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Modelling mojo and state of mind


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  • RMweb Gold

I have not tried Vitamins, but I do take Milk Thistle tablets on a regular basis. 

 

They are supposed to be good for the liver, especially after over consumption of alcohol; but I find that they seem to improve my overall health. 

 

I could go on for weeks about nightmares. I have had them since being a small child. There seems to be no predictability to their frequency but the content will almost always be the same. I have to work on the top floor of a ridiculously tall building, which is probably 200 storeys high. I can go up most floors in a lift but the top few storeys have to be by the stairs. 

 

Unfortunately, although the stairs are enclosed at first, the higher they go the more exposed they become until I am on steps with nothing but a vertical drop either side. I then find that the only alternative is to walk on a narrow ledge across to the second part of the building without falling off. Someone once told me that if I ever fail from the ledge I will die in my sleep; but that was proved to be nonsense the first time I fell - because I just floated to the ground and then had to repeat the whole process again.

 

The strange thing is that the nearest I have come to this scenario in real life was towards the top of the Eiffel Tower, but despite expecting a panic attack I had no feelings of fear at all and really enjoyed the experience and the view. 

 

This is sort of opposite to one of my recurrings, but no doubt provoked by the same fears and insecurities.  I am late for some appointment, and hurrying along an urban main road at dusk, but the lights are not coming on and it occurs to me that it might not be dusk by my vision failing.  As matters progress, and darkness falls, the road becomes a street, then a back alley, then a pathway; there is nobody around now and I am alone.  I enter the building, and descend a wide flight of stairs leading to a landing, from which a further, but narrower, flight, takes me onward. Panic setting in, I continue to the last landing, a tiny enclosed space with no exits.

 

Then I wake up, stressed out.

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If anyone tells me I've got it good, good job, reasonable income, a good life, how do I turn around and tell them that I'm not feeling it? How do you explain something that you can't explain to yourself to anyone that doesn't inhabit your head space.

 

 

Bill,

 

Thanks for sharing, I hope you are OK and feel better for it. I can empahise with so much of what you say but especially the above. These feeligs are often illogical and irrational but impossible to explain to those who do no suffer.

 

I must admit, personally I am at a real low at the moment. I think it has been triggered due to the change in the weather, the nights drawing in, drop in temperature etc - it does really affect me. The descent towards winter just fills me with dread :( I've also been sleeping very poorly and generally been quite low about work recently and I am struggling wih regard to eating well too ... upshot is that things are not great. Losong interest in my hobbies is a direct consequence, as how I react to such a situation. I am hoping for a turn-around soon.

 

I am interested in the light lamp mind - a friend recommended I get one a little while ago but I didn't really progress. It would be interesting to here of other people's experience and whether they have been beneficial.

 

The chance to share here does help though. As must all try to remember, no one is alone....

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  • RMweb Gold

One of the problems with 'not being a happy bunny' is that it is not something that is visually apparent to others, like a broken leg.  You have to explain yourself all the time, which in itself drags you further down, and the response varies; it can be anything from complete lack of sympathy to an overweaning and smothering amount of concern, but is rarely appropriate.  I try my best to 'own' my mental illness; it is my problem and, while I don't want others to exacerbate it, I'd by and large prefer if they withheld their concern; I know how to cope, thank you.

 

That said, anyone who tells you to pull yourself together should be taken somewhere there are no witnesses and, um, dealt with...

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Odd weekend for me - spent the whole weekend doing jobs - couldn't stop - felt a bit agitated but couldn't put a reason on it but cleaned all the bathrooms/en suites, changed and washed all the bedding, washed a pile of towels, hoovered the whole house including son #1s tip of a room, dusted, cooked and even spent some time painting track and gluing down Kadees to let me run trains again.  In between all this every chance I get I am shredding paperwork that has been building up in a box, 5 years worth of confidential stuff.

 

My wife is on a fitness instructor course this week and I think I was feeling her anxiety about the course as she hadn't done all her prep as she has another course she is doing on top of the other and she had been focussed on that.

 

In the past I think that anxiety would have been put into incessant playing of timewaster games on my ipad - CandyCrush and similar but without them I have to find other things to occupy my mind so although I have been agitated at least I feel good about what I did rather than feel I wasted a whole weekend staring at a computer screen moving pixels round.

