Feeling really down. Thinking it might be the weather: cold, cloudy, rainy. This after a week of sunshine and grossly humid heat.

Also might be that I've finally finished the layout for The Way of the Magus: On Lotus Magic, a d20 product for 3E, and NOW I'm second-guessing the heck out of myself. Are the DCs right? Are the rules clear? Do they work? Am I going to be mocked mercilessly for it or receive poor reviews? (Nah, I'll probably be completely ignored, as usual.)

I thought I'd managed to finally kick the depression I'd been feeling since the start of the month, but it's starting to come back. I'm thinking possibly due to the weather: it's been raining for the last three days. Very little sunshine.

I think the other part is that the money just didn't stretch this month. Our utility bill was so much I couldn't afford the whole thing, and I'm hoping that isn't going to be the case over the rest of the summer. If it is, I'm going to have to think about canceling some amenities -- satellite, phone, cell phone, internet...er, ok, that's ALL the amenities -- just to keep up with it.

I've been taking time out to try and just sit and relax and be in the moment, just de-stress and put a crimp on the moods and anxiety. It's sort-of working. Mainly, I go sit on the front porch in the most comfortable chair in the house and just watch the trees and the wind:



The papasan! We've had the frame for around five years and not had a cushion for it. Finally picked one up a while back and, oh man, so comfy. I napped in it one afternoon when it was warm and the kids were quiet for once.

Also been trying to keep busy. Finished or put finishing touches on two more of the noir pieces, and started another that I'm pretty happy with. Took me forever to decide on the layout for the piece, though. Two left after this.

So Judd has this cool city-building deal he started, and I immediately jumped on it and started typing. About halfway through my entry the interesting work I'd done was eaten (I did something stupid...pushed a button too quickly, and POOF), so I quit, annoyed. Tried again earlier today, typed about eight-hundred words and gave up, then ended up moping around the house depressed the rest of the day.

I gave up because it looks to me as though other people's cities were far more interesting than what I was doing anyways, and reading it over it just wasn't very well written. I'd based it on a city and setting that I use in most of my D&D material, and what I'd written for it four and five years ago was so much more evocative and beautiful than what I was putting together now.

That really depressed me and I started wondering if I'd lost whatever I used to have, if I ever had anything (maybe I became worse than bad).

I really hate feeling this way.

PS: it does not help that I've been feeling down almost constantly since at least the 4th, which has absolutely killed my creativity. Before I couldn't get the energy up to do anything creative, and then I finally do it, and it's trash. Not a good mood booster.

The last two days have been hell. I'm not sure if this is the meds for the colon, still being sick, or my depression cycling in. I suspect a combination.

I've been run-down, feeling low, haven't wanted to do anything, everything I think about doing seems pointless and horrid, even sleeping, but I still slept most of the day today. It didn't make me feel any better or more energized.

I could draw, read a book or comic, watch a movie, work on my Japanese, play a video game, write, browse the internet...and I don't want to do any of it. Nothing. Listless. Lethargic. Pointless.

I really hope this stops soon. And I hope tomorrow is better. Going to try to play V:tES.

This isn't quite the post I meant to make. Only about half of it, as I don't feel up to making the whole post right now.

In case you haven't noticed, I've been rather aggressive and angry lately. Very agitated. I'm a bit embarrassed about it, actually, as I noticed in a few places afterwards what a dink I sounded like, how dismissive I was and how unreasonable the attitude I displayed in a number of my responses.

Note that I'm not retracting any points I made, I stand by what I stand by, but I am retracting the way in which I stood by some of those points and the attitude I displayed in them.

A good chunk of that comes from one of the medicines I'm taking, which as typical for me, is creating precisely the opposite side-effect as usual and making me agitated (normally, it depresses you). At least it is otherwise doing exactly what it is supposed to do, unlike most medicines do with me. Yay, unique metabolism!

( ...driving people crazy... )

I'm going through a really painful time in my life right now, and I can't really talk about it here. It would just be too far beyond protocol to discuss in a journal with internet acquaintances who aren't really here to read about this kind of thing.

I doubt that most of you would care, by which I do not mean any of you are incompassionate or uncaring, but rather that, socially, given the structure and nature of our relationships, any of you could really, truly comment regarding it at all. Instead, it would just create akwardness, like telling your co-workers that your sister is dying of cancer when they ask how you're doing. Sure, you get an "Oh, that's terrible. I'm sorry," and an akward pat on the shoulder, but dealing with such things isn't part of the relationship.

( Read more... )

I had a rough night at work last night, extremely tired and couldn't wait for the night to end so I could crawl into bed, had some other difficulties as well, and I started feeling the way I do when I notice a bout of depression is starting to set in. I figured, at the time, it was just the fact that I was incredibly tired, because I hadn't had a decent night's sleep in days.

So, after I finished my weekly 12-hour shift at 6am and helped get the kids out the door for school, I spent a few minutes realizing I couldn't fall asleep. So I took a shower and finished up the last few chapters of "Soliders Live" by Glen Cook. Then I crashed and spent most of the day sleeping. I only woke up because Jen needed help with the kids while she was making dinner, and then I found I was dead tired and a friggin' bear to deal with (I thought) because of it.

Kids were put to bed early and I grabbed a blanket and slept on the couch for another three-to-four hours. I could have slept more, but it was enough that I was no longer feeling tired, and I had some typically vivid and bizarre dreams.

( Read more... )

Overall, a fairly typical dream for me, other than the one particularly odd element I mentioned. It could have been fighting vampires and mutants in a post-apocalyptic city and it would have been a typical as well, since not all my dreams are quite that hauntedly gothic in nature.

That dream, and that woman, has been hanging inside my head all night. Feels good to get it out, because when I started this post, I was going to write about how depressed I was feeling, that it obviously had not risen just from tiredness, that it was another bout of depression setting in.

I can still feel that, too, in the back of my mind, so I've staved it off for the moment. I have almost a day off today, since I worked midnights again and with an evening shift tomorrow, so hopefully I will be able to recharge and beat this before I come back to work on Friday night. I won't have to sit here all night feeling useless, crushed and apathetic.