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The I Feel Down Topic.

If it makes you feel any better it sounds like you posted it quite late at night, I doubt many people saw it. I personally forget that they even have a Story feature in the first place, that bit at the top is just invisible to me.
 
I’ve had to make the decision to stop looking at the news, particularly after last night. It’s making me so angry and upset that I’m starting to feel sick; especially considering I have family who were holocaust survivors.

How can anyone can do something like that?
 
Leigh said:
I’ve had to make the decision to stop looking at the news, particularly after last night. It’s making me so angry and upset that I’m starting to feel sick; especially considering I have family who were holocaust survivors.

How can anyone can do something like that?
Click to expand...
It really says a lot when this is the first time I can ever recall you posting in this thread, Leigh. 😢
 
Jonathan said:
It really says a lot when this is the first time I can ever recall you posting in this thread, Leigh. 😢
Click to expand...
I think I posted in here once before when I was considering taking a voluntary demotion at work (I didn’t in the end - we managed to sort it out so I wouldn’t have to), but this just really got to me.
 
Leigh said:
I think I posted in here once before when I was considering taking a demotion at work (I didn’t in the end - we managed to sort it out so I wouldn’t have to), but this just really got to me.
Click to expand...
It's a rarity - let's put it that way. I'm honestly not surprised it got to you. I made a conscious decision to not watch the inauguration yesterday, as I knew I'd just get angry. The sad thing is I wasn't even wrong.
 
Leigh said:
I’ve had to make the decision to stop looking at the news, particularly after last night. It’s making me so angry and upset that I’m starting to feel sick; especially considering I have family who were holocaust survivors.

How can anyone can do something like that?
Click to expand...
I came to this conclusion a long long time ago, to the point where I'm not even sure I know what you're referring though I gather it has something to do with the Inauguration (which I only heard about from my OH after I got in late). It does mean I'm almost completely oblivious to world events which isn't great, but at least my mental health doesn't suffer.

TV networks are also a terrible way to consume news, I've noticed the BBC in particular will use a combination of shocking footage and polarised reporting to make the viewer as upset and/or angry about something as possible. Another reason for disengaging was that I was fed up with being emotionally manipulated. Often better to read in-depth articles on a topic which contain more factual information and contexts, although finding non-biased printed media is also a challenge.
 
Spent today going though my accounts for 23-24. Because I refuse to give HMRC a single penny until the last possible moment. (Yeah, I know, I really could/should have done the return itself earlier. That's next!)

Realised why I'm so poor.
Made ~£18.5k that year before expenses. Clearly still recovering. For someone my age, who's been in my industry since 2001, that's shocking.
I'm well aware that could be a lot of money to some, and don't want to sound like a dick or anything. But an average year for me in The Before Times would be double that. [ETA] My starting salary in 2001 was £13K.

People who work in TV are all rich, you know.

My advice to younglings who want to work in TV? Don't.

[Insert obligatory "Taxation is theft" comment here].
 
GCSE’s. I can tell you a lot about quadratic equations, Britain's turbulent post-war rebuilding efforts, write a pretty good essay, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

Cool. Some of this stuff is even pretty interesting.

However, I’m slowly starting to forget how to do.. like.. human things. Like holding a conversation. Or eating. As a person thats a tinge on the spectrum, I struggle with these things normally. I’m absent minded by default. I forget things I don’t really care about.

But really, all those things have been dialled to eleven as of recent. I’ve been basically doing an extra period after school for revision, and man, I just back home and crash and burn. I sit on my bum and just look at my phone for hours. It’s bad! I can’t even sculpt anymore. That’s the one thing I’m good at doing! I’m even getting behind on homework because I’m so exhausted.

For every step I get better at poem analysis, I can feel my comedic skills rusting a freezing. It’s not like the bright and jolly circumstances the world is in currently is helping, either.

I’m genuinely question how well I’m going to cope with the “real world”. To be frank, no-ones really sold it to me. Because of the struggle with my studies and pretty frequent thoughts of my own mortality, I don’t know if I can feasibly work a normal 9-5 job and keep sane. I don’t know if I will be able to cope with being a mere number-crunching cog in a pointless machine we call a “business”.