 

Anyway, house is lovely and clean and I am itching to start rubbing down paint work as my next project.

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Someone once told me that if I ever fail from the ledge I will die in my sleep

 

 

What a cheery and motivational person they must be; you don't happen to have their number, do you, I could do with a dose of understanding and optimism...   :angel:

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  • RMweb Gold

 

If anyone tells me I've got it good, good job, reasonable income, a good life, how do I turn around and tell them that I'm not feeling it? How do you explain something that you can't explain to yourself to anyone that doesn't inhabit your head space.

 

 

Bill

 

Release day

 

An October morning like any other

but that's not actually true

alarm gone off as usual

tea and coffee made

dressing for work

today though the bus

probably off to the pub later.

What will it be like?

Will it be stressful?

Is this how a prisoner feels?

Normality for a while longer

who am I kidding.

Get through it, keep going

No tears, relief,

yes feeling that

Don't plant the boss whatever you feel

Management may be callous

Thumping them though

not really the answer.

The sort of B' word you want to say

welling in you, but stifled.

 

It's over, twenty six years gone

You can walk away

The big door opens

You are free!

Free to begin again

Do what you've always wanted to do

Stress free at last,

a last look at the door over your shoulder

Then back to your mates

Off to the pub, a celebration

No regrets, just relief

So glad, unlike them I can get a bus

No walk back to the shackles

of a hell hole office

Yes, I do feel like a released prisoner

The scars may be easier to work off

but they're there going deep

Management bullying no more

Release, freedom, retirement,

Thank god I've survived

and, unlike my father

I'm still healthy enough to enjoy it.

 

 - - - - - 

Re the above. A take on what a supposed good job does for you! Thankfully I've now been retired 10 years and that mojo from 2008 no longer applies. I still work almost full time but as a volunteer, if the stress mounts I can walk away without the fear of getting the sack.

 

NB The above is copyright to me and IS NOT public domain but can be shared/reproduced if not for profit and with me credited as the author.

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John, I love that so much. I reflects my own experience of four years ago perfectly.

I really struggled over the last couple of years in my old job.

I remember finally checking my pension estimate in July 2014.

I gave up six years of paying in to go early at 50, so sick of it was I.

My estimate showed I could go with enough to pay off the mortgage and have a basic income; I just needed part time work for pocket money and anything else.

I put my notice in in due course and atthe end of August the statement came through confirming what would be going into the bank and what my monthly payment would be.

As I held that letter in my hand, tears came.

Of relief and joy that all the BS and pretense was over.

A couple of weeks later, just like you, I walked out that door and for all the challenges I’ve encountered since, I’ve never looked back.

I could probably have added another 20k to my pension if I’d stayed but I doubt I’d have lived to see it so I’m with Edith Piaf on this one! :-)

 

Davy.

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I agree with you Davy, and I did something similar myself in my mid-50s. 

 

I, too, have never regretted the decision and believe the extra money would never have compensated for the extra decade of stress and fatigue I would have had to endure - assuming those two had not terminated my existence early. 

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I’m always sorry when I hear of people who hate their jobs, a lot of the people I know waste five days a week waiting for two , then getting fed up on the second anyway as they are about to work again.

 

What an existence, couldn’t live like that

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Interesting to hear about peple retiring early, and I love the poem posted by John New. I havent worked now for just over 4 years, I was made redundant after 8 years from a place I loved working at. I struggled to get back into looking for work, writing cv's, interviews etc. The problem was I never really found anything I wanted to do and couldn't face working for less money and working harder than I was doing, every job seemed miles away as well. I ended up not looking for work and now I volunteer at a local gym taking a Boccia group twice a week and helping people with additional needs in the gym. I love it and get a lot from that.  However, I get enough monthly income from  flat I let out and  my redundancy to cover the bills and not a lot else, I am so concious now of any major spends that every time I have to spend on my car, repairs etc it causes me a lot of stress. On one hand I'm enjoying life and the other I'm worried about the future. 

You cant win em' all i guess.

Steve.

