AM- had to do something physical as I'm going stir crazy not running. Did 30 min bike plus a lot of stretching my back.
I've taken to not publishing my blog posts recently. I'm composing and saving all of them, just never publishing. No one on the FRB has noticed yet, or at least no one has commented on my almost 4 week absence other than my mom. Just an interesting data point.
I'm not one to maintain regular contact with friends who move away. I'm finding I feel rather alone most of the time these days with almost no one to honestly talk to. I've run with people for most of my life, till recently. Now, I don't run at all due to injury, and pre-injury, I did every run solo. I've run thousands of miles with Todd, Jim, and Aaron, but they all left the company in the past few months, so no lunch work runs with them. The openness and cameraderie of running buddies is completely gone. I love my 3 days a week of frisbee (probably the highlight of my week), but you don't get the hours of open talking like during a nice run.
Work is rather stressful right now with lots of layoffs, forced retirements, and voluntary departures (I work for GE- look in the news if you want to guess the overall company morale). I try to not bring work stress home with me and be a drag on my family, so I don't really share much with my wife. Most of the people on my team are in other locations, so there's no one close to talk to here. The guy in the cube next to me is one of the few people I talk to about how we are feeling with work stress- we share thoughts and articles back and forth fairly regularly. Today, however, he said he was going to give me unsolicited feedback, then told me I've been too much of a Negative Nelly with all the bad news and asked me to stop. So, I will- no more sharing feelings with him. It's pretty amazing that you can work in an office with hundreds of people yet sometimes go the entire day speaking to no one. Yet I'm working long hours, late- often till 8 or 9 pm. But still alone.
I feel like everyone has thoughts and feelings about work, stress, life, etc., and that we need somewhere to process/discuss/share them. More and more, though, I don't feel like I have anyplace to open up. The few people I can open up to have mostly left. I don't want to burden my wife. I've been struggling with depression for a number of years. I feel alone most of the time but then push away people. It's an interesting situation. I enjoy talking to people but feel like there's no one to talk to, no one who is interested.
Some may say that I'm being self-centered. I just need to stop looking inward and go help others. Probably a fair statement. Hard to do when you feel isolated, shut out, unwanted. Maybe I'm having a mid-life crisis and reverted to being a teenager with all their feelings of isolation.
I think the FRB is a reflection of my life and feelings- I used to have lots of real-life friends who were also on the FRB. There was lots of blog commenting. Now we've all moved apart, and the blogging and commenting has petered out. I don't know the last time I saw a FRB-er in real life, especially since Cody left FRB. 3 years, maybe, when I saw jtshad? Heck, even James and Allie just moved- I never saw them, but at least they were near. If I run or not, there's no one to know other than me. I'm not one for social media, but external encouragement can help.
In Utah, I had a lot of coworkers I was close to and we honestly talked. Here, only a couple, but the talking is very intermitent. Life can be lonely.
I'm not sure if I'll publish this or not. If I do, I'm not sure if I really want anyone to read it, or if anyone will. It's kind of a stream-of-consciousness post, I guess. I saw that Rob Murphy was having a rough day, though he didn't go into details. I think most of us struggle some or most of the time with all sorts of doubts/insecurities/trials, but we generally try to maintain a stoic, strong outer shell. I guess my shell cracked a bit today and a little of the truth leaked out.
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