WELCOME 2 Our World of Recovery and Restoration!
Consistency of mindset
I looked into studying something new just recently or, at the very least, gaining some assistance from the local social services about career advice (which they're actually obligated to provide as I'm registered with them and have been allocated someone to address my concerns), contacting also my vocational specialist at the hospital outpatient clinic of the hospital I still have ties with (in an outpatient capacity) - squarely to gain some ideas from them about means for career advancement, training, brainstorming, directional suggestions, but not asking them to specifically find me work (I tried that before, it works better if you hint at that, but also give them an outing by also suggesting being open to training - which I am anyway).
Neither responded. I contacted one or two former friends who still appear open to speaking to me in a catching up capacity, but again with no response.
It was at this point, after suspecting it to be so for a while, that I realized just how out of the loop I really am - it's not that people don't care (they may not, but until I know for sure I'll give the benefit of the doubt), but more that they're just so caught up in things after having moved on past dealing with me in my formerly over-the-top brain injured state (self analysis) that they (I'm more referring to friends here than the government - I think their caseloads are likely full up right now) have seen a guy who's been in the proverbial, tried to persevere with him as old but formerly seen him (me) as too different and distanced themselves, only now to be presented again with someone hinting at being, not so much the same as before - still, in terms of health, lesser, but improved vastly by an experience which they have been largely absent from being around in.
In other words, I now realize that they've moved on and come to terms with the former Dan (that's me, obviously) being more or less gone, and now that I appear not to be so absent but instead hinting at being back again, I'm simply an uncomfortable reminder to them of a past time that they have since moved on from.
Unfortunately, as a recoveree, I've found moving on to be more challenging and problematic : all the time in the world to think about times gone by and being with those people and socially adequate and comfortable, hungering to get that back while ignorantly filing the potential for them to get over me and our past friendship in the back of my mind, seeing only a valiant return to their good graces at the end of an humungous journey back to health as the ultimately desirable outcome.
I thought this way for a long time, it fuelled my ambitions to recover, got me up in the mornings to go to the gym first thing and to pick up the study books day after day with mind-numbingly slow progress due to cognitive deficits like memory retention deficiencies. All that mattered was improving and getting not only back to who I used to be, but back to the social scene of old.
When I began to work voluntarily at the beginning of this year at a central city reading assistance library in a clerical capacity, it felt like the then 3.5 years of hard slog and recovery was beginning to pay off and I would imminently be well enough to once again power my way back into life while all around gazed on in amazement at my having overcome a disease formerly labelled, by my neurologist, as 'irrepairable after so long in recovery' - I struggled through the first few months there, generally failing at every single task they set and leaving the day feeling like they would fire me on my return there the next time I went in. They didn't, and in time I began to improve in my abilities there : not hard work, just no longer challenging.
Recently, my employer indicated an interest in sending me off to undertake a part time course in becoming a tutor there - something I was initially over the moon at the prospect of, until I found out that it would pay next to nothing at the end and eat up the better part of this year, which is when I showed reluctance : of course I wanna work, but I wanna do so with some sort of 'passable' wage (ie not bugger all/week). I indicated reluctance (indirectly) and now they're giving me a very cold feeling there and I'm considering leaving if it continues.
To me, having turned down this opportunity felt initially like not having learned from the way I used to be around former friends : they offered me their support if I played along with the way they wanted me to be - more like my former self. This job offered me a pathetically small progress to grossly underpaid employment, if I played by their rules and capitulated to the appeal of the very first offer I came across.
Then I realized that I have actually learned my lesson and done so well - there are a plethora of more lucrative possibilities for employment if I pursue the right avenues of study and don't throw myself at the first thing I see available - like this insignificant and underpaying job at my voluntary work. I thought on this, and saw that I also had chosen not to throw my emotions and often desperate hope for an end to social isolation at people who would only allow me back in until they felt like they had played the good samaritan role and could rest easy at night thereafter while I would inevitably return to the social wilderness.
I intend to thank work for the offer but decline, update my resume with the experience gained there, and not use them as a contactable reference (given their recent cold sentiment), study something else after having learned and progressed within this time, find a better, more highly paid (if not well) job doing something TBA, and meet new friends while there and begin to live my life again thereafter.
