Swedish humor

I've rediscovered Swedish humor, I mean for me Swedish humor is still synonymous with Hasse and Tage, but I kind of stumbled upon Magnus Bretner live when I was distracting myself at work with Youtube.  For some reason I can still write in English if I listen to Swedish...

After Magnus I found Bjorn Gustafsson in Parlementet and I laughed until I almost peed myself.

One of the drawbacks of listening to Swedish humor at work is that I start to speak Swedish with my colleagues if they come and interrupt my little fun time but I have realized how I can use it to my advantage.

If I speak Swedish to them by mistake and they say "Excuse me?" I say it in English again and look at them as they are completely stupid! It works really well as a form of therapy for my depression and I think my therapist will be hella proud of me now that I go around and laugh all day even if it's at the expense of others sometimes.

That's totally normal, right?

"Think positive" is where it's at, right?!

Oh yeah, I'm also doing another thing to keep myself occupied and that's making a list of things you can do while you wait for your hair to grow long again. On my list so far: Wait.

Another year, my dear

It's my birthday today and I'm not quite sure how to feel about it. Maybe it will just be like today's weather: sunny periods and occasional showers.

Something's shaking lose

I cleaned my bedroom today. After months of using the floor as a wardrobe I picked everything up and put it in drawers or hung it up. It's nice to get to know one's bedroom floor again.

The state of affairs when it comes to how I've been treating my clothes of late has definitely been a sign of what's been going on in my mind. I don't think I've ever felt such apathy before. It's not all gone but when I start cleaning without having to nag myself it's a sure signs that things are getting better in my mind.

I don't know for sure what's really changed. Maybe it's really the fact that I no longer report to the same manager, that I managed to bring about change again in my workplace and that I somehow almost feel like I can trust that Mr Department Head will take better care of me. Hoping is scary. Having hope is good.

The path to recovery begins

I've had two days to mull over my little victory. If I get all logical with myself I have achieved more than I thought was possible in the area of curbing bad workplace behavior.

I have shown that it's not OK to disregard workers' mental health to the point you cause them to have a nervous breakdown, I have shown that a company have a responsibility to care for a worker injured with a nervous breakdown and I have shown that it's not OK to bully a worker having suffered from a nervous breakdown.

I have shown that you can use the system in place to achieve these things and that the system actually work.

I should be proud of myself. I should be dancing naked under moon to celebrate my victory, or victories, and I should be feeling unstoppable.

I can't own it.

I suffer from a problem a lot of people suffer from. When something good comes their way or they achieve something great they expect that there has to be a trade off, a price to pay if you will. That's a psychological problem, I think. It's an attitude problem.

I think there is a price to pay. People get a little weary of people who kick other people's arse. I kicked someone's arse.

There aren't many people who like my boss. I don't dislike him. I couldn't care less if he was on a space odyssey or if he was sitting at the desk next to me. What I care about is the way he was behaving towards me and the impact it had on my ability to recover properly. It made me feel hopeless and powerless.

I'm not powerless. Obviously.

Hope has been restored because I will no longer be subjected to his behavior.

I won for me. I achieved something that will help me.

I feel guilty though. I have not just put a kink in this man's career path, and I know how ambitious he is, I have effectively prevented him from going anywhere in the organization. He will more than likely have a huge target on his back for the next redundancy round. I somehow feel I used excessive force simply because I knew that on order to truly get him to stop his bullying I had to stop everything. It was the only way.  The man has no room to move now at all.

Maybe I will feel a little better about this on Monday when I go back to work or maybe it will take longer. Maybe I will be able to feel proud that I stopped one bully in his tracks and that it will help many people.

Maybe I just feel like I've put a huge target on my own back by doing what I have done.

My main priority, as Mouse so rightly pointed out in a comment, is my own recovery. I need to recover and I need to heal. Most of all right now I want to get off the medication again so I can get control over my brain again. I really do feel like half of it has been shut down. I need my mind back.

Soon, very soon, I hope to be able to write posts that are inspiring and that will help others in similar situations find strength to right wrongs in their workplace or in their lives.

I have to rest first though, I really do.

Did I tell you guys I love you? I do. There's much to be said for support and it has meant so much to me to be able to come in here and see your comments! You guys are awesome!

A new era

I hope, oh dear God I hope, that this is the last post I ever write talking about my struggle after the breakdown and how things have not gotten any better. I really do.

Yesterday afternoon when I went into the meeting with HR and the department head I had a plan. I was gonna go in. I was gonna come out. Nobody was gonna get hurt.

I had a preferred outcome.

My preferred outcome was that I by a sheer miracle caused by a solar eclipse some decades ago, an event that had against all odds set things in motion to pave the way for the sheer miracle, and that the sheer miracle was that I was going to come out of the meeting reporting to the department head.

The odds for this miracle to take place were pretty slim in my mind.

You've guessed it already, haven't you? I mean I can't keep a secret, can I? I walked out of that meeting reporting to the department head.

I was given some flack about my assertiveness. I told them that I can probably tell them exactly what events my now ex-manager had talked about when he accused me of being assertive. I told them that it was when he had been wrong and I had to stand my ground or it would have caused, shall we say, some issues.

I think we can safely call this a win.

But it didn't stop there. Not only was I handed over to the department head but I was also presented with a strategy for the first month me reporting to him. First week he's on holiday but after that we will have probably three meetings in which he will get to know what I do (and he really already know because we've worked together before when he was a project manager) and also so we can have a strategy for how we're going to deal with my recovery.

HR promised to keep tabs on me for now on too.

So as much as I was given a little whack across the nose I was also finally given the support, it seems, that I should have had all along.

A plan. A strategy. These things are music to my ears because when you're depressed you're fighting your own apathy. It's hard to set goals and make plans.

I'm so tired and I feel like I need another holiday. I've certainly haven't the energy this post deserves and I which I could have written a better post about this because it's huge.

I hope I will find myself again soon and my groove. I miss my groove. I really miss my groove.