Boing!

Well; that was easier than I expected!

I'd been being pestered by my GP to come in for a review of the medication I take. When I made the appointment, it occurred to me to ask about getting a certificate signing me off work for my mental health. When I explained what has been happening to me and how I am reacting to it the doctor gave me a certificate for two weeks re "Work-related stress and anxiety" and I IMMEDIATELY felt better.

Stress and anxiety is accurate. I am challenged regularly at work but never allowed to respond or retaliate with all the tools and weapons in my defensive arsenal. It is like being sent into an arena where I incur severe penalties if I raise my hands in defense. It is my place to be insulted and blamed amongst people who pretend they are infallible. Remember that I was pretty much a 'golden boy' until I uncovered the cock-up behind my job being created in the first place. Since then I have been sidelined and dismissed as a simple functionary and my protestations have been listened to politely and ignored. I am expected to accept being mushroomed with grace and be pleased I am receiving a piddling wage!

I can't help but feel some delight at imagining the face of my boss when she (the CEO of a mental health charity with BIG claims for a "person-centred approach") reads the reason I am on sick leave. This is the woman who, at an recent "Catch up meeting" complained that I thought "Its all about you"! [and if you'd seen the face on it at the time!!! -Talk about the mask slipping] I wonder if I had cried "Depression" in dealings with others in authority but insufficient ability for whom I have worked in the past. I am fascinated by the developments introduced by my current (for the time being) boss and experience/ spidey-sense alerts me to fundamental problems in the company's future not least in the secrecy of her regimen and assumption that few of her minions have the intelligence to understand her machinations. That is so DUMB! She has created a toxic environment of people guessing and filling in blanks, there is a "them and us" vibe surrounding Head Office staff who have little understanding or inclination to know what the actual delivery part of the job is. I have been around long enough to recognise the seeds of the company's eventual collapse.

Had I accepted the diktats of dickhead directors in the past, I might be higher up the greasy pole than I am to date. But why employ someone with ideas and clearly stated passions when what you really want is a 'yes man' with a brown face? I am increasingly terrified of finding another job and ending up in the same situation... Is it me? -Much of my depression centres on that question: 

London Lesbian and Gay Centre
The Actors Centre
Black Theatre Forum
Talawa Theatre Company
Urban Forum
Intercultural Arts
Phoenix Theatre, Blyth

-all organisations I've served until hitting the buffers with dickhead directors. I look at that list and can claim vindication with hindsight that I was right in each instance but I come across as trouble-making and hard to handle. "who, Me?"

In some ways I 'blame' my first boss: Jenny Harris who was artistic director of the Combination Ltd at the Albany Empire in Deptford when I went there in 1984. Her management style wasn't to everyone's taste, but I thrived on it: I'd have one three hour meeting with her every three or so months and so much came out of those meetings I had rarely completed activities derived from the last one when the next came around. She was the sort of manager who presented ideas, outlined parameters and restrictions, expected you to build on those initial inputs, offered advice and sign-posted you to resources and then expected you to deliver. It was said of Edmund Keane that "Watching him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightening." I often felt that was Jenny's management style and it really worked for me. Sadly NONE of my subsequent bosses or Boards of directors have come anywhere close. Aversion to risk or simply being on a board for their personal profiles have been some of the worst failings. By comparison, the people I currently serve would probably just piss themselves and hide under their beds if they experienced the creative lightening Jenny could conjur.

[Jenny died in 2014. ]