The flaw with Generation Y

This post was pretty difficult to write about so excuse the scrambled thoughts that probably don’t flow right.

---

I was a pretty lonely child, but I took this solitude to online. I was only allowed on it on weekends, but that was enough time to spend talking to “random strangers”. These “random strangers” became my friends – a few of them are still my friends today! This was the only way I knew how to make friends, and helped me develop myself – who I was, what my interests and hobbies were, because no matter what happened in everyday life, there’s always some kind of social acceptance somewhere in the world wide web.

They call people like me Generation Y; a group of people who originally did not grow up with the internet but developed this as part of their later childhood and adolescence.

I probably spent a number of years feeling very much alone, but I brushed it off, until I barely felt anything. Everyday I felt numb, no feeling, no enjoyment, no motivation, and found it really difficult to get out of bed. I would be in bed til it physically hurt, and then stay in bed some more.

But it was probably 15 years later I realised then I had depression, and now, it’s not so bad. Instead (?), I suffer from anxiety – actually, I didn’t find this out ’til probably a couple of days or weeks ago, to be honest. It had never occurred to me as the only kind I knew was social anxiety which I believed I 100% didn’t have. But the depression still affects me – that one I realised a couple of months ago.

My symptoms have worsen lately, though I’m unsure whether it is because I have diagnosed it or whether it’s just taken its toll.

A week ago I saw a GP about this (though was partially convinced that a lack of hormonal contraceptives had made it worse – not that I wanted any; they came with far more worse side effects when I was on them). It was my first time of telling anyone that wasn’t a really good friend, or my sister, or my other half. Why? There’s a few reasons. My biggest reason was that I was afraid of getting medically diagnosed. And that they wouldn’t believe me. The second was that I don’t suffer with it as much as some other people do so it doesn’t matter.

The first reason I stated stems from when I was a teenager; I opened one of my mum’s letters (we did this a lot because she can’t read) and it said she was diagnosed with depression. This was back when I guess I didn’t know what it was at all and didn’t know people got this. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I put it back where it was and never spoke of it again. Still haven’t. I didn’t want to get such a letter in my life.

So anyway, the GP recommended a few things, including this IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) programme, ran by the NHS in a lot of local communities, to provide group and 1 to 1 therapy sessions, which is probably the most effective form of treatment. I registered myself and was waiting a while (a week feels like a while!) to get a phone call to then tell me a telephone screening interview will take place. So I got my screening interview call tomorrow.

Everyone I’ve told (not many people, I must confess…) has said I’ve gotten through the worst bit by going to my GP. It was oddly not that bad really. But I feel like this screening interview is going to be the worst bit as sometimes I do feel numb as hell, and what if I don’t state just how awful I feel at times? And again, I still think, I don’t suffer as badly as some. But it’s getting so bad that I just need this, I need the help. I don’t want any meds, I just need this. I get afraid they just won’t believe me and that will be the end of my journey.

Also, to a lot of people that asked how I am recently – I’m sorry I lied to you. I didn’t want to be that much of a burden when all you wanted was to talk casually! But hopefully I’ll get better soon.

Consultancy work is complicated (!!)

My secondment to the Dartford project I talked about on a previous blog post is now over. It was going to be extended until end of December, with the expectation that it was going to be extended until the end of the financial year (March 2016) but it was met with complications.

So the project was going pretty well, they (eventually) made it clear the deadlines were pretty tight and the data would be used by pretty senior staff. I was doing the work, capturing my spin on it too. I was mostly going off myself liaising with stakeholders myself, managing this little project, and fairly often it would be senior members of staff that have been involved with Dartford for many years (it has been going on since 2009).

This work was really for my clients’ client so mostly, whatever they say goes. But this is where it does get political as I should only be doing work tasked by my clients themselves and no one above that, and also they already have some feuds within each other that I was unaware of.

Anyway, so I kept producing the work and we would have weekly meetings. I would get the data somewhere towards the end of the week – which can’t be helped. To the point where I would be overworking the day before the meeting so I would have something for them. The general jist of the stakeholders were that they were pretty happy with it, but no particular feedback on what they wanted really. Which didn’t help things. But the clients’ clients wanted to keep changing the data source literally week by week which was difficult to deal with (but I did) and eventually they realised that because a lot of analysis can be produced by the data, they needed to define different levels of analysis (i.e. high level, mid level etc).

It was frustrating that one my stakeholders (from the clients’ clients side) came in later on in the project, and you could tell from her body language she was more negative about the work but didn’t provide any comments or constructive criticism about what she wanted or expected and just avoided talking about it really. I like to think that I’m not a person that really minds criticism but what I mind more is the trying to push an issue away by ignoring it.

So yeah, it has ended because they’re under such high pressure because they ultimately need to produce the analysis in-house than subcontract it out, and the original scope has changed too much. For a project that started off very positive and challenging, it is a shame it has gotten to the point where it seemed negative, demotivating and constantly changing as many things were not considered.

The closure of a project is something new to me actually – I have to write a log about what happened in the project and actions I have taken, and then this time will be invoiced.

Initially I was pretty upset at the closure of this project because I did take it personally – I am used to projects being won and getting on with the work. I am not at all used to the clients changing their minds on how to proceed. My manager and a senior member of my team ensured that it was not something to take personally and it’s not a reflection of my work or skills, but more that clients can change what they want a lot when a project is being delved into.

In hindsight, I’m quite glad it is over. I was on the verge of struggling to juggle all of my work as this was taking up a lot of my time but I also wanted to take on new projects, that my time was being utilised somewhere between 120% and 160% (!!). I also wanted a lot more technical and design skills on traffic signals (which would help a lot with obtaining my chartership status in the future).

So ready to dive into a mattress though! We did an onsite review of 3 sites in 2 days. 1 day of onsite reviews typically takes up to 12 hours constantly on your feet (!) which can be quite grueling.