done yesterday

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I didn't notice the zombies

I didn't notice the zombies, but they appear to have snuck in and eaten my brain anyway. Or maybe it was little fuzzy telepaths.

I looked up my recent mood shift: I appear to have been mostly happy between September 24th and October 17th. For some reason it seems like much longer ago.

Things still aren't getting done -- realized this morning that I hadn't even put "splitting up concert recordings from Conflikt" on my to.do list. It really ought to get done before the next practice session, which is next weekend! That and splitting the last practice session, which was a month ago. And OVFF. And...

I've had some breakfast. I'll try going out for a walk soon, if it hasn't started raining. I don't think that will help get stuff done, but it might help a little with my mood. Maybe.

I've been awake since about 5am. Some good snuggle, but Colleen's back asleep now. Feeling lonely and discouraged and bored and restless. Yeah, I know -- all symptoms of depression. The happy pills can kick in any damned time now. And cold; I can fix that. Except I want to go out for a walk. Where it's even colder.

A walk in the morning / on still being blind

I decided to go out walking early, in part because I didn't trust the weather to stay clear until after noon, and in part because I thought it might warm me up a little. Set a good, brisk pace but had to drop it down to an amble after half an hour when my shins started to tighten up. Last thing I need is shin splints; I'll probably regret it anyway.

There were quite a few walkers and joggers out by the Rose Garden; one can't talk to them, of course. Nobody even said hello, and most of them had looks ranging from something like boredom to outright agony. A couple might have been hopped up on endorphins; they looked a bit glazed over. I wonder what I look like.

I was thinking about a scrap of conversation from a day or two ago about the difference between New Yorkers and Californians -- I don't recall anything about the wording, but it involved the fact that NY has 11M people, and New Yorkers have to keep strangers at a distance or they'd be overwhelmed. OK, I grew up 50 miles from NYC, and went to school in the Midwest as well as California. I should know this.

I realized that, once again, I never noticed the difference. I still can't see it, and it seems as though the difficulty I'm having recalling the words of that conversation is that I didn't really understand them at the time. It seems as though my own shyness, anxiety, depression, and emotional blindness are enough to completely swamp any perception of the other person's (I don't have the right word here, either: style? distance preference?). I can get closer to some people than to others, it seems, but I don't have a sense of how that relates to anything else at all about them. I can't tell how close they want to get, or how close they get to other people.

It seems that there's a long list of things I just can't seem to understand; can't seem to see. This thing about closeness, whatever it's called. Joy. Love. Flirting. Implied messages. Maybe some of the books I ordered this morning will help a little. Maybe not. I'm not feeling very hopeful right now, just overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem.

Yeah, I'm depressed. I'm working on that, though with no results so far. But the decades of depression seem to have let some essential sense or perceptual ability atrophy or fail to develop altogether. I don't know whether I'll ever get it back, and that hurts even more than the depression does, sometimes.

Writing about it doesn't seem to have helped much this time. It clarified the problem, but that clarity is painful and seems to get me no closer to a solution.

Flashback

Doing the dishes is usually rather calming for me, and gives me a sense of mild accomplishment.

Flashing vividly back to the day I wrote Rainbow's Edge is not helping much.

I'm standing here doing the morning chores
And trying hard not to cry
Remembering all of the things we did
In all of the days gone by.
And there isn't a rainbow this time,
But maybe before tonight
I'll remember enough of the words I need
For the song that I want to write. 

... or maybe not. I wrote that song already.

(11:52) Oddly enough, writing this did help a little. But only a little.

Observation on productivity

So far the to.done list seems to be having its intended effect. How long that will continue is anybody's guess; my own guess is a week or so. But a couple of hours spent doing mindless but useful tasks is a couple of hours spent not thinking about a green elephant how miserable and depressed I am. I'll take it.

The more challenging tasks are not getting done, though. Maybe later.

QOTD (further observations on productivity)

Me: "Keeping a list of things I've done really seems to help."

Colleen: "Kissing your wife. You can put that on the list, too."

Getting ready for Giquing

Yesterday I ordered an SM Pro Audio PR8E 8 Channel Mic Preamp from AMS. Got the last one in stock, and free shipping. It'll go perfectly with the line mixer I got a couple of weeks ago, and one of the 8-channel soundcards. Has combination XLR/phone jacks, so it'll work for an arbitrary mix of either mics or instruments.

It's unlikely to be here in time for Tres Gique's rehearsal session next weekend (!!), but that's OK because nothing else is ready, either. We are, however, pretty far along on getting the entertainment corner of the living room cleared out enough to practice in.

Books on order

So, I ordered three books today from Powell's. All are, in one way or another, related to the River:

1. In Quest of the Mythical Mate by Ellyn Bader - recommended by my therapist.
2. You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen - recommended in a comment.
3. A Girl's Guide to Dating a Geek by Omi Inouye - for competative analysis. Ran across this at ThinkGeek; based on the blurb and the author's website, I expect it to be lightweight, ostensibly funny, and useful primarily in the "I can do better than that" sense.

Should be arriving in a week or so.