For the last few days I have had the niggling feeling that I must be behind on the various Christmassy things I usually do.  Things like buying Christmas gifts so they can be sent east to relatives in time for the 25th and sending out Christmas cards or, for that matter, having Christmas cards to send in the first place.  I have no concrete idea whether I actually AM behind, however, because I haven’t had the time to actually check.

Rather, I haven’t taken the time to survey the situation and determine exactly how far behind I am. I’m not especially looking forward to it, since I have a feeling it will produce a mild to moderate feeling of panic, but I recognize the necessity of the exercise.

So that’s my project for this morning: figure out what needs to be done, by when, and then get to work.  If I get that done, I’ll be working on a query letter for the manuscript.  My first attempt, last week, was Super Lame.  And I have an outside, unbiased opinion on that as well, so don’t try to tell me I’m exaggerating.  I’m not.  It was LAME.

Now, to find last year’s list of people who got gifts and cards….

Just because I haven’t posted any photos to make you all drool lately, here’s what Matt and I had for lunch, with Ritz crackers:

A friend posted this on Facebook a few days ago, and it resonated with me.  I think I’ve read it before, but it struck me again as deeply true. From Henri Nouwen, one of the most profound thinkers I’ve ever read:

To wait open-endedly is a radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our imaginings. So is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that He molds us according to His love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.

Why is it that our world is so concerned with control?  I struggle with this often myself, trying to plan out what will happen or what *should* happen, when I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about.  But I still talk.  Maybe it’s time for me to be quiet and let someone else speak, eh?

I did not get chosen to sit on a jury, though it took most of 6 hours to get to that point.

Last night was the last meeting for my fall women’s Bible study, and I have to say I already look forward to the next session, which will start sometime in January.

It occurs to me that I should start with the holiday candy and cookie making fairly soon if I intend to have anything done in time to send it before Christmas.  Also, the house is a total mess, which will greatly hinder the decorating-for-Christmas plans we have been nursing all week but have been too busy to follow through with.

So today is a cleaning day–cleaning the last of the kitchen (which we started last night) so it can be cooked in again, finishing the laundry I got mostly done on Tuesday, tidying up and putting away all the things in the living room, dining room, and office that have gotten stacked into piles and shoved out of the way in the last few weeks.  Also, I will check the mail.

And since it’s frigid outside today, I’ll most likely take a break to read on the couch while snuggled under the magic blanket with the dog cuddled up beside me to keep me warm.

All in all?  Things are pretty good.  Now, on with the Christmas music and bottoms up to the coffee mug!

Well December has come in with a bang here–first of all, my sister-in-law delivered a healthy baby boy in the wee hours of the morning, so that makes me an aunt again!  I’ve only seen one photo, but Josiah Perrin Wright is definitely a cutie.

Also, on a less positive, I think I’ve identified the major side effect from which I will suffer while I’m on Drug D.  It is less disruptive than inability to sleep, but no more enjoyable, and falls firmly in the quarter of Too Much Information For The Public. I’m still debating whether or not to call the doctor now or wait a few weeks to see whether the effect fades as my body adjusts to the new drugs.

Finally, a few weeks ago I received a summons to jury duty for the county with instructions to call the magic phone number on the night before my scheduled date to be sure I needed to report.  I do.  I have to be there early, and I have to deal with rush hour traffic and the potential of snow falling overnight, and in general I’m having a good time being dramatic and grumpy about the whole thing.  I do not relish the idea of sitting in a room all day waiting to be picked or not be picked, especially since I have real life things to catch up on at home, things that I put off all last week because I was finishing my manuscript!  I suspect the chairs will be uncomfortable.  That alone should give me the prerogative to be grumpy.

At any rate, I will not be around tomorrow on any of my usual internet haunts and, if I get picked to serve on a jury, I might be scarce for a few days, juggling time at the courthouse with handling things at home that usually get done at a more leisurely pace.

So, if I’m not around, I wish you all a lovely week.

