Tag Archives: depression

Getting Back Into Routines

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Things have calmed down considerably for myself the last few weeks.  I’m back on my normal doses of meds and I haven’t had a mental breakdown since about Halloween.  I still haven’t worked up the nerve to brave the mall during the Christmas rush.  But I see no need to as I did all my shopping online this year.  I think I’ll be doing all my shopping online for the foreseeable future.

I have felt quite calm the last few weeks.  I’m back to mediating at least once a day.  I leave my apartment more now.  I just don’t go entire days without leaving the apartment anymore.  I still don’t watch regular news as I have realized I’m not missing much.  I really don’t watch regular tv anymore.  If my cable didn’t come with my apartment I’d cancel it.  I don’t use it.

I’m still eating less.  For a couple months when I was eating out twice a day I ate a lot and gained some weight.  Now I usually make it a point to have at least one day a week without meat.  Been doing that for several weeks now.

Slowly but surely I’m settling back into my traditional routine.  It’s been a long time since I had any calm for more than a few days.  I think it’s coming back.

Stretch Run To The Holidays

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It’s been colder than normal December, especially the last several days.  So I’ve pretty much stayed home, caught up on my reading, watched some videos on youtube, and played some computer games.  I’ve even eaten less these last several days but did rediscover my caffeine habit through coffee and diet soda pop.

Mentally I have felt surprisingly stable in spite not being able to get out of my apartment complex.  We haven’t had the bad snow that many places have but it’s just been so cold.  I’m pretty much content to curl up under a blanket and read most evenings.  But I haven’t had problems with anxiety, depression, or hallucinations for a long time.  I think it helps that I have made it a point to avoid the mall and Wal Mart this Christmas season.  I just don’t like crowds, bright lights, and loud music even on a good day.  I can’t imagine how tough sensory overload is for autistics during the holidays.

In spite the cold I still keep in contact with friends and family.  I’m calling someone at least once a day and I drop into Facebook a few times a day to check on friends and family.  I have been on Facebook more since the end of the election.  I’m so glad that people have more or less settled down from that madness.  It was actually quite unbearable for awhile knowing that every time I logged onto Facebook I was going to get a sermon from my friends about how the Republicans or Democrats were going to be the death of us all.  I just got so sick of hearing about it that I let many of my social connections go by the wayside.  I’m only now beginning to socialize again.

Christmas will be here soon.  I’m looking forward to the return to normal.  2016 has been anything but normal for me. Spent the first part of the year in chiropractic treatment.  Got burned out not the election even before the end of spring.  Spent the entire summer out of commission with a bad back.  Spent eh fall depressed and angry about how irritable and angry my friends were about the election.  And now I’m dealing with the stretch run for the end of the holidays.  My life has been unsettled since my car accident last October.  I’m just ready for things to settle down again.  I’m sick of all the needless drama and upheaval.

Christmas and Mental Health

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I was originally going to do only one article today.  But consider this my two for the price of one sale. Christmas and the other end of year holidays will be upon us soon.  I didn’t put up any decorations and skipped out on the apartment’s Christmas party.  I don’t even do any shopping besides grocery shopping this time of year.  All the lights, bell ringing, too loud music, and too over the top decorations really give me bad cases of sensory overload.  Sometimes I can get sensory overload even driving in rush hour traffic.  Just everything moving too fast, too many sites, and too many noises I suppose.  So you can imagine how bad Christmas can be for me.

I’ll probably go to my parents’ house for a couple days but I doubt I’ll do anything with the extended family.  Once again too much sensory overload and no means to tactfully excuse myself from such overload.  I’m looking forward to the end of the holidays and the end of 2016 in general.  I really haven’t watched that much football this year as it has lost much of it’s appeal for me.  I just no longer enjoy watching it.  I did watch playoff baseball but really haven’t watched any tv outside of netflix and youtube since the end of October.

