Category Archives: Bipolar Working

CEH Test Scheduled!

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You may or may not know that I have been studying for my Certified Ethical Hacker certification.  I previously studied for and passed the Comptia Security + certification, despite some serious doubts on my part.  Well, now I have some serious SERIOUS doubts about my ability to get the CEH certification.  I am passing the practice tests, because I studied the answers to the questions I got wrong until I could get them right, but that doesn’t mean I have a true handle on the information.  I’ve studied just about as much as I can, though, and I just have to hope that the questions on the actual exam are similar enough to the practice exams that I’ll be able to muddle through and get a 70%.  It’s a four hour test – WHAT THE HELL?!  I can’t imagine what could take four hours.  The practice test takes about an hour.  It is 125 questions.  The fact that the REAL exam takes four hours makes me worried that I am wildly unready for it.  What the hell do you have to do?  Hack a system?  Fuckkkkkkkkk.  It is scheduled for Thursday, June 29th.  Right now I am feeling too overwhelmed to study but I have to overcome that.  Sometimes I have to literally force myself to study.  When I am overwhelmed I just want to sit around and obsess.  That doesn’t really get me anything good.

Ok, off to take some more practice tests!  The next one is from the study guide I read, it’ll be new questions so it’ll test my knowledge instead of my ability to remember the answers to questions.  Wish me luck!

Just to give some background on me, I have Bipolar Disorder, some say Bipolar II and some say Bipolar I.  I tend to be more depressed than manic, in fact the manic episodes are few and far between.  The depressed episodes are entirely too frequent.  I left my last full-time job about 3 1/2 years ago due to depression.  I actually went on FMLA to have ECT, and I never went back.  I was in a suicidal depression and I was hospitalized twice.  I had over forty ECT treatments.  I still don’t know if they helped.  I tend to think that the Ketamine they used to sedate me helped more than the ECT.  The reason I say this is because I had ECT in Florida too, and they didn’t use Ketamine for sedation, and I felt like shit after those treatments.  I was on Clozaril for about a year and a half and it turned me into a zombie.  I think what finally brought me out of being a depressed zombie was switching from Clozaril to Abilify.  I don’t remember why we did this, but I am totally grateful.  I have been able to function better than I have in a long time, moved back into my own apartment, started working part-time a little more than a year ago, and then got the opportunity to start classes for these IT Security certifications in January.  The fact that I can study and learn is something that I would not have even dreamed of a year ago.  So that brings us up to date.  I am taking my last certification test next week and I have started looking for an IT Security job.  That is my next hurdle.  Full-time jobs are kind of like Kryptonite to me and my mental health.  If I can find a part-time job, I will know there is a God 🙂

NEWS! SO MUCH NEWS!!!

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thank-you

Well I went from absolutely nothin’ going on last week to EVERYTHING going on this week!  I have to preface this by saying, I did one of those moronic new-agey affirmational asshole thingeys this weekend, I took a piece of art paper and my metallic gel pens and I wrote over and over in different colors across the page “Thank You” and I told myself “When you get your own apartment, you will hang this on the wall.”  Well, fuck me.

There are Thank-You-Gasms going on right now.  First, you may know that I applied for a $5000 grant from the local Workforce Center for some IT Training to get me out of godforsaken IT Support and into something more stimulating and might I say lucrative?  Yes, I might.  I walked into the Workforce Center last week and applied for the grant after two weeks of unanswered phone calls and emails.  I filled out the application right there on the spot.  The next day, I got another application, which I immediately filled out and returned. (I swear, sometimes I act like I have my shit together!).  Now, I was told that this grant approval process would take around a month.  So I hunkered down to wait for a response.  Well shoot me in the finger was I full of shock and awe to receive my determination yesterday:  I got approved for the funding!!!!  So excited I don’t know what to do with myself.

And now ladies and gentlemen we pivot onto Axis B, whereupon I continued my obsessive apartment-hunting on Craigslist, while simultaneously acknowledging its futility.  But then HELL-O!  Here’s a one bedroom apartment under a thousand dollars a month and it doesn’t even look like the Roach Motel!  It actually looks…kind of nice!  Trying not to overthink it, I emailed the landlord.  He replied with a Kiss of Death show time:  Monday at 5pm.  Now who in their right minds wants to drive to the next town at during rush hour?  But somehow my higher self prevailed and I accepted.

