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It’s been awhile since my last update. Once again, I apologize for the absence. Moving took a lot of my free time. It’s been a blur.

Spring is finally with us! I feel like I’m coming back to life. My Seasonal Affective Disorder is at its worst during winter. I think I’ve just experienced my worst ever episode of it in a decade, or even possibly ever.

The very good news right now is that I have finally found a job! While it isn’t the highest paying or most fascinating job ever, I work with a team of amazing and lovely people, and a fair number of them are LGBTQ. I have never worked in more diversified environments than this one, and it’s an amazing feeling to be with similar folx. It is also a very short commute, less than 25 minutes – 3 metro stops and a 10-minute walk, so I get some great power walks before and after my shift, a great stress killer. I plan on buying a bike and helmet and start biking to work during the warm months. Great way to get back in shape! It would be an even shorter commute than my metro. 15 minutes, tops.

My physical health is also, at least for now, and god forbid I jinx it, quite…good? It feels very strange to be even writing this, after the past few years of serious illness. I will be getting health coverage as of April 1st, and I will definitely take advantage of it. I also look forward to going back to my old family doctor, who had been such a resourceful person who diagnosed me with clinical depression and General Anxiety Disorder back in 2007.

So, there is quite a lot to be looking forward to! I sincerely hope this is the end of this string of bad luck and misery. I’ll report back, hopefully not in 3 more months. 🙂

When I Grow Up

First off, apologies for not updating this blog in the last few weeks. My return to work took most of my energy and spoons. I’m definitely going to have to dedicate an entire post to that, because there’s been a lot of really positive things happening. Moving on…

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and this is something that’s been on my mind a lot recently.

Do you ever feel like you took the wrong career path?

In Quebec, high school ends at grade 11, and you have to go to CÉGEP for 2 years before going to university. You can also get a sort of trade school degree, which we call “technique”, although it’s more like college because it’s a 3 year program. Trade school, or whatever is equivalent to it in QC, is no more than 2 years I think.

When I graduated from high school in 2001, I thought I wanted to be a scientist. I enrolled in a Biotech technique program and got my diploma 4 years later (failed a class that was a pre-requirement for more advanced courses, otherwise I would’ve graduated in 3 years). I did a 5-week internship doing a mini-research assignment, and I loved it. But working in microbiology quality control was boring as fuck. It turned me off working in a lab. I tried university for 2 semesters but failed. I thought I could just go all the way to a masters degree in order to make more than what a CÉGEP diploma would get me.

The great thing about cégep is that tuition is really low, so much that textbooks end up costing more. IIRC, it was like $150ish/semester in admin fees. That’s a fraction of what a semester in university costs. So if you fuck up, at least you didn’t throw thousands of dollars in the toilet. I went back to cégep to do a 3-year program in Radiation Oncology, but dropped out after 2 years. I realised I was really not a good fit for that kind of job.

I’m 34 now, and I think I found out what my career path should have been only in my early 30s. Translation. Writing. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and tell 17 year old me to go that route instead. I didn’t think I was good at writing for the longest time, but now I realise it was because the stuff I had to write about was boring and didn’t interest me. I’ve also been doing low-key translation while not having a diploma for a lot of my customer service jobs. Especially here in Toronto. People are cheap, translation is hard work and they don’t want to pay extra. Apparently being bilingual means you’re a translator. 😂 I mean I did help my sister a lot with English homework, but I just went with common sense, not academia.

Obviously I’m not going to work in customer service for the rest of my life. It’s such a thankless job and it doesn’t nearly pay enough. I’m waiting for my financial situation to improve enough so I can finally get my gotdam translation certificate. U of T has an online course that’s 18-months long (4 classes over 4 semesters), so I can do it and still work full time. It’s $750/semester, not counting textbooks obviously. It’s a small sacrifice though, because I will have access to better paying jobs as a certified translator.

I’ve also gotten to know myself better. I didn’t really consider myself an artist in high school. That’s obviously not the case anymore, haha. My husband keeps telling me that my writing is great but I struggle to believe him, because he’s obviously biased. My brain is a jerk.

Hopefully I can start classes by autumn of next year the latest. As a Xennial (aka people born towards the end of Gen X and the start of Gen Y/Millennials), I don’t think I’ll get to retire before age 70, so if I’m going to be working for another three decades or so, I’m going to make sure I like what I do.

If you could go back in time and speak with your younger self when you got out of high school, what would you say? I’d love to hear from you!

Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum

I know I haven’t updated this blog for a few weeks now. A lot has happened since; however, I’m happy to report that my health has improved a bit.