I enjoy the colder weather.  I’m happy for the longer nights and the decreased expectation that I always have to be going somewhere and spending time with someone outside of my apartment.  I enjoy spending time in my apartment with my books, my internet, my music, and my computer games.  When I want to talk to friends and family I can always call them over the phone or chat online and not have to be embarrassed or shamed if I want to end the conversation in a hurry.  I really have no stomach for small talk or gossip.  I guess I never have.  Sometimes I am my own best company.  I guess I adapted too well to spending most of my life alone.  Anymore I prefer to be alone almost all the time.  I haven’t had a roommate in over twelve years and I don’t see ever having a roommate again.  Whoever invented the rules for human socializing never took mentally ill people into consideration.

Yet, I couldn’t be happier with my current living conditions, especially considering I have to fight a mental illness everyday.  I guess that’s why holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas cause me some sadness in that I’m expected to socialize and engage in small talk against my will.  I really don’t like going to Christmas parties, especially with people who I see in foul moods most of the year.  I don’t like listening to Christmas carols, those songs don’t articulate my memories of Christmas from childhood or my feelings right now.  I don’t like going to the mall and fighting crowds just so I can buy a couple items for myself.  I don’t like being told to be jolly or of good cheer.  I hated being told how to think as a kid and I hate being told how to think even more as an adult.  I’ll feel however I like and just not talk about how I feel or think.

I’ll enjoy the holidays regardless if I do it in traditional ways.  I can socialize, but I can do it for hours on end if I have some intelligent conversation.  If small talk comes up I’ll be ready to leave after twenty minutes.  It can be kind of tricky being mentally ill around the holidays.  It can take a few years to figure out what works and what doesn’t.  It certainly took me several years to figure out what to avoid and what to do to ensure a smooth holiday season.

Changes In Interests With Mental Illness

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Over the years of working with schizophrenia I have had to reinvent myself a few times.  When I was first diagnosed in 2000, I was a wreck.  I pretty much left my dorm room only to go to classes and go to the mess hall twice a day.  I couldn’t concentrate in classes or doing homework for longer than a couple minutes at a time.  I was trying different medications twice a month just hoping to find something that would work.  As a result of these struggles I had to drop out of my pre med major.  I even had to take a semester off from college because I was in danger of flunking out entirely.  After a few months off the academic grind and finally finding some medications that worked well, I was able to return to school be it with a different major.  I decided to do business management because I really knew little about money and business and thought I could find a job in that field once I recovered.  I never did completely recover but I did graduate college with a business degree.

After a year of working in sales I tried my hand at getting a masters’ in business.  At the time my dream was to teach basic economics and personal finance at a small college.  That was before I realized how tough it was to get tenure and that the majority of junior college instructors are not full time.  After two semesters in the program my grades were hurting enough that I lost my graduate assistant job.  I could have stayed in the program but I would have to go deep into debt.  So I left the program.  After my failing to become a college instructor, I got a job in a factory.  It was simple enough work but I couldn’t adapt to the overnight hours and my work suffered as a result.  Two months of this I decided I would put in for a transfer to morning shift.  I was denied so I quit.  It also didn’t help that I was threatened by one of my coworkers with violence because of my mistakes.  A few years later I heard that the factory was shut down.  So many people lost their jobs, probably due to automation.  It made me kind of thankful I didn’t stick it out with that job.

About the same time I failed at the factory, I applied for disability pension.  It took two years to get approved for it, and that was even after I hired an attorney to fast track the process.  Here I was with a mental illness that clearly ruined my ability to work and I was getting to where I was running out of money.  Shortly after I gave up on the factory, I moved into low income housing because that was all I could afford.  I could have moved back with my parents but the mental health care in that rural of an area was quite primitive.  And I was too embarrassed to face the people of my hometown with a mental illness.  Ten years ago there was even less understanding about mental illness than there is now.  Small town gossip is vicious and unavoidable.  I didn’t like living in my parents’ town as a kid because I never fit in and my skills sets weren’t conducive to a farming dominated economy.  I may live in a town of about 40,000 people (which isn’t big compared to many places) but it has far more to offer than my parents’ town of less than 500 people.  I just didn’t want to go back home, admit defeat, and face the scorn of the people of my hometown.  To this day I still won’t go back for class reunions or alumni events.  Too many people just don’t want to accept that mental illness is real.