Given the month I’ve had, I was pretty darn sure that I wasn’t going to make this deadline, and I’m not sure I can accurately convey how bummed out that got me.  I’ve worked with this story, loved it, hated it, coaxed it along, finished it, pulled it apart, and put it back together again for almost three years now.  Everything in me has screamed that it was taking too much time, but I’m so excited because I think the extra time has been good in the end.  It’s worth the wait, I pinky swear.

The manuscript is finished.  For reals this time.

And now I get to look at the list of agents I started compiling the first time I finished it, revise it, update it, put together a totally rawkin’ query letter (I shall have to see whether I have one or two hiding in my archives somewhere that I can tweak, because I could swear I put one together for this story before), and begin convincing people of how awesome this novel is.

Happy Monday!

It’s harder to be transparent than to be honest.  It’s one thing to not lie and another to lay yourself open to other people, to allow light to shine on your shortcomings and struggles and failings and trust that you will still seem worthwhile to others.  And there are times and places when too much transparency is inappropriate, especially when one is transparently wallowing in negativity.

I have a hard time letting people see me when I am non-functional. Some of that is rooted in that good old American “everything’s fine” facade, which it seems everyone is obliged to maintain. I can’t speak definitively to whether it’s a wider phenomenon, but it’s clearly implanted in the American culture, that we’re all just fine, all the time.  Because that mentality is so ingrained in us, when someone is brave enough to admit that they are not fine, the knee-jerk response is to fix things so that they will be fine again.

But some things cannot be fixed like that. Some things must be waded through, and all we want is someone to know we are wading. It’s not even usually necessary for someone to jump in with us, but just for someone to know and to care that we are having a tough time can sometimes shore up waning strength.

There is another element of pretending I am fine that comes into play particularly in blogging and facebooking and twittering and all those social media forums. It is that nobody wants to be around a whiner, and all these services bring immediate contact with every passing thought that’s deemed worthy of sharing. I tend to resort to sarcasm and sharp wit to convey my not-fine-ness without making it seem too serious. To avoid making it whiney.  I am honest, after a fashion, but not often transparent.

I’ve made an effort in my blog over the last two years to talk openly and honestly about my depression and how it affects me, what goes on in my head and some of the things I’ve found to counteract my own personal negative patterns.  I’m lucky enough that my depression releases me enough that I can step back and identify these things objectively. I know many people who cannot do that. My hope is that someday someone might stumble across what I share here and it might help them.  Whether that’s someone who struggles with depression and has never been able to voice their own thoughts about it or someone whose loved one battles depression and has never really understood what goes on inside that crazy head, or how they might be able to ease the load even a tiny bit.

So I’m going to be transparent today, in hopes that it will help someone understand what depression does even to a person who has their situation more under control.

I’ve already shared the recent adjustments my insurance has made necessary to my antidepressant medication. I very briefly shared my concerns that the process of finding another suitable medicine will turn large chunks of the next several months into “lost weeks.”

It is a fact of my life, medicated or not, that sometimes I lose a few days or a week. By this I mean that although I may manage to handle everyday tasks when they are urgent enough, although I may show up at my normal social activities looking presentable and carry on a normal conversation and generally look “fine,” essentially I am moving in survival mode.  If people are coming to the house, it will be clean; if Matt runs out of underwear, I will do laundry; if we can no longer fit dirty dishes on the counter because there are already so many stacks of them, I might empty the dishwasher and run it again (but that’s a huge stretch–usually that falls to Matt when I’m non-functional); when it is time for Matt to eat, he will have something to eat (if he’s not around I’m likely to skip a meal because it would take work to make something).

When I’m away from the house, no one will know that anything is wrong.  I dealt with my depression sans medication for nearly ten years before I went to the doctor about it.  I have a superb mask, and I’m smart enough to fool most people into never realizing it’s on. Also, just because I’m having a rough day doesn’t mean everybody needs to know it.  It’s common courtesy to not let your mood negatively affect others.