Im not a doozer! Im a fraggle! Ive got far more pressing matters than money or work or commuting, like making weird little creatures out of clay. Like, get this; one day I’m just going to straight just close my eyes FOREVER. Im sure it’ll be very nice and relaxing, eternity will come around pretty quick and someone’s gotta feed the worms, blah Dee blah. But I get to do absolutely nothing! That’s so boring!

Even weirder, it seems everyone else around me is either getting on with/preparing for a job that they only pretend to care about, so they can have enough pieces of metal and plastic and digital numbers to gain possessions like a “fancy car”. And they keep doing this until their heart stops beating and they are thrown in a little hole and forgotten about in like 3 generations. They act like they’re going to live forever!

Everyone keeps on talking about “investing and retiring at 30”, I get ads about investing at I’m fifteen years old! I don’t care! I don’t think having a great excess of funny little coins in a ceramic pig are going to seem all to important as I get to enjoy breathing for the last few times. I don’t want to die and just think I’ve been used as a tool for my whole life. I want to think that I’ve done something that pleases people instead of a pie chart, and make people laugh and have fun instead of make people a little more bank.

I mean my parents jobs look like my own living nightmare! My dad spends a lot of time at work, has his laptop out almost all the time doing work, and he’s only off for a tiny portion of the year. And what makes me feel especially bad about saying all this is that I know he is doing it for me and my siblings, so that we can have opportunities to learn stuff and try and succeed in our lives. And sometimes I’m too tired from my - in comparison- petty work to hold a proper conversation with him after he has done so much more work in a day than I do in two. It’s like a dung beetle saying he’s tired to SISYPHUS.

Am I inherently a greedy person for wanting to do something that isn’t going to give my possible future family the best financial edge so I can have a job that inevitably pays less that I enjoy a lot more?

Don’t panic; either way I’m sure there will be some nice things to look forward to whichever way I spin it. It’s not like my polymer clay is going to evaporate, every church organ I touch falls apart instantly or Efteling is going to be swept away in a freak tsunami from a nearby oxbow lake.

I also quite enjoy eating food and breathing fresh oxygen.

Ugh. The brain fog is real. I’m very lucky I have some pretty lovely things to look forward over half term and my long summer holiday after I finish secondary. Aye yie yie.

Enjoy my Wikipedia page of a vent piece. That’s why I haven’t been around here for a bit. I feel better already about it to be honest.
 
The_bup said:
GCSE’s. I can tell you a lot about quadratic equations, Britain's turbulent post-war rebuilding efforts, write a pretty good essay, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

Cool. Some of this stuff is even pretty interesting.

However, I’m slowly starting to forget how to do.. like.. human things. Like holding a conversation. Or eating. As a person thats a tinge on the spectrum, I struggle with these things normally. I’m absent minded by default. I forget things I don’t really care about.

But really, all those things have been dialled to eleven as of recent. I’ve been basically doing an extra period after school for revision, and man, I just back home and crash and burn. I sit on my bum and just look at my phone for hours. It’s bad! I can’t even sculpt anymore. That’s the one thing I’m good at doing! I’m even getting behind on homework because I’m so exhausted.

For every step I get better at poem analysis, I can feel my comedic skills rusting a freezing. It’s not like the bright and jolly circumstances the world is in currently is helping, either.

I’m genuinely question how well I’m going to cope with the “real world”. To be frank, no-ones really sold it to me. Because of the struggle with my studies and pretty frequent thoughts of my own mortality, I don’t know if I can feasibly work a normal 9-5 job and keep sane. I don’t know if I will be able to cope with being a mere number-crunching cog in a pointless machine we call a “business”.

Im not a doozer! Im a fraggle! Ive got far more pressing matters than money or work or commuting, like making weird little creatures out of clay. Like, get this; one day I’m just going to straight just close my eyes FOREVER. Im sure it’ll be very nice and relaxing, eternity will come around pretty quick and someone’s gotta feed the worms, blah Dee blah. But I get to do absolutely nothing! That’s so boring!

Even weirder, it seems everyone else around me is either getting on with/preparing for a job that they only pretend to care about, so they can have enough pieces of metal and plastic and digital numbers to gain possessions like a “fancy car”. And they keep doing this until their heart stops beating and they are thrown in a little hole and forgotten about in like 3 generations. They act like they’re going to live forever!