I saw the place and I have to admit I “got the feeling” which is exciting because I haven’t had intuitive certainty for a long time.  But I got the “this is it” feeling and the landlord kept sweetening the deal by dropping prices and offering flexible lease terms and I’m thinking, yeah, he has a hardon for me, this is good!  So me, even with my credit score of zero, literally, zero, no credit at all, decided to accept his TransUnion request and fill it out, and I sent him an email and said look, I have this much income and this much savings, and I have a $5k grant and will be studying, and I’d really like the apartment.  To my shock, (really I should have been spurting diarrhea), he responded and said yes, let’s go forward with the lease!  And THAT, my friends, is how you get an apartment with a zero credit score and sketchy income!  You get a MIRACLE!

So I went to see Dr. Drugs today and I told him “this is literally the best report I have ever brought to you” and goddamn it felt GOOD!!  Like, here I’ve been feeling so stuck and what the fuck else can I do besides IT Support, and wondering for literally years if I will ever have my own home again, and then ker-SLAM in two days everything is *poof* solved.  It’s a bit to drink in.  So yeah, I am grateful!  I am going to hang up my Thank You sign!  I’m going to keep being grateful!  Because the road from there to here has been a long one.  And I couldn’t see my way out of it.  But somehow the Universe has taken me by the hand and said here, I’ll help you get off your ass!  You’re welcome!  And so it is.

 

Work Worries

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Well I finished inputting the first five files for Dr. Flaky and asked her if I could come get more files.  She wanted to look at my work and get back to me and at long last, she did.  Unfortunately for me, she had nothing but criticism.  This is missing, that is missing, and I’m like, I can only enter data that is actually in the file!  Said much more nicely than that.  Nothing about how thorough I was, how consistent, how I scanned every single page of the damn file and uploaded it . . . Oh dear, work anxieties, like always, are coming out of the woodwork!  The wish for approval and positive affirmation are overwhelming.  And I’m not getting any of it!  Is this going to be the job for me?  Is she going to want to keep me?  Fear, fear, fear.  And after I invested (probably unwisely) FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS in my beautiful laser printer!!!  I haven’t even made that much back yet!!  I am not the happiest of campers today.  I don’t like having my insecurities brought out.  I like thinking that I’m the greatest worker that ever lived!  What if I’m not up to the job???  Well I guess that will just be more data to tell me the level of my disability.  Which scares me.  Part of me wants to think that I can go back to work at 100% functioning any time I want.  Maybe that’s just not the case.  Maybe I can’t.  I guess time will tell.  I will do my best.

It’s May 1st and in Boulder, Colorado it’s snowing, goddamnit!!  This is NOT how it’s supposed to be on May 1st!!!  It has snowed for the past three days, including today.  I am over it.  Looking forward, the temperatures are supposed to increase and then we’re supposed to have some rain.  I don’t care about rain, as long as we don’t have any more snow.  DAMMIT!  Nothing is going my way.  I hope to have a less pitiful post for you soon.  Hope you all are enjoying a stellar Sunday.  Peaches!

Do I Have A JOB?

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So I applied for this part-time job working for a psychiatrist (I know it sounds like a joke but it’s TRUE!), converting all of her paper records to electronic, about three weeks ago. I had an interview which I thought went really well, but I never heard back from her.  So, I totally gave up and said, fuck this work noise.  THEN this Monday I got a voicemail from her, saying she wanted to discuss the position with me and was I still interested in the job?  Well I have to admit I felt ambivalent about it because I had resigned myself to the idea that I was (am) unemployable and now I would have to change how I was thinking about myself.  But, thinking it would be stupid as fucking hell not to respond to her, I called her back on Monday afternoon and left her an enthusiastic message saying that Yes, I was interested in the position.  And then….nothing.  So I’m like, what the fuck?  Is it possible she didn’t get my voicemail?  Did she change her mind?  Surely she didn’t change her mind based on my awesome voicemail, did she?  I mean, what in the fuckin’ fuck?  So I am just sitting here, back at square one, wondering what I am doing, with myself, with my life, am I going to get Disability, am I going to go broke, am I going to get a job, can I do a job if I get one, oh life’s little questions that torture you when you have too much time on your hands and NO ANSWERS!  AND I’ve eaten eight dark chocolate-covered espresso beans and I’m waiting for the buzz to come.  No buzz.  I swear to GOD I’m going to switch to cocaine if the old faithful, caffeine, stops working for me!  But hell no I can’t afford cocaine.  And where would you get cocaine?  Plus, it’s so impure, I’d hate to put that in my body.  Anyhoo, this is one hell of a ramble.  I think I’ll go make a smoothie.  Hope your week is going better than mine, either way, let me know!  Peach out homies!