I think this has been a major realization through my experience recovery - others expect nothing : like friends who abandon when the time gets too tough, or an employer who thinks they can acquire discount labour and feel like they're the one doing the favour : I now sell my friendship at a higher price, and one of genuine intention - I see those others I once knew, some are almost genuine, but what we once had is now dead. I feel the coldness and disappointment at work by having not committed to an effectively useless and time wasting offer of employment, and I see it as their attempt to use my now imminent return to health to their best advantage : nup, I've come too far through this damn disease to give in to something like that - I won't let that pathetically underpaying job annoy me further, just like I wont allow my former friends to reel me back in, but only when they can be bothered.
It's been a test in moving on, and one offset by seeing something which I do place high genuine value in - a place to come to and prattle on about life and recovery - this site remains a constant sanctuary, and a place where I feel like I've grown to now show not the definite uncertainty that specialists and former friends once saw, but a community of those with a common concern who don't care about my meeting some pathetic standard they set, only that something is tried not only by me but everyone who joins here - sometimes the activity here is quiet, sometimes active, but always has it eclipsed former acquaintances and current employers in terms of the comfort it and those here provide(s).
I think the ultimate realization is consistency - I've consistently, while a member here, theorized improvment, chased it, then achieved it as a result of having trusted my own judgment. At present, my judgment tells me to move on and not go back to a point of living up to the expectations of others who don't deserve my aspiring to what they suggest - beit in terms of friendship or ridiculously underpaid vocation.
So I intend to kiss this voluntary job goodbye. I intend to not return to that former circle of friends and instead make new ones. I intend to remain an active member of this site and post again and again and again until I can one day say that this disease, encephalitis, is a potentially repairable one, and then I'll keep writing past that point - because I can and will then be, as I am now, free enough in the choices I make and more than capable of making the right choice.....
....the right choice is remaining consistent with what has gotten me to where I am right now - writing a lengthy blog with a consistent theme aswell as, I hope you'll agree, a logical train of thought : when friends were gone and employment doors closed and locked tightly, this site allowed me the opportunity to address it and dream, I repay that by following through with all I've learned throughout the past 4 years - make the right choice, move on past those negative things, but remain defiant in what's gotten me so far past my former neurologists negative prognosis - remain consistent and don't give in to former temptation. I won't.
Neither responded. I contacted one or two former friends who still appear open to speaking to me in a catching up capacity, but again with no response.
It was at this point, after suspecting it to be so for a while, that I realized just how out of the loop I really am - it's not that people don't care (they may not, but until I know for sure I'll give the benefit of the doubt), but more that they're just so caught up in things after having moved on past dealing with me in my formerly over-the-top brain injured state (self analysis) that they (I'm more referring to friends here than the government - I think their caseloads are likely full up right now) have seen a guy who's been in the proverbial, tried to persevere with him as old but formerly seen him (me) as too different and distanced themselves, only now to be presented again with someone hinting at being, not so much the same as before - still, in terms of health, lesser, but improved vastly by an experience which they have been largely absent from being around in.
In other words, I now realize that they've moved on and come to terms with the former Dan (that's me, obviously) being more or less gone, and now that I appear not to be so absent but instead hinting at being back again, I'm simply an uncomfortable reminder to them of a past time that they have since moved on from.
Unfortunately, as a recoveree, I've found moving on to be more challenging and problematic : all the time in the world to think about times gone by and being with those people and socially adequate and comfortable, hungering to get that back while ignorantly filing the potential for them to get over me and our past friendship in the back of my mind, seeing only a valiant return to their good graces at the end of an humungous journey back to health as the ultimately desirable outcome.
I thought this way for a long time, it fuelled my ambitions to recover, got me up in the mornings to go to the gym first thing and to pick up the study books day after day with mind-numbingly slow progress due to cognitive deficits like memory retention deficiencies. All that mattered was improving and getting not only back to who I used to be, but back to the social scene of old.
