network and bannished to Maidstone. At least it makes a change from the NY Subway nightmare.

My best friend in NYC has actually just been sacked from her job, due to horrible office politics. I feel so powerless. All the times that I got sacked from various temp jobs, she was always there for me, comforted me, spotted me the rent when I couldn't make it. And I feel like I can do nothing except tell her that she will find a much, much better one. I mean, no matter how frustrated I get with my own job, I am aware that mostly it's good, challenging and I am well appreciated, both in person and monetarily. (Both of these things are important - especially when the owner of the company sees you sobbing at your desk, and comes over to pat you on the back and tell you to GO HOME and have a hot bath and a bottle of wine.)

I'm wound up by the internet community I belong to. It's not bad enough that I've become the repeated victim of "ugly and excessive" harrassment by some little twerp, simply for the unspeakable sins of being female and over the age of 30. It's my own little corner of the world, the Watercooler Threads, which seem to have been the victim of their own success. I got so frustrated with the nastiness and horribleness on most of ILX that I retreated. It's like you go to a party, and everyone is in the living room, shouting and arguing and fighting till you can't even hear yourself think, let alone enjoy yourself.

So you go in the kitchen, and make a cup of tea. And either one or two people come in and you chat quietly, or else if no one else is there, you sit and talk to yourself. And suddenly everyone notices that you're having a better time in the kitchen and next thing you know, EVERYONE is in the kitchen, shouting and arguing and doing all the things you went in the kitchen to get away from.

And if you complain about this, everyone starts whinging about democracy, and saying "ooh, thread starters can't dictate where threads go" and you just want to stand up like John Malkovitch and shout "BUT IT'S MY HEAD!!!!"

Anyway, I guess I should stay off the interweb today and just try on concentrate on actually getting some work done for a change, instead of bashing my head repeatedly against a computer system that Will. Not. Work.