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Rather a disastrous day yesterday:

 

Took the day off work to give me time to complete the electrics on the layout in the Museum. Found someone had put a load of extra screws in the front fascia and done them up so tightly they couldn't be removed! They'd also put an extra cross brace at ground level which had trapped one of the power supply cables so it would no longer reach the socket! 

 

Came home and decided to do some work on my layout instead. 

 

Took a look at a PL11 point motor near the back of the layout where the mechanism had kept working itself to bits. Test fired it and the crank catapulted itself away never to be seen again (given the awkward access to this point motor I'm trying to consider other options here but it's a tricky spot as it's over one of the baseboard side frames and the PL11 tucked nicely under the platform in a way that a PL10 wouldn't - any suggestions?) I'm loathe to replace it with another PL11 in case the same thing happens again.

 

So then I decided instead to replace one of the points in the station throat where the sleepers either side of the tie bar had come detached from the rail on one side, meaning the point motor wasn't throwing properly and the blades weren't making proper contact. Found a spare point and went to clip a point motor to it. Crack! The ends of the sleepers sheared off!

 

:-(

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Interesting thoughts on jobs. I found myself stuck in roles I didn't really enjoy with little prospects of progression but 3 and a bit years ago packed it all in.... forgot the career and now do contract work. Enjoying myself and love the feeling of being able to walk away from where I am. Kind of focuses you on now rather than the future which has really helped my mindset.

 

like the idea of retiring early though ;)

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I’m always sorry when I hear of people who hate their jobs, a lot of the people I know waste five days a week waiting for two , then getting fed up on the second anyway as they are about to work again.

 

What an existence, couldn’t live like that

 

 

Although I never regretted retiring, I never hated the actual job. I just hated the commuting, the exhausting shift patterns, the incompetent management, and the idea that I was just some monolithic dinosaur who thought the old methods were the best and was resistant to change. 

I thought the old methods were best because they had stood the test of time and had been developed through decades of experienced learning by trial and error. 

 

Ok, a 30-something with a PhD could sweep in with a head full of wonderful computer backed ideas, but if anything went wrong at the sharp end - guess who was left to sort the problems out at 1am on a night shift?

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Although I never regretted retiring, I never hated the actual job. I just hated the commuting, the exhausting shift patterns, the incompetent management, and the idea that I was just some monolithic dinosaur who thought the old methods were the best and was resistant to change. 

I thought the old methods were best because they had stood the test of time and had been developed through decades of experienced learning by trial and error. 

 

Ok, a 30-something with a PhD could sweep in with a head full of wonderful computer backed ideas, but if anything went wrong at the sharp end - guess who was left to sort the problems out at 1am on a night shift?

 

I think this view is true for many of us, an expectation that before things were implemented they would be trialled and any bugs found at "the doings end of things" would be fixed. That is not the same as resisting change/cut backs, just expecting the changes to be done/managed in a way that works. The paradigm shift occurred during the 1990s. One classic here in rural West Dorset was London thinking at its worst - a new system rolled out where, IIRC, our out-workers had to use mobile phones/Husky* data-loggers to enter in data on-site, it was never going to work as no-one up the line had appreciated coverage was so patchy you had to log stuff on paper and transcribe later.  There are still areas local to here were there is no signal.

 

* May not have been mobile phones/Husky's but it was something similar that needed access to a data signal to work.

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  • 3 months later...

Well the mojo is well and truly gone at present.

 

Just logged on to book train tickets to Stafford, Doncaster and Glasgow - first discounted Doncaster for no other reason as I couldn't be bothered, then Stafford went to a 'I'll see how I feel on the day' and now Glasgow is 'Three hours there, three hours back and all that standing, so nope', Ally Pally also tossed onto the scrapheap.

 

I was looking forward to February as a pick me up but it's just not there, I got a little excited over Hornby's announcements but that didn't last long.  I'm off social media, hardly posting here, railway looks like a bomb has hit it, wagons derailed and locos gathering dust and I've not bought anything substantive in months.

 

It's not just the railway modelling, I am struggling for mojo in general, though I have had one pick me up when an interview sparked a reaction in me that I didn't anticipate and I may have found a future career - but it's several years study away so I have to summon the strength to pursue that but for everything else it really is CBA.

 

I wouldn't say I am really depressed either, I am feeling flat and really contemplating major changes so it seems interests and social media are taking the back seat whilst I get it together possibly.

