A few weeks of downtime - getting signed off sick due to stress

The title really says it all, doesn’t it.

Those that know me well know that well things have been tough, a big part of that is my fault, some is accidental fallout that has occurred due to events out of my control.

However the reason for this is a bit more compounded by too many things like

• Currently Jobless
  • I’ve spent months looking for work in tech & even have a M365 Planner board for tracking this project
  • I regularly get emails from recruiters & from Job Boards & get sent things by many people too.
  • I’ve read got to be over 2500 job listings just for Tech roles.
    • LinkedIn, JobSite, Cwjobs, TotalJobs, Hackajob, Jobs.ac.uk and others are on a regular reviews.
  • I’ve applied for far too many roles & think I’ve heard back from less than 5% of them.
  • Out of those most were entirely positive experiences, only some minor neutral ones.
    • Mostly with long, fund interesting & overall incredibly good chats with recruiters.
    • Some of those then progressed to interviews.
    • Also often good ones too with hiring managers.
• Try living on Universal Credit - it’s not fun & definitely doesn’t come close to meeting even basic financial needs.
  • I get £641 a month in Universal Credit
    • £271.99 is my rental allowance as a 33 yr old with no dependents living with me doesn’t meet my current rent of £650 a month.
    • Or other bills, whether they be deemed priority or non-priority.
    • Or food - properly at least
• Almost been made homeless because of the above
  • This may still happen, September will be an interesting month that’s for sure.
• Universal Credit isn’t helpful for many skilled workers like myself & being forced to attend weekly meetings in person, in a JobCenter, often costing me not only time to get there but money too, is just not a sensible use of my time or my finances & I have complained about this time and time again. The fact that I was recently pushed to attend weekly is a huge part of why I felt that I needed to be signed off sick due to stress as it’s not helpful to me in the slightest and stresses me out much more when I’m already stressed as it is.
• Felt so hopeless I’ve swung back and forth from feeling Suicidal to looking forward to hopefully a much brighter future. A future that I so badly want for me and my family and friends.

So yeah life has been incredibly stressful, somehow I am surviving, but right now all that is happening is that I am unable to tackle many of my problems and am instead kicking those down the road for future Ryan to have to deal with. I am tackling some, but not as a many or as important ones as I’d like right now. But I don’t want to, nor should I have to let my future self deal with the rest of these problems that now are mostly out of my control right now and all due to being out of work & not having enough coming in to meet my complex set of needs. I’ve applied for IT roles as well as non IT roles and gotten nowhere. If I didn’t have so many people that I know are dependent on me, I very likely would have multiple times in the last 20 months or so just ended it. But I know I have much more to give the world and I have so much that is important to me that I want to try and protect going forward.

I’m tired, so tired, and all of this is taking a toll on me. I genuinely do not know how much longer I can keep on battling all of this absolute fucking nonsense. And yet we as a society wonder why there are more males that commit suicide between the ages of 18 & 40 than women do. We don’t support people properly, the support systems are stretched when they exist, or are completely non-existent.

There’s plenty of things keeping going, like Friends & Family, as well as the fact that we are getting more episodes of Bleach each week atm, but it’s so hard and draining, and really getting me down.

I am barely surviving, definitely not thriving, and I and others like me shouldn’t be looked down upon for how we keep ourselves going in times where we want to give up but are doing everything we can not to, especially as we all have so much to give the world. Often people like me are the ones doing all we can to give people like you all the things you enjoy in in life, especially those in the world of the arts. Sure there are people like you giving people like me those things too, which is why we should look to better work together and understand each other, which people like me are often more than willing to do, when we get given the opportunity to do so, especially as we more often than not see the world differently.

The use of you in the above paragraph was generic, because you may have been reading this and can relate to what I was saying, or you many not have been able to. I just hope in reading this you can understand that struggling is not fun, I hate it, I wouldn’t wish the struggles that I’ve been through on anyone, especially as many of them would have & could have been avoided with better support systems over the years. Support systems that I genuinely hope no one needs to fall on as they are abysmal & so damn dehumanising even at the best of times.

But Yeah, i’m not enjoying life right now, even though that is what I want to be doing & using my skills to help others better their lives too, because that’s what I really good at.

My Mental Health really is swinging like a Pendulum & I am struggling to Hold My Colours right, now, and if you get that reference, then you’ll understand exactly where I am at right now.