Everyone keeps on talking about “investing and retiring at 30”, I get ads about investing at I’m fifteen years old! I don’t care! I don’t think having a great excess of funny little coins in a ceramic pig are going to seem all to important as I get to enjoy breathing for the last few times. I don’t want to die and just think I’ve been used as a tool for my whole life. I want to think that I’ve done something that pleases people instead of a pie chart, and make people laugh and have fun instead of make people a little more bank.

I mean my parents jobs look like my own living nightmare! My dad spends a lot of time at work, has his laptop out almost all the time doing work, and he’s only off for a tiny portion of the year. And what makes me feel especially bad about saying all this is that I know he is doing it for me and my siblings, so that we can have opportunities to learn stuff and try and succeed in our lives. And sometimes I’m too tired from my - in comparison- petty work to hold a proper conversation with him after he has done so much more work in a day than I do in two. It’s like a dung beetle saying he’s tired to SISYPHUS.

Am I inherently a greedy person for wanting to do something that isn’t going to give my possible future family the best financial edge so I can have a job that inevitably pays less that I enjoy a lot more?

Don’t panic; either way I’m sure there will be some nice things to look forward to whichever way I spin it. It’s not like my polymer clay is going to evaporate, every church organ I touch falls apart instantly or Efteling is going to be swept away in a freak tsunami from a nearby oxbow lake.

I also quite enjoy eating food and breathing fresh oxygen.

Ugh. The brain fog is real. I’m very lucky I have some pretty lovely things to look forward over half term and my long summer holiday after I finish secondary. Aye yie yie.

Enjoy my Wikipedia page of a vent piece. That’s why I haven’t been around here for a bit. I feel better already about it to be honest.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry to hear you're feeling this way @The_bup. You've raised a few points, so I'll try to address each one in turn with reassurance, but also with honesty.

Firstly, let me address GCSEs and your current revision-induced feeling of brain fog. Let me reassure you (as I'm sure you know deep down already); this is temporary. In 5 months' time, this will be completely gone and a large number of your academic subjects will be things of the past. Whatever you currently hate most in the timetable, reassure yourself that you only have to persist with it for 5 more months, and then you can cast it into the past forever! And if you want my honest opinion, I would honestly say, as someone who's 6 years older and a couple of stages further up the academic ladder than yourself, that I don't think it ever got more intense than GCSEs for me. Yes, the material becomes more complex further up, but in terms of the raw breadth of material and number of subjects, exams and skillsets crammed into such a short space of time, nothing that comes after is quite like GCSEs. The other great thing is that higher up, you engage with the material at a way deeper level than the mere rote learning and regurgitation you do at GCSE. The material becomes more complex, but it also becomes way more interesting.

I don't know what your current post-16 plans are, but as someone who took the academic path, I can talk about A Levels, undergraduate university, and my experience so far in postgraduate university in terms of work-life balance, as that's the key thing you appear to be worried about. Once you get to A Levels, you're expected to be far less of a "jack of all trades", and you can specialise into primarily doing things you actually enjoy. There are far less subjects (typically, people do 3 A Levels or equivalent; some might do 4, but this is not too common, as even the likes of Oxbridge universities only require 3), and resultantly, you have notably fewer exams at the end. You also gain free periods and a less crammed timetable, and if you use these effectively, I think you can have better work-life balance at A Level than at GCSE. And if you do what I did, you can pick your A Levels so that there's some crossover between them and they build on each other, which makes revision easier (I did Maths/Physics/Computer Science, and Maths and Physics in particular had quite strong crossover in areas).

