Today was the first day in weeks we had warm weather.  I had to get outside to enjoy it.  This has been a tougher than usual winter.  I spent a lot of time indoors and hibernating because of the bad cold spells and snow storms.  Now that it’s almost March I can see the beginning of the end of winter.  And I am not sorry at all to see winter on it’s way out.

Been spending too much time indoors and isolating.  There were times I would go entire days without leaving my apartment.  With as bad as the weather was, it seemed pointless to just wander the halls.  There were days I would sleep sometimes as much as twelve hours a day just out of boredom.  Unfortunately I didn’t get as much reading done as I would have liked this winter.  And I was lazy about writing for the last few weeks.  While I have been stable mentally this winter, this was probably because I wasn’t doing much to invite troubles.  I lost some of my social contacts from isolating and staying home so much this winter.  Hopefully I can get those reestablished soon.

I still hear from old friends and family a couple times a week.  Not as often as I would like, but I get that most people don’t have as much free time as I do.  Mental illness essentially sent me into early retirement right about when my friends’ careers were taking off.  Most of my friends now are married and have kids.  I have as much freedom as anyone I know and yet I don’t get to share it very often.  It’s a shame that most of my best friends from the past live out of state.  I do have online friends from my discussion groups, but many of them live in other countries.  I’ll probably never get to meet them in person even though I have far more in common with these friends than I do most people in my own hometown.

I would love to travel more but I absolutely can’t stand driving anymore.  And flying airlines anymore is about as enjoyable as going to the dentist for root canal work.  I have friends scattered to the four winds I haven’t seen since college graduation that I would give almost anything to see even for a few days.  Since some of the old friends live in foreign countries I’d have to get a passport.  I don’t know what Social Security’s rules are for disabled people traveling overseas and collecting disability pension.  But I guess those dreams of travel and seeing old friends will stay in the realm of pipe dreams probably forever.  I’ll just have to do the next best thing and socialize online I suppose.