A new day

Sometimes it gets really hard to concentrate on work, especially when things don't go well. I notice whenever the creative director goes away for awhile, chaos happens here at work. Either there are issues with the server, or issues with the printers, or something. Now we have issues with uploading files to China.

Our usual way of sending art files to printers in China has been for me to upload them to an FTP site, and then send the links to the printers once they've finished uploading on Cyberduck. However, the company we use for that to happen seems to have changed practically everything as of late, and now I have no idea how to send art files to printers.

We tried to set up a situation in which we could utilize Dropbox to send files, however I have since discovered that dropbox is one of those websites that is stuck behind the Great Firewall of China. Now I have to wait for the person at work who works with the people at GoDaddy to give me an assigned website so I can send the files. However, it's clearly not high on his priorities list, so I might be getting it possibly tomorrow.

Not having a fully functional FTP site or ability to send art files to printers affects pretty much about 80% or more of my job. It is my job to finalize and flightcheck art files, send them to printer, and approve all the artwork in the various proofing stages that we have. If I can't send files to printers to print, we will have nothing for sales to sell. The person in charge of getting me this website is a sales manager. I don't know what else to do besides wait and wait and wait some more. It is royally frustrating, to say the least.

On to other things... My life is pretty much the same as per usual. Still trying to keep the depression monster at bay with anti-depressants and working on Bounce Back. Still binge eating like crazy. Still lazy as a sloth when it comes to doing housework or exercising. Still feel like I'm just living day to day with no real hopes or dreams anymore. Still feel isolated. Still going to Emotions Anonymous meetings. Still having some issues from time to time with my parents. Still obsessing over things that happened to me as a kid. Still not really living a life that I would love to live.

Blah...

Yep, clearly the depression beast is lurking in the shadows again. I might have to up my dosage again to keep it at bay. Or, I don't know, fix my life so I don't feel so fucking useless anymore.

I usually struggle with the concept of finding a way to be happy with my life. I have no idea what a happy life for me would look like, though, so in a lot of ways, this quest for happiness seems to be one of those far-off concepts that even I can't quite figure out. All I know for sure is that I feel like something is missing in my life. Some piece of the puzzle, and without that piece, I still can't figure out what the big picture is. It's a very important piece. I just don't know what it is.

Last Saturday was the fourth Saturday of the month, which means besides our usual weekly meetings at Emotions Anonymous, we have another meeting after and we work on the twelve steps, using the number of the month to coincide with the number of the step we are on; for example, as this is the month of October, we worked on step 10. Step 10 is about continuing to take a moral inventory over our emotions and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. I'm still working on Step 4, which is to take a huge moral inventory over my life. Because I have had to take a break from working on the steps to do the Bounce Back books, that has been a little stalled.

When discussing the step, I sort of figured out the point to Step 10. It's not necessarily that we have to do the same work every single day of our lives that we did in Step 4. It's to sort of go over what happens in the day and evaluate how you responded to it. Could I have done something better? Did I allow my emotions to get the better of me? Was I powerless over my emotions? Did something go right? Have I improved since starting the program? The point is to evaluate how you are handling the program and see if you still need to work on it some more, or go back and do some other steps if you are still struggling. If you are handling things okay and find that Step 10 gets easier and you can handle situations better, then you can move on to Step 11.

There were three of us present for this step meeting, and we sort of decided to try it for a week to see how it works. However, I am far too anal (or obsessive compulsive) that I find I can't work on Step 10 until I finish the other steps first, and I'm still on step 4. Either that, or I am procrastinating again. LOL

One thing I will say that has improved since I last posted is that Canada has seen a new Prime Minister come into power. The Liberals won with a clear majority and now Heir Harper can tuck his tail between his legs and get the Hell out of politics. Even though Justin Trudeau is still new at this and he doesn't really take control until next week, he has already invited Elizabeth May, the Premiers, the leaders of the Conservatives and New Democrats to go to the climate change meeting in December. That is light years away from Harper's approach, which was to basically forbid anyone from any other party from attending. Elizabeth May actually had to attend as a visitor from a different country the last time. While I am sad that the Greens did not get many representation in this election (just 1 seat), I am happy to see a sense of relief from feeling ashamed of being Canadian for the past 10 years or so. Hope is starting to come back to me that maybe we might be able to do something about climate change. We simply cannot afford to wait much longer.

Anyways, I just wanted to write a little update on how things are going for me as of late. One of these days I will figure out what that missing piece is.

Thanks for reading.