Once you get to university, I think the work-life balance can stay the same or gets better again, depending on the course you do (I gather some are more intense than others; my undergrad was Computer Science at the University of Gloucestershire, so my comments may not apply to, say, Medicine at Cambridge). My undergraduate course had no exams, so I had primarily coursework projects, and for the first year or so, it honestly felt like a breath of fresh air after GCSEs and A Levels once I'd grown accustomed to the uni learning style, and I felt like I had way more free time. It does ramp up as you progress further, but if you manage your time effectively, I don't think the workload ever gets unbearable at uni. Of course, this comes with the big if of "if you manage your time effectively"; I won't beat around the bush and pretend that you aren't in for a world of highly pressured pain if you leave all your assignments and/or exam revision to the last minute. But if you try and start things early and work "little and often" from the get go, I don't think the uni workload ever gets unbearable, even in the final dissertation year. I'm now encountering exams again on my postgrad (MSc Data Science and Analytics at Cardiff University), but these are only end-of-module exams rather than highly pressured "finals" like your current GCSEs are, and they are interspersed with other forms of assessment like coursework. And while I'm not yet at the MSc dissertation stage, I'm still coping fine with the workload at postgraduate level.

Apologies for the tangent there; let me address your other point about being disillusioned at the idea of the 9-5. I don't think it makes you selfish at all to want to pursue happiness over more money and/or prestige. The truth here is; as long as you're happy, it doesn't really matter what you do. Even the lowest-paid job out there is great if it makes you feel happy and fulfilled and helps you attain what you want to in your life! In all honesty, you probably seem to have a healthier attitude to the workplace than I do; I'm at the stage in my life where I'm thinking about jobs post-uni, and I'm honestly really worried that I won't get a job that's "good" or prestigious enough and disappoint myself and everyone around me. That may sound hypocritical given what I just told you, but I am a little bit of a perfectionist academically/professionally and have this inner voice that's always really disappointed in myself and beats me up if I don't attain the very best or score the very best opportunities. I know deep down that your mindset towards this is way healthier than mine, so I offer myself up as a cautionary tale here! (Why is it so hard to take your own advice? I honestly have no idea...)
 
The_bup said:
GCSE’s. I can tell you a lot about quadratic equations, Britain's turbulent post-war rebuilding efforts, write a pretty good essay, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

Cool. Some of this stuff is even pretty interesting.

However, I’m slowly starting to forget how to do.. like.. human things. Like holding a conversation. Or eating. As a person thats a tinge on the spectrum, I struggle with these things normally. I’m absent minded by default. I forget things I don’t really care about.

But really, all those things have been dialled to eleven as of recent. I’ve been basically doing an extra period after school for revision, and man, I just back home and crash and burn. I sit on my bum and just look at my phone for hours. It’s bad! I can’t even sculpt anymore. That’s the one thing I’m good at doing! I’m even getting behind on homework because I’m so exhausted.

For every step I get better at poem analysis, I can feel my comedic skills rusting a freezing. It’s not like the bright and jolly circumstances the world is in currently is helping, either.

I’m genuinely question how well I’m going to cope with the “real world”. To be frank, no-ones really sold it to me. Because of the struggle with my studies and pretty frequent thoughts of my own mortality, I don’t know if I can feasibly work a normal 9-5 job and keep sane. I don’t know if I will be able to cope with being a mere number-crunching cog in a pointless machine we call a “business”.

Im not a doozer! Im a fraggle! Ive got far more pressing matters than money or work or commuting, like making weird little creatures out of clay. Like, get this; one day I’m just going to straight just close my eyes FOREVER. Im sure it’ll be very nice and relaxing, eternity will come around pretty quick and someone’s gotta feed the worms, blah Dee blah. But I get to do absolutely nothing! That’s so boring!

Even weirder, it seems everyone else around me is either getting on with/preparing for a job that they only pretend to care about, so they can have enough pieces of metal and plastic and digital numbers to gain possessions like a “fancy car”. And they keep doing this until their heart stops beating and they are thrown in a little hole and forgotten about in like 3 generations. They act like they’re going to live forever!

Everyone keeps on talking about “investing and retiring at 30”, I get ads about investing at I’m fifteen years old! I don’t care! I don’t think having a great excess of funny little coins in a ceramic pig are going to seem all to important as I get to enjoy breathing for the last few times. I don’t want to die and just think I’ve been used as a tool for my whole life. I want to think that I’ve done something that pleases people instead of a pie chart, and make people laugh and have fun instead of make people a little more bank.

