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I did leave work early yesterday, about 2 pm, after continued engagement and triage, none of which addressed the Important things i needed to do, but were both Critical and Urgent. I do so try to learn give the urgent yet non-critical the minimal attention it deserves, but i am not so good at that. These tasks though were critical, so i engaged with intensity (trying not to resent the system that put such planning to the last minute so that response was urgent), and i was drained by early afternoon.
I spent some time with Christine talking about our states of being. I remain unclear whether i should find a psychiatrist and seek pharmaceutical help again. The psychotropic assistance when i was first diagnosed and treated for depression was critical: it cleared enough of the experience of depression away that i could work on dismantling some of the things in my life that fed into the depression. I walked away from the drugs believing that i could choose a lifestyle that would reduce external causes of depression, and i could work through the cognitive issues.
It's certainly not the case i could escape *any* external cause, but i had the tools to work through them, and the experience to know when to get more training and therapy. So i worked through Christine's transition and the family turmoil, then the years of work stresses as the Minnow tried to survive, and then the merger with the Whale. Now i've had several years of work normalcy, i've not been at the center of family drama, i've not been at the center of Meeting drama. I should be able to shake the mental struggles now, right? I have the tools, i made it through the training, the trials, i've practiced. When does it cease to be a challenge to pick socks up off the floor?
It's still hard. My experience with somatic therapy made me far more aware of my body, of my physical health, and how it interacts with my mental health. My physical health is probably no worse than it was during the year when i was on call 24x7 and the database server couldn't stay up, and hardware was failing, and we were too busy sticking our fingers in the leaking dike to figure out what was needed to fix the the problem (although we lacked the financial resources for some of the obvious solutions, having bet the farm on Enterprise hardware support being sufficient to save on staffing).
I keep tracking upward trends, keep showing myself the improvement, and then i look up at the staircase and feel i've moved up over these stairs before: the Escher loop seems impossible to surmount.
So maybe it's time to face the meds again (and the side effects). Some residual value assigned to illusory independence stays with me from my upbringing, and makes this a little harder than a simple cost-benefit analysis. I've wrestled with the "Do It Myself" value for a long time: it's a hard one to completely unpack.
--==∞==--
Meanwhile, Edward's had an overnight at the vet. Christine took him in to have a scabby rash examined, one near where he is slowly growing hair back from the ringworm experience. She returned home without Edward: fleas, the vet said, so he was going to get dipped. Later though, there was another call from the vet: actually, there was an abscessed cat bite back where the scabby rash was. He stayed overnight for care and drainage of the wound.
We almost made it to six months with no vet bills.
--==∞==--
We went to see Ridley Scott's Robin Hood last night, finally using some reward "free" tickets. I was taken by a trailer shot of Cate Blanchette putting on a helmet. The film was wonderfully rich and complicated, the story unexpected, the politics curious in the age of Tea Parties. Anti-spoiler: there's no scene of Cate putting on the helmet. I await the director's cut because the absence of that scene points to a WHOLE BLOODY STORY LINE BEING CUT. On the other hand, i was surprised by how late it was when we left the theater, so perhaps the director's cut will be a little too long for one sitting. I am tempted to sum up the film as "Summersby 1215" and, despite some juggling with the time line, i think this telling grounds the movie in history more compellingly than the usual telling of Robin Hood as a Christian morality tale of care for the poor in the face of abusive power while waiting for the Savior to arrive.
I spent some time with Christine talking about our states of being. I remain unclear whether i should find a psychiatrist and seek pharmaceutical help again. The psychotropic assistance when i was first diagnosed and treated for depression was critical: it cleared enough of the experience of depression away that i could work on dismantling some of the things in my life that fed into the depression. I walked away from the drugs believing that i could choose a lifestyle that would reduce external causes of depression, and i could work through the cognitive issues.
It's certainly not the case i could escape *any* external cause, but i had the tools to work through them, and the experience to know when to get more training and therapy. So i worked through Christine's transition and the family turmoil, then the years of work stresses as the Minnow tried to survive, and then the merger with the Whale. Now i've had several years of work normalcy, i've not been at the center of family drama, i've not been at the center of Meeting drama. I should be able to shake the mental struggles now, right? I have the tools, i made it through the training, the trials, i've practiced. When does it cease to be a challenge to pick socks up off the floor?
It's still hard. My experience with somatic therapy made me far more aware of my body, of my physical health, and how it interacts with my mental health. My physical health is probably no worse than it was during the year when i was on call 24x7 and the database server couldn't stay up, and hardware was failing, and we were too busy sticking our fingers in the leaking dike to figure out what was needed to fix the the problem (although we lacked the financial resources for some of the obvious solutions, having bet the farm on Enterprise hardware support being sufficient to save on staffing).
I keep tracking upward trends, keep showing myself the improvement, and then i look up at the staircase and feel i've moved up over these stairs before: the Escher loop seems impossible to surmount.
So maybe it's time to face the meds again (and the side effects). Some residual value assigned to illusory independence stays with me from my upbringing, and makes this a little harder than a simple cost-benefit analysis. I've wrestled with the "Do It Myself" value for a long time: it's a hard one to completely unpack.
--==∞==--
Meanwhile, Edward's had an overnight at the vet. Christine took him in to have a scabby rash examined, one near where he is slowly growing hair back from the ringworm experience. She returned home without Edward: fleas, the vet said, so he was going to get dipped. Later though, there was another call from the vet: actually, there was an abscessed cat bite back where the scabby rash was. He stayed overnight for care and drainage of the wound.
We almost made it to six months with no vet bills.
--==∞==--
We went to see Ridley Scott's Robin Hood last night, finally using some reward "free" tickets. I was taken by a trailer shot of Cate Blanchette putting on a helmet. The film was wonderfully rich and complicated, the story unexpected, the politics curious in the age of Tea Parties. Anti-spoiler: there's no scene of Cate putting on the helmet. I await the director's cut because the absence of that scene points to a WHOLE BLOODY STORY LINE BEING CUT. On the other hand, i was surprised by how late it was when we left the theater, so perhaps the director's cut will be a little too long for one sitting. I am tempted to sum up the film as "Summersby 1215" and, despite some juggling with the time line, i think this telling grounds the movie in history more compellingly than the usual telling of Robin Hood as a Christian morality tale of care for the poor in the face of abusive power while waiting for the Savior to arrive.
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