Done yesterday

[mdlbear]

0330 Mo
  * up ~5:30; W=187.6; drugs, nose; phone; coffee; emergen-c
  * 7:20 Colleen - having breakfast
    ! calm; basically ok
  * the usual meetings at work
    ! very mudita about B's move from research to head of $newDivision
  * walk: ~40min
    one major slow-down-and-stop, but I don't know why.
  * work: got one to-do item done (scheduling a meeting on $protocols)
  * 5:30 group
  * call Callie - voice mail
  & make dinner - pan-fried chicken with rosemary and red wine
  & IM with N.
    ! perhaps I gave us both a little hope.  ?compassion.
  & Colleen, with Plink and songbooks
    ! loving, moderately hopeful, I hope comforting and encouraging
    Middle-Aged Bear, Middle-Sized Bear, Where the Heart Is, The River, 
    Eyes Like the Morning, Ferret Went A-Courtin'
  & LJ post; no sorting.  Blerg.
  & splat ~11:50

Umm... it's been a busy day. Tomorrow will be busier, but at least I can work from home and save an hour's worth of commute time. So posting yesterday's doings is necessarily coming a little late. OK, a lot late.

I was basically OK, maybe a little down, most of the day, but got rather little done. Quite a lot of singing for Colleen; singing always helps. One episode of coasting slowly to a stop during my walk; I have no idea what caused that.

Lots of mudita around a co-worker's move from research to rather high management (head of a new division). Berna is blonde and bubbly, with a high soprano voice, a Turkish accent, a PhD in computer science, and a string of publications and patents that's simply amazing.

On IM with pocketnaomi, I think I managed to give us both a little more hope. I, um... hope I did, anyway. Hope is elusive. Like cope, it's been in rather short supply recently.

Sang for Colleen.

Comments

ahhhh

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Thank you, not just for the picture of your day but for a new word, which is a rather rare pleasure for me: mudita.

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

Decades ago, when I wasn't very aware of depression, I knew that if I didn't walk a lot (I suspect other exercise would have worked, but walking was what I did) I would feel bad, and that another thing that worked for me was singing. I didn't know many songs by other people, and hadn't written many of my own, so I made up semi-nonsensical songs as I went along, or sang while making up words in an unknown language as I went along (singing in tongues, as it were). That usually cheered me up enormously. Later I discovered the joys of singing for other people, which is, for me, a very different thing, and includes singing while alone if the purpose is later to sing to others. Both sorts of singing cheer me up, but they seem to me to have that underlying and hard to describe difference.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Singing does all sorts of good things. For one thing, it forcibly changes your breathing pattern, which can do quite a bit towards altering your consciousness. Then you've got the tones reverberating inside your head. Add in the meaning of the lyrics (if any), plus the emotional feedback from listeners (if any), and it's a wonder they haven't criminalized the powerful "drug" of singing.

Re: ahhhh

[mdlbear]

Grins happily. Or is that mudita-ly?

[mdlbear]

If I remember correctly, I started walking and making up songs somewhere around age 5. Yeah, both are good.

[mdlbear]

Some religions do ban it, I believe. Also dancing, which is also a powerful drug.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

"Why don't Methodists have sex standing up?"
"They're afraid somebody will think they're dancing!"

[mdlbear]

:) :)