• I went from needing my cane daily, to about maybe 3 times at most in the last month or so. I even had days with a pain score of 0, and it hasn’t been more than maybe a 5.
• I decided to go back on Cipralex, an antidepressant and an anxiolytic. I was on it over a decade ago, and it worked really well at the time. I started taking it again on Saturday of last week, and I can’t really think of any significant side effects other than feeling a bit more tired at the end of the day.
• I returned to work on Monday. I was very anxious about it, because I had been gone for over 6 months, and was apprehensive to go back to a toxic environment like before I went on sick leave.

About a month ago, if you had told me that my return to work would have been going smoothly, I would probably have laughed in disbelief. But there is something about this new space that the previous one. I took an 8 week leave a year and a half ago, when I should have taken more time off to fully recover. That lead to a stream of micromanagement and invalidation from my employer. I requested workplace accommodations, but was constantly denied them.

Now, about that new space… While it takes maybe an extra 15 minutes each way in commute, it is a world of difference. I’m not a huge fan of open office spaces, but I have more than double the desk space I had at the old office. I HAVE A WHITEBOARD OF MY OWN! Everyone is provided with an ergonomic chair (that has like 27 different settings – which means I finally have a workspace that won’t exacerbate my chronic pain. The desk height is also adjustable, and I never thought I’d ever say this, but I can have a standing desk if I feel like it, by just raising it high enough. I try to make an effort of being in the standing position, in 15 minute increments.

Also, I was micromanaged like mad by my supervisor at the old place. Having been gone for so long, I didn’t know what I was coming back to. It turns out that some things changed in the department, but I’ve been made feel welcomed, and not pushed around. My supervisor seems to genuinely care about my well-being. I took my first call since I came back on Wednesday, but it didn’t go so well, and I had a panic attack (she was just so mean, like I took maybe 5 calls in my entire time there about the brand she was calling about). I was able to calm myself down without my anxiety meds (clonazepam), and that’s a huge deal. I noticed a lot more support from my team leads and supervisor, and they even found her to be so unreasonable.

I’ve also received praise from them, which felt so validating. This is something so few people in management do, and I never understood why. Wouldn’t you want to encourage your employees to know they feel appreciated, and that their work is great? A happy employee is a more productive employee. Micromanaging will only alienate them.

I think I already have better coping skills. I don’t know if it’s from the medication, or just me being done with this bullshit, but at any rate, I hope it stays that way. I’ve been on different antidepressants over the years. The first one I tried was Cipralex, then I switched to Effexor XR, and that was a nightmare. The withdrawal from it was hell, I needed to take it at the same hour every day, or else I’d get painful brain zaps and terrible nausea. It was the hardest drug to come off of. Would not recommend. My family doctor recommended I try Cymbalta as it apparently helps with chronic pain. I had nausea the first week and every time I’d increase my dose, but that was about it. Then I tried Pristiq. I didn’t feel anything from it, and I mean, anything. No side effects, but no benefits either. So I stopped it after a year.

The first half of 2018 has been so difficult. Most of it feels blurry, like I’ve had a cloud of fog around my head. I needed the time off to recharge my batteries. I never thought it would have taken 6 months though. I felt guilty about being off for so long, but now I know I really needed that long. Mental illness is still wildly misunderstood and dismissed, and that rings especially true if you’re really good at masking it. I hope one day this will change, considering it affects about 25% of the population.

Homesick

Hey readers,

As some of you know, Doug Ford (Conservative party) was elected as premier of Ontario last week. It made me feel so sick, and scared as to what this’ll mean to marginalized folx.

I moved to Toronto a little over 4 years ago. There was an opportunity and I jumped on it. My husband Matthew followed me a month after I moved. And these past 4 years have been the worst 4 years of my life. Toronto is already very expensive to live in (especially housing), but with the Conservatives in charge, they’d scrap rent control, so Toronto would be even MORE expensive to live in. And we can’t afford that. There will also be some major cuts in services, especially healthcare.

Moving back to Montreal has been on my mind for a few days now. However, I HATE it. It’s expensive and so stressful and I have so many things. But in the long run, it would be much more sustainable. My family doctor in Montreal even kept my file open, so at the very least, I won’t have to look for one.

I decided to create a fundraiser to help us with moving costs. I’m definitely not happy about having to do this, but right now, it is needed.

Please help Tess & Matt move back home

If you can’t donate, could you please share my fundraiser?

Thank you in advance, from the bottom of my heart.

Not What I Expected…

Are you like me, pretty disgusted with the results from the latest Ontario election? I gotchu. Here is a cute photo of a kitten with lilac flowers.

I really do commiserate. I’m very nervous and anxious about what that’ll mean for marginalized folx like myself. For my non-Canadian readers, here is a piece about why this new government is bad news for us.