Symbolic Forest

Went for a walk on the beach today, to try out a new camera lens.^* I’m told that brisk exertion can be good when you’re feeling down; and struggling through the biting wind across the dunes always seems to leave me more cheerful than I was before. When I was too tired for the sand, I moved down and walked along the firm mud at the edge of the saltmarsh instead.

Even at half a mile, the roar of the breaking waves was a loud, constant growl. I stood and watched ships lining up and waiting to be piloted upriver, and tried to take photos of the changing weather.

(as they are on film, you’ll have to wait)

* Nikkor AF 35-70mm 1:3.3-4.5, if you care – an early 90s model, I think. I can never understand Nikon lens ranges. I don’t normally go for zoom lenses either, but it was only £35.

Keyword noise: beach, cold, photography, Nikon, walking, weather, wind.

Work is wearing me down again. We have several projects on our menu, for different divisions of the company, and of course everybody thinks their own project is urgent. Our manager’s opinion of the most urgent depends on who he had last talked to.

When people ask me: “have you done X? When will Y be ready?” over and over again, I get annoyed and irritated. Unfortunately, most of the other managers in the company seem to think that this is the best way to go about motivating people. Of course, some go further, and lie directly: “I know Z is supposed to be ready by the end of the month. I’m sure someone told me that. I’m not sure who, but I’m sure someone did.”

Keyword noise: management, motivation, planning, prediction, work, project planning.

Feeling dark and downtrodden still, and nothing creative has been coming to mind. When I’m home from work, all I want to do is stretch out on the sofa and let my mind idle. When I’m at work, I’m too busy, well, working, rebuilding and reindexing database after database in desperate attempts to shave percentage points off their performance.

When I sit back and let my mind idle, there are usually a few images that float into my head by themselves. Lately, when I relax, I start thinking about yggdrasil, the tree that binds the worlds together. I’m not sure why, but it helps to remind me that everything we do is interconnected.

Keyword noise: archetype, darkness, databases, interconnection, mythology, subconsious, yggdrasil.

This is the time of year when the black moods usually hit. I’ve heard of SAD, and maybe it’s that. I don’t know. Maybe it’s that the things I’m scared of, when I think back, all seem to have happened at this time of year too. When it gets back round to November again, the dark fears all start to come back.

The Mother has been in a dark mood lately too. She doesn’t like to talk about it, but I know she’s always had depression, and has always tried to hide it and pretend it’s not a problem. I can tell she’s having a bad time too; so maybe it is all about the season.

Keyword noise: depression, SAD, seasons, winter, The Mother.

Someone recently said they thought the mysterious creature at the top right was myself. Strangely enough, it isn’t. Here’s a slightly better picture of it:

The creature isn’t me, but it does have a name. This is a gruntlebeast. Although shy,^* and so rarely seen on camera, these rather sad monsters are unfortunately rather common.

Their name comes from their main food: gruntles. They will often attack lonely strangers, using those vicious teeth to remove the victim’s gruntles. Often, the victim will not even notice the beast’s attack, only realising that they now feel rather disgruntled.

Clearly, these things are a menace. They account for a large proportion of the disgruntled people in the world, in turn leading to large-scale outbreaks of annoyance, irritation, depression and Being A Twat. You should watch out for them, and be particularly wary if you hear their distinctive hunting cry: “Arrg kxrrt!” If you see any, or hear of any sightings, then let me know. Be safe out there.

* and also, according to some accounts, sometimes invisible; which may account for the partially see-through appearance of the one in the picture.

Keyword noise: arrg kxrrt, disgruntled, fake mythology, gruntlebeast.

Back at the office today, and I wish I hadn’t been. The first things I had to deal with: a manager, not my own, complaining that I wasn’t doing my job properly; or at least her idea of what my job should be. My own manager’s response to that was: “Bollocks, ignore her,” but I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place.

There’s not much motivation about at the office. There’s no joy in work when your only hope is to make people slightly less annoyed than they otherwise would be. There’s no recognition that we’re ever doing anything right, only constant complaints that we never do enough.

Keyword noise: colleagues, management, motivation, office politics.

So far, I haven’t tried to explain the name of this site; and nobody’s asked, probably because very few people read it. I thought it up whilst sitting one afternoon on Doncaster station, waiting for a rather late train, and ever since I’ve been worried that it’s too pretentious.

The meaning came second, but if you ask me it’s a good meaning, so that doesn’t really matter very much. The Forest isn’t made of solid wood and trees, but it is there, around us. It’s there all the time, but some days you can see it more than others. Some days you feel that whatever happens to you, however wonderful, you’ll still be feeling awful at the end of the day and you still won’t have achieved anything. That’s because you’re stuck in the Forest, and you haven’t managed to fight your way out of it yet. This site is – at its deepest root – all about doing just that, because it’s written by me, and that’s what I spend an awful lot of my time doing.

That last sentence makes this site sound as if it’s going to be very, very personal, all the time. That’s not true. It also makes this site sound as if it’s going to be very, very pretentious, all the time. I’m going to try to make sure that that’s not true either.

The monster up at the top right does have a name. I’ll get onto that another time, though. I might even make t-shirts.

Update, April 12^th 2022: No, I know the monster’s not there any more, and it hasn’t been for a while, but it’s on the About Me page.

Keyword noise: anxiety, blogging, explanation, names.

I haven’t been feeling very good lately. Pretty depressed. Very depressed, in fact.

Then, last night, I was drifting off to sleep whilst listening to the midnight news, and I started smiling and softly crying. Because this was on the radio.

Keyword noise: depression, news, trans, transgender.

Today, work is just fixing my own stupid mistakes again. All morning, so far. Why is it always on Mondays, too? Grrr.

Still, noone has sent me any emails telling me I’m incompetant for several days now, which has to be a good sign.

Keyword noise: work.