Rough and Bluff

Back from a month off work, and I am having severe problems with motivation and pointlessness. Approaching a major depression, really, and I should know, as I have been there before: a sense of imminent doom and being "found out", too long in one place, trouble sleeping and getting out of bed. I don't say that lightly. Six months without a manager or senior colleague to help out, no official steer about whether I should take charge of my small team; sarky comments from the others about my uncertain status; one or two meetings with the Asst Director to discuss replacements, which then seem to fade away as the weeks go by. "Would you like to be on the interview panel?" "Er well I might like the job myself?" "Oh. Perhaps not then" which hardly bodes well for getting the manager's job, or gives me confidence.
I'm floundering about wondering what the hell is the point, when I have two meetings in one day which point me in the right direction: a meet with an old colleague who gives me confidence in myself, and gives me several pointers to where inspiration might lie (eg plagiarising stuff that other people elsewhere have already put on the internet about the future of the third Local Transport Plan, which, theoretically I am now in charge of, in the absence of anyone else. Take the words XXXXXshire Council out and insert the name of my employer, for a start) and confidence in my young colleague who is already working on the same lines, with a new steer from me.
The second meeting involved the Highways Department, and apart from failing to find some information from the previous minutes, which can be easily rectified, I am suddenly charged with buying some land and spending several millions of your english pounds, and finding some funding for other bits of stuff, which I am now nominated as the person who gets the money: a task for which, if I am not eminently suited, at least I have done before and, who knows, may do again. After all, it just takes emails, nagging, and a sense of who to ask. Oh. And Bluffing. Did I mention that? All management is based on bluffing. As long as you can come up with the goods occasionally, all else is forgiven as long as you can bluff. It takes a keen, spiteful bastard to see through that and actually put you on the spot. These people are mercifully few on the ground. And, in western society, they are not actually allowed to kill you for bluffing, or even have you fired. Phew