As a result of having to abandon my childhood hometown, I had to find other means of socializing.  That’s about the time I signed up for a Facebook account.  The majority of my contacts on Facebook are with people I met in college.  I don’t have that many friends from my old grade school and high school days.  I hear from really only one of my friends from my high school days on a regular basis anymore.  One of my best friends from junior high I haven’t talked to in over ten years.  Some of my classmates I haven’t seen since graduation.  But I did enjoy college much more than high school, even if it was a religious school and I was beginning to question the teachings and dogmas of the religion grew up with even back then.  The majority of my friends from college are still in the same denomination I grew up in, but they seem to be understanding on why I don’t attend church anymore.  I haven’t been a regular in church in almost ten years.  It just seems ineffective and pointless.  People have been praying for cures for illnesses and deliverance from  danger for centuries.  Sometimes they get what they want, sometimes they don’t with no rhyme or reason behind it.  I guarantee the early Christians being fed to lions in Roman coliseums were praying like mad, just like the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe, or the people killed in every other crisis.  I gave up on organized religion once I came to realize that if there is a God (and let’s be honest, no one knows for exactly sure), than God was hap hazard in spreading the blessings and curses around.  If my friends and family want to continue going to church and believing what they do, I refuse to stand in the way.  I just won’t partake.

Once I left religion and made up my mind I would never marry, I had to find other outlets for socializing.  I joined writers’ groups, I took part in mental illness support groups, I volunteered at a museum for a summer, I started writing seriously, I worked on a blog with an old high school friend of mine, I wrote the rough outline for what would be this blog, I wrote rough drafts for two novels, I wrote hundreds of poems and even got a few of them published, I self published my mental illness writings and poems and sold a few dozen copies of those through local bookstores, I made friends with fellow artists and writers, I made friends with a few smart and eccentric people even in Section 8 housing.

Sadly several of my old friends in my apartment complex died in the last couple years.  I left my job at the county courthouse once I found out I could live on my disability pension and could get serious about writing.  Several months after I left my job at the courthouse I started this blog.  As the months went on I started getting a bit of an audience.  I found out I have a talent for putting ideas and words into written form.  At first I did this blog only every two weeks.  I was getting a few readers that way.  After a year I decided to post once a week.  I started getting more readers and some feedback.  Found out I was fulfilling a niche in the writing market that many people don’t know exists.

Mental illness is a problem that isn’t going to be swept under the rug anymore.  With more people feeling stressed about possibly losing their jobs to automation and globalization, people my age bracket and younger realizing that in spite their best efforts they won’t have as nice of a house or the job security of their parents and grandparents, and people just being depressed and stressed about the changes and crisises going on that we hear all about because of mass communications, mental health issues are going to be affecting more people.  And I’m writing about life with mental health issues, not having traditional employment, and having to make meaning and purpose in my life inspite all that has happened in the last twenty years.  And I will continue to post these blogs.  I don’t care if I make a dime off my writing anymore.  Most writers don’t make anything off their writings anyway.  I just want these writings to stick around for a long time and maybe make a positive difference for those affliceted with mental illness and their loved ones.

 

Rant About Working and Money

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I’ve been feeling quite calm and content since Thanksgiving.  I really haven’t left the complex that much but I do keep myself occupied.  I still watch a lot of educational videos on youtube and curiosity stream.  Most people will find me odd for saying this but I love learning new things.  Sure the things I learn may not help me make more money or land a dream job, but so what?  Why does everything I do have to have a dollar sign attached to it?  Why can’t I do something just to make myself smarter and more interesting?  I know plenty of well to do people who haven’t voluntarily read a book since high school.  But these people are one dimensional, boring, and really don’t know what’s going on in the world outside of their workplace.  You may make a lot of money but that doesn’t make up for the fact you may be boring, uninteresting, a bad parent, or your marriage is falling apart.  Most of my critics think I’m wasting my time and efforts learning extemporaneous things and not doing practical things like chasing women or complaining about my coworkers.  But I don’t care.  I’ve reached the age where I’m focused on what I need to do to advance my work and purpose and everything else is just background noise.

