This is a story about returning to normality...

One week from today I'm going to start circulating my CV and generally getting back in touch with my network to try and find some work. It's been a surprisingly long road, getting back on my feet.

I've picked an arbitrary date to try and get back into the swing of the working world. I certainly don't feel very well. I'm tired all the time. I still need help and support to deal with things, which are otherwise overwhelming to me.

However, I seem to have an on/off switch inside me. When I'm powered down in the 'off' position, you would barely believe how dysfunctional I am. Just getting out of bed and getting some food is considered a highly productive day. Pathetic, I know.

Something triggers me to switch gears from neutral, to top speed. The 'on' switch gets thrown and then the only problem is slowing me down enough to try and stop me from burning out. Next week is going to be a blur of activity, and if things go right, then there will be at least 3 or 4 months of frenetic activity before the circuitboards melt.

There are lots of bits of data that are graphable to see these two poles in my behaviour. Whether it's my bank balance or my activity data, collected by the movement sensors in my watch & phone, they all show the same thing: peaks and troughs.

Sadly, I would say that the peaks and troughs are getting more and more extreme though. I was certainly having some very odd thoughts and ideas when I was getting really tired last year, but I was in the middle of a highly productive phase. I had great difficulty biting my tongue, and thinking about the medium to long term benefits that would selfishly suit me best.

It's quite possible that I've totally busted my brain by just asking way too much of it. I've tried to be really kind to it for long periods, to see what difference that makes, but it's a bit like a tube of toothpaste that's open at both ends... you can put the cap on one end, but the toothpaste still oozes out of the other end when you squeeze it.

There's so much pressure in modern life. There's no opportunity to stop and catch your breath. Just as soon as I'm physically able to drag myself into an office for 8 hours a day, and not fall asleep in every meeting, I have to get back in the saddle and earn another load of cash, knowing that my episodes of stability are increasingly rare.

It's really strange, but I think that I used to know what was best for my health, and be really strict with employers, way before I got sick. The idea of working weekends was really offensive to me, and having to do on-call work, or late nights was something I'd only do very occasionally, and there had to be the bait of a big bonus or promotion on the table if I was going to do it.

I used to be really good at managing my long-term health. I made sure I took all my holiday allowance every year, and I made sure I always had something to look forward to. I was also really strict about maintaining a good work:life balance. I was fit and active, spending most weekends at the beach, kitesurfing. I was sociable and had all the right elements to create a fulfilling healthy life.

Nowadays, if I can work, I work. I live for work. When I'm not working, I'm just eating and sleeping. My existence is isolated, unhealthy. I dare not spend any money. I dare not take a holiday. I don't feel like a whole, functional person... and I don't see my friends. I feel worthless.

Frankly, when I am working, I'm way too intense at the moment. It doesn't take me very long to get a handle on an organisation and its objectives, and to understand the team and technology. From there, I seem to fall into my old pitfalls of becoming cynical and overly outspoken. Plus, I'm always in such a rush to get everything done... there isn't an IT project in the world that isn't late or overbudget.

It's hard when you've worked at a particularly demanding level, managing your own team or department, or even running your own company... and then you've got to slot into a massive corporate environment. It's hard to get back into the mindset of the wage-slave. It's hard to remember how to achieve the difficult balance between getting stuff done, and just terrifying the hell out of senior management, because things are happening at breakneck pace.

There was one particular piece of work that I was doing, and I knew there was a really important deadline to hit. There was a TV screen setup, which would light up green when we had succeeded and hit our deadline. I was working away in one of the meeting rooms, away from distractions on the open office floor. I knew that there was going to be a really tricky period to navigate with some of the senior management, who didn't understand what I was doing.

My very worst fears were confirmed when the senior management came rushing into the meeting room to say that there had been cheering in the office, because I'd made the screen go green. I then had to tell them that it was only because I had done some contingency work in preparation for the proper work. The pained and stressed look on their faces was unbearable, but I knew I only had 10 or 15 minutes to wait until the real 'green light' popped up, hopefully.

There then followed a very strained 10 minutes where I attempted to explain that I had done something to give us a retreat route, in case there were problems further down the line. The senior managers felt that I had done something cavalier, they felt misled, they were confused, they were disappointed, they didn't understand... this continued for 12 or so minutes.

Then the screens went green again, much to my relief. There we go. Job done, that was the event that they should be cheering. I had just been killing time explaining what I'd done, because I had a great deal of confidence that everything was going to be OK.

Such is the way with IT. The explaining takes the time. The work is normally trivial.

It takes time to get used to working with me. I tend to work on the principle that it's easier to ask forgiveness than ask for permission. I just put a great deal of pressure on myself to make sure that I get things right when I'm sticking my neck out.

I'm pretty unencumbered by fear, especially now I've been to hell and back a few times. This could be part of the general broken brain problem I've got. I have absolutely no fear of being reprimanded... I stick to my guns when I know I'm right, and my hunches are normally right too. There are so many times when there is enormous pressure to say or do the wrong thing, and the middle ground is to simply button your lip, say nothing, go along with some madness.

I'm not very good at going along with amateur hour.

I was working such long hours that I was staying in a hotel just minutes away from the office. I even had to take my washing to work with me

Tags: #career #banking #computing #london #bipolar