sa puso ninuman

discombobulating.

• scaffolding guys re-appeared, wanted me to move cars I cannot move
• can't find my work phone, which made e.g. making breakfast for me and the cat more stressful, I like being able to hear if I'm suddenly needed at work
• also my train tickets for London tomorrow are on the phone
• oh wait no they're not because this time I couldn't find the option for that on the inaccessible website so I have to go to the station to collect them from an inaccessible machine
• I forgot I have a work-adjacent thing this evening, which means I can't go to circuits, which means I haven't been to the gym in like two weeks, no wonder my brain is all fucked up (well this and a million other reasons...)
• also my counselor and I have rearranged on each other about five times now, I had to cancel last week because of a last-minute work trip but rearranged to tomorrow, like a dingdong, because I have a longstanding trip to London tomorrow!!

But the most discombobulating thing is the main thing on my work calendar for the day: an interview for a slight promotion at work. My current manager and someone else I work closely with get to ask me about why I would be good at a job a little better than the job I have now. I've never really done anything like this before and I understand it but it just feels so weird.

And then there was a faff over whether I (and R on my team, who also once again had gone for the promotion) had to do the written task since our manager had forgotten that he shouldn't be using the same one as the abortive attempt to run these interviews a year ago, because we'd already taken part in that. I did remember how exhausting that had been, to work very hard for an hour on this task and then go right back to my regular work which is of course pretty similar. So I was happy to skip it even though I figured that wouldn't be the recommendation once he'd talked to HR.

But the real issue is that just, like a minute, before my interview, V came up to me, very angry and upset. The scaffolders, who'd finished and left by that point, had destroyed many plants in the garden. I'd noticed they had been thoughtless about where they'd stored some of the poles, flattening part of a little wooden border force that surrounds one of the beds.

I hated to turn my back on them and join a Teams call, feels so pointless when someone you care about is suffering, but it was too late to even really say "hey can I have a minute." As it was I got a message from my manager -- who was running this interview -- at one minute past; I was already in the process of joining when he sent it. In the space between him asking me the first question and me trying to answer it, I could hear V sobbing -- and stomping up the stairs, presumably because their laptop is there and they quite rightly wanted to complain. I felt like I was ignoring them and was heartsore.

Which probably didn't help my interview but honestly, whatever. If I get it, cool and if I don't, fine. I don't think I'll know until the beginning of next week, though I guess it may be by the end of this week.

And just after this, the plans that the long-suffering events team had just finalized for the event taking me to London the next day were suddenly turned on their head, so I had a meeting about that where someone tried to tell them the new plan was bad for policy when I had just been thinking it was good!

Then I had this focus group after work, from a very slow-moving but interesting-sounding process of making NHS Talking Therapies more accessible for visually impaired people. I'd been despairing about it clashing with circuits, but I'd determined that if I left a bit early, and D kindly offered to give me a lift, I could make it. No circuits or lift club last week, and I haven't made it to the gym myself in...months? I was really feeling it. By which I don't mean I was de-conditioned (though I was), I mean mentally I felt like one of those coyotes someone has mistaken for a dog and tried to "rescue" by putting it in a cage.

Then home to do a Tesco order for the next day, shower, pack my stuff for the morning, and get to bed for my early alarm the next day.