I don’t want pity or special treatment or to be let out of my responsibilities.  If I wasn’t expected to do anything, I wouldn’t.  I would lie on the couch with the curtains drawn and snuggle with the dog all day, and I would feel guilty and worthless because I wasn’t doing anything.  If I stop moving, I will never get started again.  I need to keep moving and I need to not dwell on how rotten my mental state is, so I put on my mask and do what needs to be done and most people never notice.  Sometimes I’m glad for that, and sometimes it’s frustrating that nobody notices that I’m not okay.  It doesn’t matter that I haven’t given them a chance to see my not-fine-ness; the depressed mind is not particularly logical, and when it comes up with logical arguments it promptly disregards them even though it recognizes they are accurate.  Even if I mention that I’m having a rough week (which I will do in the name of honesty if someone asks) the extent of the struggle is downplayed for both our sakes–most people have no idea how to react to someone in the middle of depression, and it does me no good to wallow.  As I’ve said, if I can keep moving, it doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

Does any of this make sense?  Sometimes I can’t tell.  I hope it does.

So to the outside world everything looks okay, but the things that are not simple day-to-day tasks, the ones that add value because I choose to do them suffer.

It feels like I’m Tom Hanks on his Castaway raft, desperately concerned with staying afloat on the waves, unable to paddle fast enough after the ship he can see on the horizon, taking his deepest dreams with it.  Nothing he does will get him there in time.  All he can hope for is to stay afloat, try to move closer to the shipping lane, and pray for another boat.  But there’s no telling how long that will take.

I was chatting with a good friend this morning, and I’m going to steal some words from that conversation (my words, not hers) to try to convey this in a non-metaphorical sense.  These exact words did not circle in my mind through the last week and a half, but the sense of them has pervaded my perceptions of things.

i hate the idea that i might lose december if my meds keep being troublesome and i have been trying so hard to actually finish my revisions on the manuscript by december so i can be sending it out, and last week just felt like everything would get blown out of the water and i’d sail past yet another imaginary deadline with absolutely nothing done and no end in sight. and matt’s job and classes are super stressful, and he had papers due and i had to stop working to edit them, and we had people over for dinner and social stuff to do, where i cannot just be unfunctional. and you crashed your bike and i couldn’t do anything to help, except try to talk to you, but neither of us was any good at that last week. it was awful.

Logically, I acknowledge that these are all fairly minor concerns. Objectively, quite a few of them are things I have no power over, and I’m taking responsibility for them anyway. But these are all things that matter deeply to me, and when I feel like I’m fumbling them it’s very hard to acknowledge that.  Even though today is a comparably good day, as I typed those things to my friend I teared up and my nose got sniffly because I hate not being able to act when I need to.  Notice the never-ending sentences… thoughts just run together and roll forward with their momentum and it’s very hard to pull up and adjust my approach.

It becomes necessary to stop thinking about those things and do what I can. Wash clothes, run errands, show up and smile when it’s required, do the best I can with the things that matter most, and hope that tomorrow or next week I’m closer to being able to handle them as I feel I should.  As I want to.

This isn’t something that happens once a year and then goes away for me.  Every morning I might have a good day or a horrible one, and all I can do is try again tomorrow.  My meds make it easier to have good days, so that my good day tally looks more like a normal person’s, but they’re not a guarantee.  I still have to be diligent and aware and proactive.  And when people are messing with my meds, even diligence sometimes makes no difference.

It’s frustrating, but it’s reality.  I am blessed to have friends and family who have sought to understand and support me.  I am so lucky for Matt, whose patience and encouragement lend me stability when I have precious little of my own. All things considered, I am lucky.  But it’s still hard sometimes.

Ten days since my last entry isn’t so bad, really.  Not when it’s been caused alternately by furious manuscriptural progress (yeah, I made that word up, and I quite like it, thanks for noticing) and some pharmaceutical adventures, the latter of which I was rather slow to catch onto.

First of all, I’m more than halfway through this manuscript revision, which is significant because close to the first 1/3 was new material that had to be connected and smoothed into the existing text, and now that I’ve passed that juncture I anticipate veritably flying through the remaining work.  In other words, I am optimistic.  But then, I am rarely pessimistic, so we should take my optimism with a shaker’s worth of salt.

