Maps and Mirrors

I had the disconcerting experience of watching a woman on the news say, “I don’t want those people in my neighborhood” and realizing that I was one of those people she was talking about.

The subject was housing for the mentally ill who had become homeless. I have thankfully never been homeless, but my chronic depression has meant that at times, even with treatment, it is difficult to care for myself. The luck of circumstance and the willingness and ability of my family to help at times may be the only things that have allowed me to say there but for the grace of God go I. One day I may run out of luck.

I realize that the invisibility of my condition means I don’t have to face anywhere near the hurdles so many other people do. I realize that I am privileged in many ways. But as I said, it was disconcerting.

(Also, I lived in that woman’s neighborhood for about ten years. I was a perfectly decent neighbor.)

My bus driver forgot what route she was driving. It's going to be an AWESOME day.

I have my MacBook back. That's the good news. They forgot to replace the battery so I got to wait for a tech to do that for me at the store since I'd paid for the comprehensive service. Apparently this comprehensive service also meant that they had to reformat my hard drive. Just a reminder: the problem was with my screen. But anyway, if I wasn't exactly warned about this I was asked at least three times if I backed up. I do back up, I use Time Machine which is fairly easy. But apparently doing a COMPLETE restore after they've formatted my hard drive is going to be a little more challenging. I suspect the first problem is that I didn't rename my hard drive again first. All I know now is that I went through the restore and according to the memory left on my laptop the data is all there ... somewhere, but I can't find it. It certainly didn't do an actual mirror restore so my email and the like isn't restored. I have a sickening feeling I may end up doing a lot of this by hand. If I can find where the data is on my computer. I'd like to cry now please.

If you could send me and my computer a good thought I'd really appreciate it.

I've been thinking about depression a lot lately. OK, I'm pretty much thinking about it all the time in the way anyone with a chronic condition would, but recently I've been thinking about things I feel like writing down. Surely one of the joys of medication changes, whee!

A little while ago I saw someone mentioning the links between depression and creativity again. This crops up pretty frequently with some people insisting their creativity has been greatly enhanced by their depression and some people insisting that depression sucks their creative potential dry.

To me this illustrates what I think is one of the biggest misconceptions about depression, even shared by some of the people who suffer from it: that depression is just one thing, that it is only a single set of symptoms and that everyone who suffers from depression suffers in the same way. That's just not accurate.

Depression can mean periods of crippling sadness, but it can also result in uncontrollable strong emotions of a wide variety, or the inability to feel any strong emotions. It can affect the same person differently at different times. It can affect people differently depending on whether or not they suffer chronic depression, how severe their depression is, at what point in there life they first experience it, or a variety of other factors.

Even understanding the basics of this I still need to reassess from time to time. When my doctor would ask about my energy levels I would tell her they were fine, but the truth was I was only thinking in terms of physical energy. What I was having difficulty identifying was that I was suffering from a kind of mental fatigue that among other things made it hard for me to make choices, to put myself in situations that would involve interacting with other people, or even at times to read a book. Even after I had a suspicion of what was going on I kept forgetting to talk to my doctor about it, which began to make me feel like I was in a science fiction story (or an episode of House) where I was possessed by some parasite that would do whatever it took to keep from being dislodged. It also might have been related to my deep-seated problems with asking for help that requires medication, or my tendency to think of these kinds of symptoms as shameful personal faults, but I think it mostly pointed to one of the really frustrating aspects of depression, that it can be so difficult to identify the precise nature of your problem while you are still experiencing it.

Thankfully I was able to be open enough with my doctor about how much trouble I was in that she was able to point out to me that I was in trouble. As I mentioned earlier, this has involved a change in medication that at the moment seems to be very helpful. But I do wonder how long that will last, and how long it will be next time before I'm able to say that I need more help.

Customer service rage: you promise same day installation for new cable TV customers but you can't get someone out the same day to to fix my home phone? Oh yes, and I live in a security building where the intercom system works through my home phone line, which is going to make it so much fun when the technician finally shows up. You [censored], for a lot of people their home landline is still their primary contact point, and thanks to the way your new [censored] digital lines work when people call it doesn't give them an out-of-service signal, it just rings and rings and rings. The [censored] modem goes out all the time, if not from the power cord falling out than for no good reason whatsoever. I HATE YOU. I still hate your competition more, but you are becoming their competition in a whole new way.

I know I'm not really allowed to complain about the heat considering what other people are dealing with but I don't have air conditioning so it's in the low eighties in my apartment. I'm a cold weather girl so that's really uncomfortable for me. Seriously though, the rest of you, please do what you can to stay cool and hydrated.




There is so much suck going on in the world right now it makes me ache through and through.

I CAN HAZ HOT WATER!

I know I should be happy I still have a job, but it's hard sometimes. I got somewhere around three hours of sleep last night because I couldn't stop stressing. People don't understand what they're now being asked to review and they're making decisions based on those misunderstandings and apparently I'm being annoying when I'd like it to see about getting that fixed. Hi, please stop treating an invoice and a late notice like they're the same thing. No, wait, please let me ASK them to stop treating an invoice and a late notice like they're the same thing. WHY AM I THE PROBLEM? *cries*

Even minor accidents on treadmills are not good. At least the damage is limited to my legs. And this was yesterday when I was reasonably alert; as you can imagine I decided to skip the gym today.

Some of you are going through some really tough times. You're in my thoughts. I hope things ease up soon.

Highly annoyed by Google this week. Yes, I see your shiny new live search now, but the last couple of days made me want to use Yahoo.

Um, I know there was something else I was going to mention, but see above re sleep deprivation.

Love?

I opened my drapes to snow again this morning, with a prediction of 2 to 5 inches in town and a winter weather advisory for the higher elevations.

Will someone please get Mother Nature home and sober her up?

I made the most interesting noise this morning when I opened my drapes and saw snow on the ground.

So, long story short my vacation plans for 2009 are pretty much dead. I was thinking about my next possible vacation and to be honest I've realized that I'm the type of person that probably would enjoy a cruise. I was amused by recent TV commercials for Carnival so I went to their website first. If you click on 'Destinations' you get a world map with a few icons, usually animals or landmarks, for various destinations. For Alaska there was a small picture
of
a
PENGUIN.

Congratulations Carnival, you may have set a speed record for insulting my intelligence and squashing any chance of getting my business.