As it is I consider this blog and my own enlightenment my career now.  I don’t care that I don’t make much money from it.  Besides money isn’t backed up by anything tangible as most countries haven’t been on a gold or silver standard for generations.  Your money is fake.  Your money is less real than a porn star’s body parts.  And that is why I don’t care that I don’t get much money from this blog or my other outside projects.  My critics just love to brag about how much they work in one breath and then complain about how much they hate their jobs in the next.  Robots and automated programs will be taking many jobs within the next twenty years.  Someday that job you lord over others to brag about how much you are earning your keep will be taken over by machines.  Then what?  Then you will be in the same place with the “welfare bums” and “lazy idiots” you have damned for generations.

I really have no patience for people who brag about how much they supposedly work and about how irreplaceable they are.  Screw you, we are all replaceable.  There have been tens of billions of humans that have lived in the history of our species, individuals are not that special.  Many jobs will be replaced by machines within the next generation.  Many millions of people will be unemployed without their consent.  And here you are complaining about people that can’t find jobs to support themselves or resorting to welfare programs.  Well, screw you!  We will probably all be on some kind of tax payer sponsored support within the next thirty years, especially when automation takes off.

Many people think we’re going to bring back millions manufacturing jobs and it’ll be like the go go 1950s once again.  First of all, most manufacturing jobs are getting to the point that machines can do them better than any human can.  Even Chinese factories are putting in robotic manufacturing processes as we speak.  It’s not like an average person just out of high school is going to work the same factory job for forty five years and then get a pension anymore.  Those days are as dead as the horse and buggy.  And it’s stupid and pointless to try to bring those days back.  If we are to compete on a world stage, we’re going to have to update our entire education system and retrain millions of workers.  It angers me to think that I spent my educational career in a mediocre system that didn’t challenge me or even try to prepare me to compete on a global scale.  Heck I feel like I was cheated by my school systems.  There is more to life than whether you can throw the football a long way or become prom queen.

We aren’t going to bring back the “good ol’ days”, and they weren’t that good to begin with.  I have no patience with people who have an overabundance of nostalgia for the past and think that the old days were some magical time where people respected others and an honest day’s work meant an honest day’s pay.  In most cases, an honest day’s work meant you didn’t get whipped by your slave masters for most of history or beaten by your alcoholic husband.  I hate nostaliga and I am really sick and tired of people longing for a past that never existed in the real world.  Do your homework already!

I guess I shouldn’t rant that much about people who won’t do their homework.  But it does get old after awhile.  It does scare me that even though I’m a schizophrenic on disability pension I do more homework into the state of science, technology, and world affairs in a typical day than most people do in a month.  The internet is a great tool to learn cool and great things.  Use it for some constructive purpose already.  The internet was not designed just so you could troll people who don’t agree with you.  Dealing with stupid people who think they’re something special because they have the internet (which they had nothing to do with in making) gets tiring and discouraging from time to time.  I guess this  is one of those times I’m just discouraged with so many people in my life acting and thinking like a bunch of barbarian brutes.  I will feel better eventually but I just need to vent right now.  Even mentally ill people should be allowed to have moments of weakness.  Screw the stiff upper lip at all times!

 

Routines

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I did go and do some shopping on Black Friday.  That is, if grocery shopping counts.  Bought enough food to last several days.  I haven’t eaten fast food in a few days as I’m doing my own cooking again.  I’ve also had some of my psych meds doses lowered as I’ve been stabilizing for a few weeks.  I sleep a little less now.  I’m staying up later again but I really don’t drink that much caffeine.  I have all but given up coffee and I usually have only one or two soda pops a day.  I notice I feel less tense and short tempered since cutting back on the caffeine.

