So, a week is gone, and another one is here

And finally it sinks in, it’s a Monday morning, and for the first time that I can remember in a very very long time, I’m not at the beck and call of somebody else. Yes that is correct, I am unemployed.

The duration of this unemployment is yet to be decided, but will probably be in the order of weeks, although a handful of people have the power to make it less and if they decide to do so then I will be happy with that, but otherwise I will enjoy my few weeks of relative freedom.

The last time I took any proper leave from work was in October last year ^[1] when I took two weeks off, one of which I spent in Sydney. It looks like I’ve built up a reasonable leave balance since then and I’ll be quite happily living off the payout from that for a few weeks.

For those of you who aren’t aware, I resigned from AussieHQ ^[2] about a month and a half ago. Originally I was going to finish up on Friday June 13, but this date was pushed back by mutual agreement and I finished up on Friday July 11 instead, the last couple weeks of which I have spent working from home, which is rather fortunate considering my current lack of personal motorised transport.

Last week was somewhat quieter than usual on this blog due to my week being somewhat more hectic than usual. On top of working, I had half a dozen personal administrative matters to sort out, and I spent most of Monday and Tuesday in bed with food poisoning…well, that’s technically accurate, but not the full story.

“Food Poisoning” is definitely technically accurate, after all I ingested something which didn’t agree with my body and I became quite ill as a result, the full story isn’t quite as innocent though. If we go back to the early hours of Monday last week, everything “just got to me” and I hit what I would describe as being my most depressed state yet. I have previously reached the point of writing a suicide note and scheduling it to appear here a few hours later, only to eventually come to my senses and delete the note. On Monday I didn’t write a note, I just decided that taking 2600% of my daily dose of anti-depressants would do the job…I was wrong. Within half an hour I was very sick and I spent the better part of the next two days in a “zonked” state, clearly a large dose of the drug made its way in to my bloodstream before my body could deal with it, and it had quite an effect.

Thankfully the work I needed to do on Monday and Tuesday didn’t require an awful lot of concentration and I was able to take care of it by sitting in bed with my laptop.

To answer the obvious questions, yes I feel better (both physically and mentally) now, and no, I don’t want to do that again. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if that failed suicide attempt turns me off trying for a very very long time. Apart from being zonked for a while, I had an utterly awful taste stuck in my mouth for about four days. To understand the taste, imagine chewing any random medication you happen to have, multiply the awfulness of the taste by about three hundred, add the taste of vomiting, and there you have it, an absolutely awful taste for four days, and a really really bad memory for life.

Of course, I’m happy that I’m over that, and I feel much better now knowing that I’m not actually compelled to do anything at this very moment by virtue of employment. I could have breakfast now, or this afternoon, or just skip breakfast completely, sleep until midday, have lunch and the rest of the day’s meals in their normal sequence, and have breakfast before I next go to sleep. Regardless of what I do, nobody is actually waiting for me to do something for them or turn up somewhere, and I’m not going to get an earful and be disciplined for not doing such.

It’s not that I don’t like work…it’s just that I pretty much lost interest in the job I as doing, and I’m happy to put it behind me. Whilst it was nice to know that it was almost over, it’s much nicer to know that it actually is over.

With things looking up from a work (or lack thereof) perspective, and with me looking forward to taking a break for a few weeks, I’m pleased to say that things are also looking good from a personal transport perspective. I’ll be back on the road on Saturday afternoon, after which I’ll be in a much better position to spend a bit of time out of Canberra, and take care of a few projects and trips I’ve been putting off for some time.

That reminds me. I was planning on starting a new podcast this month. The plan was for a weekly online talkback program recorded live and released as a podcast. I haven’t had any time to deal with my plans for that lately, so I don’t know if it will actually happen this month, but it’s coming and is back near the top of my priority list.

I’ve got a lot to do, and a good amount of time in which to do it. This should be a good few weeks.

Samuel