I mean my parents jobs look like my own living nightmare! My dad spends a lot of time at work, has his laptop out almost all the time doing work, and he’s only off for a tiny portion of the year. And what makes me feel especially bad about saying all this is that I know he is doing it for me and my siblings, so that we can have opportunities to learn stuff and try and succeed in our lives. And sometimes I’m too tired from my - in comparison- petty work to hold a proper conversation with him after he has done so much more work in a day than I do in two. It’s like a dung beetle saying he’s tired to SISYPHUS.

Am I inherently a greedy person for wanting to do something that isn’t going to give my possible future family the best financial edge so I can have a job that inevitably pays less that I enjoy a lot more?

Don’t panic; either way I’m sure there will be some nice things to look forward to whichever way I spin it. It’s not like my polymer clay is going to evaporate, every church organ I touch falls apart instantly or Efteling is going to be swept away in a freak tsunami from a nearby oxbow lake.

I also quite enjoy eating food and breathing fresh oxygen.

Ugh. The brain fog is real. I’m very lucky I have some pretty lovely things to look forward over half term and my long summer holiday after I finish secondary. Aye yie yie.

Enjoy my Wikipedia page of a vent piece. That’s why I haven’t been around here for a bit. I feel better already about it to be honest.
Click to expand...
Dearest Bup, have you ever considered meditation? With a little bit of time and a small amount of effort, you'll be able to organise your thoughts and lift that brain fog.

There are apps to help take you on guided meditations, such as Headspace, Calm or InsightTimer. There are guided meditation podcasts you could listen to. The idea is to help reset your mind, to put the buzz of thoughts to rest for just 10 - 20 mins, or however long you want, and give yourself a bit of a reset. You may find it useful.

It's important to know that there is no "right" way to meditate, it can take many different forms. Also no one is good or bad at it, it's not a competition, it's deeply personal.

As for the life stuff, it's what happens to you whilst you're busy making other plans. As long as you have a roof over your head, food in your mouth, there is nothing wrong with doing something that you love, as long as you are happy.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Spent today going though my accounts for 23-24. Because I refuse to give HMRC a single penny until the last possible moment. (Yeah, I know, I really could/should have done the return itself earlier. That's next!)

Realised why I'm so poor.
Made ~£18.5k that year before expenses. Clearly still recovering. For someone my age, who's been in my industry since 2001, that's shocking.
I'm well aware that could be a lot of money to some, and don't want to sound like a dick or anything. But an average year for me in The Before Times would be double that. [ETA] My starting salary in 2001 was £13K.

People who work in TV are all rich, you know.

My advice to younglings who want to work in TV? Don't.

[Insert obligatory "Taxation is theft" comment here].
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I’m guessing you do a backstage TV production-type role @DiogoJ42?

I’m sorry to hear you’re struggling. With regard to “people who work in TV are all rich, you know”, the unfortunate truth is that I think a lot of people conflate working in TV with TV presenters. TV presenters and actors are often very rich and well-paid, but people forget about the unsung backstage folks like yourself.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but TV strikes me as one of those industries where people perceive it as all glitz and glamour, but only a small percentage of those who work in it manage to actually access the glitz and glamour side.

Has work not picked back up for you following COVID yet? That seems strange, what with the boom of streaming and such.
 
Matt N said:
Has work not picked back up for you following COVID yet? That seems strange, what with the boom of streaming and such.
Click to expand...
@DiogoJ42 works in TV, but in studio based television programming. Not the sort that's really seem on streaming, and certainly not in the UK.

Streaming is mostly drama, reality and documentary, all of which don't require TV studio technicians.

Match of the Day, Blue Peter, Strictly Come Dancing, BBC News, Have I Got News For You. These are "true" television shows, or shows which at least require a television studio. Typically live, or filmed as live, in a controlled environment and a large production team.
 
Beaten to it by Goose. ;)

Not a lot more to add, really. Sadly the days of big "shiny floor" LE shows on a Saturday night, or "live studio audience" sitcoms, are long gone.
It's just the dull but regular stuff like sport left now. And even then, these days a lot of networks are opting to just send a presenter, camera op, and single production member to the side of the pitch, rather than use an expensive studio.

The single camera dramas we see on streaming services these days are actually made like a film shoot, rather than TV. That's a whole different world. It's not that I couldn't do it, but I move in very different circles, so never get the chance.
 
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