When I began to work voluntarily at the beginning of this year at a central city reading assistance library in a clerical capacity, it felt like the then 3.5 years of hard slog and recovery was beginning to pay off and I would imminently be well enough to once again power my way back into life while all around gazed on in amazement at my having overcome a disease formerly labelled, by my neurologist, as 'irrepairable after so long in recovery' - I struggled through the first few months there, generally failing at every single task they set and leaving the day feeling like they would fire me on my return there the next time I went in. They didn't, and in time I began to improve in my abilities there : not hard work, just no longer challenging.
Recently, my employer indicated an interest in sending me off to undertake a part time course in becoming a tutor there - something I was initially over the moon at the prospect of, until I found out that it would pay next to nothing at the end and eat up the better part of this year, which is when I showed reluctance : of course I wanna work, but I wanna do so with some sort of 'passable' wage (ie not bugger all/week). I indicated reluctance (indirectly) and now they're giving me a very cold feeling there and I'm considering leaving if it continues.
To me, having turned down this opportunity felt initially like not having learned from the way I used to be around former friends : they offered me their support if I played along with the way they wanted me to be - more like my former self. This job offered me a pathetically small progress to grossly underpaid employment, if I played by their rules and capitulated to the appeal of the very first offer I came across.
Then I realized that I have actually learned my lesson and done so well - there are a plethora of more lucrative possibilities for employment if I pursue the right avenues of study and don't throw myself at the first thing I see available - like this insignificant and underpaying job at my voluntary work. I thought on this, and saw that I also had chosen not to throw my emotions and often desperate hope for an end to social isolation at people who would only allow me back in until they felt like they had played the good samaritan role and could rest easy at night thereafter while I would inevitably return to the social wilderness.
I intend to thank work for the offer but decline, update my resume with the experience gained there, and not use them as a contactable reference (given their recent cold sentiment), study something else after having learned and progressed within this time, find a better, more highly paid (if not well) job doing something TBA, and meet new friends while there and begin to live my life again thereafter.
I think this has been a major realization through my experience recovery - others expect nothing : like friends who abandon when the time gets too tough, or an employer who thinks they can acquire discount labour and feel like they're the one doing the favour : I now sell my friendship at a higher price, and one of genuine intention - I see those others I once knew, some are almost genuine, but what we once had is now dead. I feel the coldness and disappointment at work by having not committed to an effectively useless and time wasting offer of employment, and I see it as their attempt to use my now imminent return to health to their best advantage : nup, I've come too far through this damn disease to give in to something like that - I won't let that pathetically underpaying job annoy me further, just like I wont allow my former friends to reel me back in, but only when they can be bothered.
It's been a test in moving on, and one offset by seeing something which I do place high genuine value in - a place to come to and prattle on about life and recovery - this site remains a constant sanctuary, and a place where I feel like I've grown to now show not the definite uncertainty that specialists and former friends once saw, but a community of those with a common concern who don't care about my meeting some pathetic standard they set, only that something is tried not only by me but everyone who joins here - sometimes the activity here is quiet, sometimes active, but always has it eclipsed former acquaintances and current employers in terms of the comfort it and those here provide(s).
I think the ultimate realization is consistency - I've consistently, while a member here, theorized improvment, chased it, then achieved it as a result of having trusted my own judgment. At present, my judgment tells me to move on and not go back to a point of living up to the expectations of others who don't deserve my aspiring to what they suggest - beit in terms of friendship or ridiculously underpaid vocation.
So I intend to kiss this voluntary job goodbye. I intend to not return to that former circle of friends and instead make new ones. I intend to remain an active member of this site and post again and again and again until I can one day say that this disease, encephalitis, is a potentially repairable one, and then I'll keep writing past that point - because I can and will then be, as I am now, free enough in the choices I make and more than capable of making the right choice.....
....the right choice is remaining consistent with what has gotten me to where I am right now - writing a lengthy blog with a consistent theme aswell as, I hope you'll agree, a logical train of thought : when friends were gone and employment doors closed and locked tightly, this site allowed me the opportunity to address it and dream, I repay that by following through with all I've learned throughout the past 4 years - make the right choice, move on past those negative things, but remain defiant in what's gotten me so far past my former neurologists negative prognosis - remain consistent and don't give in to former temptation. I won't.
Comment
About
Badge
Birthdays
There are no birthdays today
© 2009 Created by Stephen on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
You need to be a member of SURVIVORS PLUS!! to add comments!
Join this Ning Network