I’m back to eating less too.  For several weeks I was practically living off fast food and I have no doubt my health suffered.  Now that I’m back to cooking my own meals and eating healthier I am gradually noticing small improvements.  My stamina is beginning to come back, I am not as irritable, I am not as short tempered, my flare ups aren’t as bad, and I’m getting better sleep.  I think I have also lost a few pounds as my clothes are fitting a little looser.

I’m looking forward to winter even though I missed the summer with back problems and had more stress than usual during the fall.  I love the chilly weather, I don’t mind shoveling snow, I love spending time with family over Christmas, I enjoy watching college football games all day on New Year’s, and I like making cold weather food like potato and cheese soup and chili.  My Christmas shopping is done as I just did everything online this year.

I didn’t get what I wanted accomplished health wise this year.  I gained back much of the weight I had lost in 2014 and 2015.  Some of this came after I hurt my back and lost a summer’s worth of exercise.  Some of this came as I was more depressed and unstable this year than some of my previous years.  But for the last few weeks I’ve been having more of a sense of stability than I have had for months.  I’ve actually gotten some of my more healthy routines going again.  I still don’t socialize much in my apartment complex as I’m trying to avoid negative and depressing people.  I’m gradually getting back on Facebook.  I avoided it as much as I could for most of the fall.  But now that winter is almost here I’m getting to where I want to socialize to break up some of the colder, slower days.

Trying to Break the Cycle of Depression and Loneliness

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I spent a couple days at my parents’ house in the middle of this week.  It’s the first time in weeks I left my hometown.  It was good to get to see my parents and a few extended family members.  My cousin is back from the coast with her baby.  I’m glad I got to see them.  It was good to finally get some good face to face interaction with other people.  I had almost forgotten what that was like.

I’m glad the election is over.  But I am saddened and disappointed that some people just won’t let it go.  We have people on the left protesting and we have some people on the right mocking the lefties for protesting.  Never mind that many of these said righties were buying extra guns and stockpiling ammo and watching ‘Doomsday Preppers’ reruns after the last two elections.  I saw some people mocking the fact (which is probably hearsay if anyone bothered to look it up) that some colleges are making mid term exams optional because of the election.  FYI: many colleges made final exams optional some semesters in the 1960s because of Vietnam War protests.  My father’s college was one of these said places.  So this is nothing new if it’s even a thing.  My God, you normals are acting insane about this election.  I have a mental illness.  What is your excuse?

Needless to say all of these tense emotions are making it more difficult for me to get back into socializing.  I want to connect with other people so bad I want to cry over it.  But most people are content to either moan or gloat over the election that it’s impossible to carry on any kind of conversation.  I am very angry that this is what my fellow humans have come to.  I can’t even relate to most people anymore.  It’s lonely.  And it looks like it’s going to be lonely for a long time.  I don’t understand you normal people.  And at this point I don’t want to anymore.  Quit arguing and fighting and acting stupid already.

Voting and Politics with Mental Illness

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IndependenceDay2

I got out and voted this morning.  I didn’t have to fight a long line as I went in the middle of the morning.  I did the online registration earlier this year.  I found it intriguing that in some nations a person is automatically registered to vote when they get their driver’s license.  I saw that some countries have their major elections on the weekend or make the day a national holiday where everything is closed.  Regardless of the results I did my civic duty for now.

I have to admit this was the meanest and nastiest election I can ever remember.  I imagine there were parents explaining to their kids that this wasn’t a typical election cycle.  At least I hope it doesn’t become the new normal.  This has been a real stressful and unsettling election for me.  I have had to increase doses on all my medications just to deal with the anxiety and depression.  I hate how divisive and hateful this election was.  I have had to block friends and even stopped talking to friends and family over this.  I even quit talking to people I agree with.  Many normals were insane about this election.