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  • RMweb Gold

It is sometimes difficult to achieve escape velocity, to be able to do even ordinary everyday things, and stuff like rerailing wagons on the layout or booking tickets to actually go out and do stuff becomes impossible.  First thing; don't beat yourself up about it, it's plenty bad already and you don't need to make it worse.  Second thing; step back and take a look from a different perspective.  Third thing; write on the forum about it, ok, you've done that!

 

I will PM you shortly.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Apologies for dragging this thread up again......

 

Well since my last posting I have certainly had an interesting few months. I hadn't been feeling well at all for a while last year and at the end of October I was rushed into hospital with a severe infection. Upshot was I spent 6 weeks in there, including a spell in intensive care.

 

Thankfully on the mend now but still recovering and rehabilitation will take a long time. 

 

It is somewhat of a cliche, but being so poorly has made me reassess things in life and take stock. Life is too short and too precious to waste it working long hours and running yourself into the ground. It's been a tough few months as you can imagine......

 

As I recover in 2019 I am going to have a fresh attitude, including to my modelling. I am going to try some new projects and have a positive mindset after a few years of malaise and lack of confidence with regard to the hobby. I have had plenty of time in recent weeks to plan and dream and as I get better I want to grasp the chance to do something with my modelling. I am sure it will be excellent for my mindset during my rehabilitation - constructive tasks to focus my mind on! 

 

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Apologies for clogging up this thread, but I have found it somewhat theraputic just to write things down. Here's to a return of my mojo, a recovery in mental and physical health, and a new lease in my modelling life over the coming months.

 

David

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1 hour ago, sb67 said:

David, no need to appologise for anything, good luck for this year. Sounds like you've had a bad 2018 so hopefully you can put that behind you, glad your on the mend, take care.

Steve.

 

Thank you Steve. It is all about looking forward now. Last year was pretty terrible, but there is always someone worse off than ourselves, and I have been given a second chance so will grasp that. We all have bad days but it is important to leave those behind and look ahead :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sort of coming out of a downturn on the mojo side of things again. Funnily enough, a visit to the RAF museum at Cosford and a 1:100 or something scale Lancaster has weirdly brought back the modelling mojo. Its weird, I go and look at planes, and the trains also come back to me. Its a funny world and a funny brain I have. The Billy loco has finally got a coat of midland red and the smokebox on her (him?) has had a treatment of bbq paint too.

 

I don't get how my brain works at all. Going back onto weekend work again has knocked me for six, and I'm not happy about it. It is in the contract sadly.

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5 hours ago, Coldgunner said:

Sort of coming out of a downturn on the mojo side of things again. Funnily enough, a visit to the RAF museum at Cosford and a 1:100 or something scale Lancaster has weirdly brought back the modelling mojo. Its weird, I go and look at planes, and the trains also come back to me. Its a funny world and a funny brain I have. The Billy loco has finally got a coat of midland red and the smokebox on her (him?) has had a treatment of bbq paint too.

 

I don't get how my brain works at all. Going back onto weekend work again has knocked me for six, and I'm not happy about it. It is in the contract sadly.

 

Glad you seem to have turned the corner and have rediscovered some enthusiasm. I know exactly what you mean about seemingly unconnected things triggering and interest in railway modelling... It happens to me a lot. The strangest things can provide inspiration to me and will have me reaching for the sketchpad and pencil! 

 

Hope it doesn't affect you too much having to work on a weekend. Keep posting and try to keep positive.

 

David

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I seem to be up and down like a bride's nightie for no apparent reason in recent weeks.

 

Just now I can literally feel myself going down. No obvious cause, unless it is word from a friend yesterday that her dog, of whom I am very fond, has cancer and will shortly have to be put to sleep, as the saying goes.

Life just seems to be a constant struggle; it's just the change between struggling to get a jam jar lid off and struggling to shift a bolt that has rusted solid.

 

I really am quite sick of it. Objectively my depression is much better than it has been these last ten years, but I just get this feeling that I shall never be completely free of it and that it could develop into its old dark self at any time.

 

Currently I am trying to keep myself busy, not because I want to be busy but just as a tactic to push the darkness to the back of my mind.

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