16 September 2003 | 10:04 a.m.,

read at your peril - i'm depressed!

I seem to be stuck in a permanent funk these days. I just don't really know how to shake it off.

I keep telling myself that I will be all smiley and giggly & that in itself will make me feel better. That I'll go back to being that person that Tam-the-engineer calls the giggler. Without it feeling like I have to make this monumental effort to appear like I'm not a miserable cow. Some days though if I'm really tired I just don't have the energy to keep up a pretence of being cheery.

The root problems are things that aren't going to go away unless I really make an effort to change things in my life. But in a lot of ways I am too comfortable with the status quo I've been in for the last 5 years to really do anything about it. The things I would be giving up that I don't think I would get back, the people I would no doubt lose from my life. It scares me so I just continue to do nothing and hope that one day soon I will suddenly snap out of it and be "little miss happy". That things will work out if I just hang in there and don't rock the boat.

I guess I have this feeling that, ok things aren't perfect NOW but if I makes these changed its only going to get worse. The good things in my life right now won't be in it anymore and part of me doesn't see me having that again. I don't have confidence enough in my own abilities to start again. To make new friends, have guys attracted to me, to be good at a new job, live on my own.. I just see this even more depressing future where everything is 10 times worse but my mum is happy because I'm earning more money.

I'm conflicted between knowing what I SHOULD be doing about it all and being too scared of winding up really unhappy.

Which is stupid.

I had read the email I get every week from Creative Journalling with their prompts. I always read it but invariably forget to use any of them but the one for saturday was something about listing 10 things you like about yourself. I thought this might bea good exercise for me, to focus on my good points for once since I'm always so down on myself usually. But I thought about it a bit on Sunday and only came up with two things - and one of those was my fingernails. How pathetic IS that?

Yesterday I was so tired and zombie like that it took 3 yeastvite [in as many hours] and a bottle of irn bru to make me feel awake. I was practically dragging myself around the packing hall getting packets off the lines and could have done with some matches for my eyes.

I did eventually wake up but then ended up with a splitting headache and due to all the caffeine I'd consumed was unable to take any painkillers for it. Blah.

And more blah. Mad S didn't get the sack [meaning Ali G likely won't either after his weekend off] and just got yet another final final final final warning and if he is off again he is to get the boot. But didn't they say that last time? Oh RIGHT! You don't have enough staff to cover if you sack two people in a week. That explains that then. But so much for me getting the car to myself and not having to drive through town anymore! And I won't be able to escape the dodgy "mad S really fancies you/he's your destiny" comments for a while yet.

i wonder if there is any chocolate in the house, I could do with the serotonins...