Current mood:	good
Entry tags:	20 pounds of crazy in a 5 pound bag, but i'm a volunteer!, can't hear you!, illness sucks, life and times of a gamer geek, my brain needs an off switch, sleep is a wonderful thing, wish i never had to shop

Here, have a quick summary of my week.

Monday:

Went to the Jobcentre. I normally see my Disability Advisor, Steve, who is awesome - he knows that I have trouble with my hearing, so instead of calling me over, he comes to get me. Unfortunately, the rest of the staff have no idea, because it's not like it's in my notes or anything. Or, more accurately, it is in my notes somewhere (just like the fact that I have mental health problems is - I've seen the page with those notes on) but those aren't the notes that anyone bothers to read until something goes wrong.

Anyway, I wasn't seeing Steve, so I asked the receptionist if the person seeing me could be notified that I have hearing problems, so I might not hear them call me over. The receptionist - who is also awesome - remembered me asking her to do this for me about a month or two back, and asked me if she could ask about getting some sort of note put my file that people would actually see, so I wouldn't have to keep asking, to which the answer was "Seriously? Can you do that?"

So I end up seeing this advisor, who decides that the note that to put on my paper-file-thing is "SHOUT LOUD" - written like that and everything. I don't know how I feel about that, because it's probably going to make people shout when they call me over (which might help) and then talk really loud to me face to face, which I don't want or need (I don't lip read exactly, but seeing people's lips move does help me understand what they're saying).

Oh, and I had a migraine (or something very close) at the time, and nearly passed out on the way home.


Tuesday:

Went to therapy. Realised that I haven't had any proper negative self-critical thoughts since the last time I went, which messed up the session plan somewhat. Talked about my lack of sleep, the latest flashbacks, and why I don't count my paranoia as something completely negative (in fact, it can be useful in it's own weird way).

And then, spurred on by the sort-of success of Monday, I asked if it would be possible if I could just have one session every two weeks, so I could have time to recover between sessions (recover is possibly the wrong word, but talking about some of things that have happened is just so emotionally draining that I can't do it on a weekly basis - this might be part of why I attempted suicide and had my second nervous breakdown during my last attempt at therapy). My therapist was okay with this and we agreed to have a session next Thursday and do every other week after that (but now we've had to move that session back a week, which means that there will now only be a week between that session and the one after, because we've had to book sessions in advance so that we can have a place to do all this in /o\).


Wednesday:

Wednesday was supposed to be my "take it easy after therapy" day. What it ended up being was the sort of day where I forgot to turn the oven off (I could see that there was something not right about it, but I couldn't figure that that the thing that was wrong as that it was still on), and it took five tries for me to get a cup on a table (plenty of space, but I still kept missing the table). In order to survive the day, I felt it was best just to go back to bed.

(For those of you who are wondering, staying in bed for the whole day worked.)


Thursday:

Finally went food shopping, which we'd needed to do since Monday. Bought more vegetarian pies than were necessary, but they are ridiculously yummy. Then I went home and played FFXII for a small while (apparently I started singing "We are now leaving Balfonheim" to the tune of "Here we go round the mulberry bush" - the last line of my song being "and we're off to Giruvegan" /weirdness).


Friday:

I'm not sure if I've told you guys what I do volunteering-wise: I do admin work for the charity shop department of the fundraising office for a local hospice. Sounds simple, yeah?

So why did I nearly have a panic attack at the end of the day? Because I was trying to get masses of paperwork out to 14 shops and the collection/delivery vans ready for Monday, and do a week's worth of filing, that's why.


And that was my week.