Medicated depression, day #96
At the office early, like half hour before 08 early.
Slept exceptionally bad, fell asleep on the recliner and woke up at 04 first time, fell asleep and woke up again at 06 .. three cups of coffee this far, several more needed.
Today there is a booking for this "co-worker chat" that our manager holds with each colleague, to check that we have everything we need to do as good job as possible, physically and mentally .. sort of. For me that is the mentally-part that matters, as diagnosed with depression and suffering from its effects, also is feedback to the company, filtered through manager.
They need to figure out how much I'm gonna be available, if at all, how extensive is a sick leave going to be, length and percentage, one, three, five or nine months and at capacity 20%, 50% or 80% .. or any arbitrary number. I haven't talked to my doctor yet, I thought I was about to meet him yesterday but I had misread "29th" as "24th" .. so, on Monday I'll gonna meet doctor and listen to their suggestion.
A colleague burnt out last spring (was allocated 100% across 8 different projects for some reason, was more like 150%), spent whole summer and a few months after that on reduced capacity and partial sick leave, it was only last week they were back at full capacity, 8-9 months later.
Later: Was booked for a meeting with my manager, but were contacted by my managers manager, the KC .. who said that my manager were at the ER and that she is to offload him a bit, asked it we could take that meeting at 10 and in a more private setting like a small phone booth like room.
I get these bad vibes from this, such as this is going to be the meeting where I get to know that I got the first verbal warning .. about termination.
This is my biggest fear, getting terminated, fired, let go, separated from my position, given the pink slip .. just by thinking about this turns my stomach into a knot .. and I feel nauseous and jittery.
Later: Huge onset of stress, feeling sick. Physically uncomfortable. I probably shouldn't worry, but there is something about this I can't shake off, still worried.
Later: Some 10 minutes left to the meeting and I'm feeling sick to my stomach, like I have to puke, really stressed.
Do I need to flag myself as "open to work" this afternoon? Time will tell.
It should not be anything like that but I can help getting wound up because of this, zero explanation, not knowing what is going on.
Later: Just had a meeting with the KC, she was asking about how I felt, I told her details and what was going on with my depression, also told her about my fears of her and other managers from the head office showing up was a huge onset of stress for me but that I also knew this was an irrelevant reaction and feelings, this "getting fired" fear.
KC said that we should form a plan after my doctors appointment on Monday, to make a plan forward, how to bring me back to being a productive employee basically, or that was what she meant, I see that as a good and caring thought but I also understand this from a purely logical view. KC touched on the subject of me "being competent for the tasks at hand", meaning if I'm equipped with the correct knowledge for what I'm working with, which was also touched upon during the whole discussion..
I recounted that I've been a consultant for more than 10 years, have had assignments and working independently, probing and exploring my mandates and working on behalf of the customer as a partner towards other vendors, a much appreciated service for the customer as I acted as one of them while on two parallel assignments for the same customer in two different capacities, this was questioned .. if I knew what the consultancy role was all about. Sure. I know what it entails.
KC booked a meeting shortly after the doctors appointment on Monday, to get a quick update of the current status, if I'm off on sick leave full time, 100% or what kind of percentage if part time. KC and employer appears to have me be out and off for a while, to heal, get well and come back.
Later: talked to colleague about the situation, he agreed and said that the most important assets the company and employers have are the employees and their knowledge ..
Later: The KC emailed my manager and me, about the general plan forward and what we agreed upon in the meeting. I also got to know who is replacing me, two guys I've been working with before on another assignment and the PL is informed as well, I'll be contacted for handover and on-boarding of these guys.
I brought up the idea of participating at a conference about a month into the future with the topic of how to refactor applications where SDK's have reached EOS or EOL, upgrade without an upgrade path, for a 15 minute flash session. Should be doable and is what I should focus on from now onwards, until I have met doctor and know for certain how the future looks like. To submit against the RFP, which I do not know when it closes. So it got decided that I'd work on this.
Later: I dug up my notes from the refactoring projects, may need to reiterate over the code and compare certain passages which has been reworked to find patterns and perhaps lift those as examples. I have 4 or 5 projects to lift code snippets from, where I have cut out old SDKs and adapted old code to new SDKs where interfaces and functions are very much different from the legacy code, different amounts of "glue-code" had to be added to achieve same functionality.