Poor woe is me

It's late afternoon. The sun is well and truly on her descent for the day. I'm sitting on a chair in the garden trying to soak the last of her diminishing rays. The gentle breeze blowing by does not aid in my quest.

My eyes are red and burning. The residual sting of earlier tears lingering longer than I care for.

One dear customer left me with this today

I cried at work today.

On the checkouts.

While serving customers.

It took nearly four customers till I could pull myself together. I wasn't a complete blubbering mess but I know there was pain in my eyes that they could not help but to see.

My mind was doing the cruelest of things to me. It was so mean and hurtful, yet I know that in a bizarre twisted way it was meant with kindness and love.

Not that, that really makes it ok.

As much as I always hope for the best, I often prepare for the worst. A kind of safety net I guess. That's what was happening today.

I'm waiting to hear the outcome of a job interview from last week. It's still with the same company, just a different position and most definitely a promotion. I hate hearing myself say it, but if I'm brutally honest there is a part of me that thinks I deserve this. Actually brutal honesty is to admit that I think I should have just been offered the position.

So you see my quandary?

To not be given this will be devastating. I have worked hard and I know I am the right person for the job. To be told I'm not will be akin to being told I am useless. It's like I'm already mourning because my stupid head got sick of waiting for the outcome to be revealed. On the upside though at least I now feel like I might be able to cope with the direst of outcomes. Nothing could be worse than what I have put myself through today.

On being disconnected

One of the things that I have liked most about #ouradventureofalifetime so far is the way it has made us so disconnected from the world at large. Though I must admit that this comes as no surprise to me. As even before we left it was something that I looked forward to.

For a while I worried about what this meant. Why did I desire so badly to be disconnected?

As a blogger, sharer and communicator a desire to be disconnected is probably not what you would expect from me. You know since I regularly try and get people to connect with my words and all...

I started to think that perhaps there was something wrong with me. Humans are not meant to want to be isolated and alone. We are community driven beings rather than islands. Apparently.

Today was a stark reminder as to why being disconnected was so appealing.

When you are disconnected you don't know about war torn countries or people displaced, pressured and murdered because of their religion or planes that crash or people that desperately wanted to be parents only to then abandoned the child they had paid for.

Or famous people that filled the world with laughter and then took their own life.

Being in a time zone that is hours behind most other places the news of this tragic event had filled my Facebook news feed before I had finished my morning coffee. It didn't seem real, though of course I knew it was. There were too many posts for it to be misinformation.

Our day had already been planned so before long we were on the the road and quickly out of mobile and internet range. With the excitement of a new road to drive on and places to discover this heartbreaking news soon left my mind.

No more thought paid to it until we returned. The beauty of being disconnected.

By the time my fellow bloggers had all found their voice and my newsfeed now filled with tales of depression and the need to break the taboo that surrounds this ghastly disease. A disease that no one, rich, famous, happy, poor or anything else in between is immune from.

It makes me sad to think there are so many unhappy and troubled people in the world. So many beings unable to live to their potential and crippled by a disease that so largely goes unseen. Somewhere along the line today I read that some three thousand people will take their life today.

As crowded as the world may be it does not need to lose that many people in that manner. In fact no one anywhere should lose someone in that manner.

When we were in Kununurra the other week the Black Dog Riders dropped in to stay the night. These guys do an amazing job at trying to create awareness of depression and suicide. I love that this is a project by men and primarily for men. You see I worry more about men's depression than women's.

Just about everyone everywhere talks about women and depression. And rightly so because it is a burning issue. But that does not mean men do not suffer either.

The Black Dog

The other day a while flitting about on Facebook a friend shared a link to an Upworthy post that offered explanation to as to what depression was like.

Personally I have managed to escape any formalised diagnosis of depression. There was an instance a few years ago (not long after Teapot was born and my father had passed away) where I think I may have come pretty close to ticking a lot of depression boxes. I am glad those days are behind me.

Anyway there was so much in this clip that I wanted to remember I decided sharing it was the easiest way to save it for later. That and the fact I hadn't yet organised a post for today and I am not yet ready to walk away from post every day challenge.

So here it is for your enlightenment and my memory later.