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I have been in a really bad slump lately. Worse than it's been in a really long time. And you know, I can blame it on my meds not working properly anymore, and I'm sure that's part of it, because there's no reason I should be feeling quite this bad with the things I'm dealing with lately.

But a lot of it is also just feeling completely out of control in my life. There are about a thousand things that are beyond my control, but which affect my life profoundly. I don't feel like getting into it all here in my blog, but suffice it to say that about the only thing I have control over right now is what music I listen to in the mornings. That's it.

And so I feel constant frustration. I feel anger. I feel helplessness. And all of those feelings compound and multiply until I'm being sucked into a bottomless pit of despair. Now, it's not like anybody is dying, or anything majorly depressing like that. It's a lot of little things and medium-sized things, and for a person with a normal brain, my current life situation would cause stress and frustration, maybe a few cranky days. But with my brain and its faulty wiring, I end up in a deep depression. Heaven help me if something catastrophic *actually* happened to me. I think my head might literally implode.

So I guess I'm going to try to take control of the little things I can control. I can control my immediate environment by continuing to organize and purge, maybe even decorate. I can do the yard work that I've been putting off. I can clean my car. I can keep my eyebrows plucked. And I can try to let go of the things that I can't control, and try to be more flexible.

Maybe it won't help. But it probably won't hurt.

I can't.

I've been really struggling for the past couple of days. I can do the things that I absolutely have to do, like getting the kids from school and going to work, but if it doesn't have to be done, I can't bring myself to do it. It takes all my energy to do those few things that must be done and I don't have any left for the other stuff.

And the funny thing is that I'm more debilitated by this downswing than I used to be before I was getting treatment for my depression. I guess it's because I was always living in some state of depression before, so I was used to it, and if I let it keep me from living life when I felt bad I would literally never get out of bed. So I pushed through it. Now, I'm not used to it. I know what it's like to not live under the cloud, and I know what it's like to have energy and motivation, and when those things are gone I don't know how to function.

I'm not sure this is progress.

New year, old me

Once upon a time I loved to make New Year's Resolutions. I would make like 20 of those suckers. And by January 3, I would have failed, forgotten, or abandoned all of them. The guilt would stick with me through March, and then I would spend the rest of the year doing what I'd always done.

So for the past several years I haven't made any resolutions, and it's wonderful. Because really, what makes January 1 any different from April 4, or September 15? Not much. It's just an arbitrary boundary between two years. I still make goals for myself, but I don't wait for the new year to make them.

Are there things I would like to accomplish this year? Yes. I would like to get active, and actually finish the C25K program. I've been wanting to do that since last spring, and I keep starting and stopping, but not giving up entirely. I would like to change the way I eat so that I can feel better, and find the foods that are giving me issues. One of those is cheese. I love cheese, but it hates me, so I'm not going to eat it anymore. And I would like to get better about keeping up with my life. Things are getting busier around here, and my house and relationships are suffering a bit. I need to figure out a way to balance and manage my time better, and I'm already taking steps toward that goal.

Some of these things I can start right away. Some of them I can't, at least not without major inconvenience, and we all know I'm not a fan of inconvenient things. Like the running. I'm not running in the snow. Just not doing it. So that one needs to wait, unless I can figure out how to work going to the gym into my schedule. 

Um... I forgot what my point was. So I'll just finish my coffee.