As to the pharmaceutical adventures, it’s a rather long, roundabout story, but the short version is that our new medical insurance policy very much prefers not to cover my customary antidepressant (hereafter Drug B), so I switched to another variety that has the same active ingredient (Drug C).  I was assured that very few people have trouble with this change as the two drugs are very similar, and I am so far from being picky about brand or method as long as the darn stuff WORKS that I readily filled the prescription.  Unfortunately, I am part of the “very few people” who do not adjust seamlessly to the new (to me) drug.

For about the last week and a half I have had seriously strange dreams–abnormal ones, for me.  Not scary dreams, just uber weird.  Pretty much every night, three or four a night.  I know this because I wake up between all of them and have trouble getting back to sleep, which leads to a tired Betsy.  I’ve been taking naps most mornings, and have only proceeded from napping to writing (rather than reading or watching “A-Team” episodes on Netflix) about every other day.  Finally, sometime in the nighttime hours no one should ever witness between Thursday and Friday, it dawned on me that there is only one other time something like this has happened to me–and it was almost two years ago, with the very first antidepressant I tried.  This reaction isn’t as severe as the first one, but then I was on Drug A for a month and a half, and Drug C for only two weeks.  Less time to develop strangeness.

At any rate, I called the doctor folks on Friday morning and after numerous call-backs for them to verify lots of angles, I am now gradually shifting to Drug D. If it works, great.  If not, I know that the doctor can jump through some hoops and get Drug B (my antidepressant of choice) approved coverage with the insurance, if it’s the only thing that works for me.  I’m not sure how many others I’ll have to try before they can conclude that I actually do need Drug B.

All in all, I’m not all that upset at present.  I’d much rather not have to jump through hoops (either personally or via my doctor) to get what I need to be healthy.  On the other hand, if they make me try several more medicines before we find one that works, I can see the next two or three or four months basically going down the drain, practically speaking.  As it is, barring severe immediate issues, I have to stay on Drug D until Christmas, more or less, before they’ll consider trying me on something else.  I have not yet run through even all the antidepressants that most people would recognize on hearing because of various advertisements, much less any lesser-known ones.

But I am trying to remain optimistic, because getting pessimistic about depression tends to be a rapid downward spiral and we can certainly do without any of that.

All that to say, another week (probably) of funky dreams before I’ve totally phased out Drug C, and then we’ll see how well Drug D works through my winter depressive slump.

And now back to my regularly scheduled manuscript edits.

I’d like to extend my thanks to all those who serve and have served in the armed forces. I may not agree with the government on all points, but the individuals who serve our country deserve a great deal more than simple respect.

So, to those I know personally and those I don’t: Thank you. We owe you more than we know. You have my appreciation.

I stole my husband for a few days this weekend and took him up to the mountains.  He contests that I did not kidnap him because he went willingly, and it’s true that he asked me to make the arrangements in the first place, but it’s more fun to say I husband-napped him.

At any rate, we had a lovely time, met some lovely people and saw some great scenery, and got three very nice horseback rides in.  The first was a good warm-up, the second satisfyingly filled with loping, and the third with a bit more technical narrow-trail riding up and down some really amazing terrain.  We took Shiloh with us, and she had fun with the two ranch dogs.  She adjusted to the goats and horses really quickly, and came along with us for all three rides, though it was clear that we plumb wore her out by the end of the last one.  She only got nipped once, when she annoyed one of the horses by running around too close to him on the trail.  Scared her more than anything, and taught her the appropriate lesson.

As usual, I had great intentions for taking all kinds of photos, and I failed miserably on the follow-through.  Regardless, it was wonderful and relaxing and I suspect we will be going back sooner or later.  Hopefully sooner.

I feel like I should have more to say, but I really don’t.  Maybe that’s because it’s just about time to head to bed.  Speaking of which, I’m headed in that direction.