Too many normal people have for the last eighteen months acted like the election is the only thing that is going on.  Seriously?  I just quit watching the news because that was all that was being reported.  One of the reasons I got to studying science and tech advances on science web pages was I wasn’t hearing about the state of science or technology on the regular news channels.  I also think that science and tech advances will benefit humanity far more than any elected politician.  It’s no comparison.  I think normal people are insane and out of touch with reality paying so much attention to the election.  Most politicians are lawyers and business people by trade, not scientists or engineers.  A politician doesn’t know how to build power plants. A politician can’t figure out how to grow more crops with less water and pesticides.  It wasn’t politicians who figured out how to build houses that won’t fall apart during earthquakes.  We are electing people to represent us, pass laws, and set budgets.  We are not electing Santa Claus who will make everything we desire come true with pixie dust and magic.  We really give politicians too much praise when things go right and too much blame when things go bad.  Too bad there wasn’t a Mt. Rushmore type monument dedicated to inventors, scientists, and humanitarians.  I’d visit a place like that.

In short I’m glad this election is going to be over soon.  Thank God.  I’ve seen enough nastiness to last me several election cycles.  I only hope that 2016 isn’t a preview of future elections.

 

Discouragement and Socializing With Mental Illness

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Been spending much of the last several days watching the World Series and football games.  As far as my hopeless addiction to watching sports on tv is concerned, October is traditionally the happiest time of year for me.  But all in all it’s been an uneventful fall.  The weather is starting to cool and I haven’t run my air conditioner in almost three weeks. Some nights I even run the heater.  We’ve already had a few freezes but no snow yet.  In my hometown we usually don’t get our first snow until mid to late November.  I still have to winterize my car and restock my emergency winter supplies.  It won’t take too much other than a couple trips to the store.  It’s just a matter of getting it done.

I didn’t do anything special this Halloween.  Some times I like to go to the all night diners to see people in their costumes after the bars close.  Some years I help hand out candy to the kids that come to our complex.  Didn’t do any of that.  I’m still kind of afraid of socializing.  If it wasn’t for cell phones and Facebook, I probably wouldn’t have much of a social life.  But then again, years ago the only option for someone like me was long term hospitalization.

During the last two weeks I was on higher than usual doses of some of my anti psych medications.  They helped take the tension off and knocked down the hallucinations but I did end up less motivated than usual and slept more.  I haven’t posted anything to Facebook for almost two weeks.  I’m trying to avoid a lot of nastiness and negativity that’s going on lately.  I haven’t watched the news in months because I’m tired of the wall to wall election coverage.  Even my parents who are hopeless news junkies have been boycotting all news channels just to avoid it all.  I thought we were electing representatives and not gods.  I have grown to hate politics and I would love to live to see scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, etc. get the kind of press we seem to have only for politicians and entertainers.  It’s probably a pipe dream, but I can hope can’t I?

As it’s been I’ve been depressed and discouraged for weeks.  I can’t stand normal conversation and small talk anymore.  It’s just reruns as far as I’m concerned.  That’s probably why I isolate so much.  I just don’t want to rehash politics or sports or the weather anymore.  Perhaps I’m too tough on my fellow man because most of what I see is people doing the same stupid things and talking about the same stupid stuff all the time.  I might feel different if I lived in a large city with more diversity of thought and culture.  I probably would feel different if I didn’t live in low income housing.  But it’s not like there’s ever going to be low income housing for smart but eccentric people.

Some people got the idea because I live in low income housing and am on disability that I’m stupid.  I’m not.  But I will say it has been pretty tough living in low income housing ever since my pastor friend and brilliant but eccentric photographer friend died two years ago.  Their deaths have been tough to bear.  The intellectual life of my complex took a nosedive since they passed on.  Now I pretty much hear people complain about how they don’t get enough in social security money when they buy mostly lottery tickets, cigarettes,  and booze with their money.  It’s discouraging seeing people do the same dumb things over and over again but never getting the idea.  Anyone who ever said there virtue in poverty has never lived in HUD housing.  We have the same mix of crooks, losers, cranks, and jerks as every other class of society.

It’s discouraging dealing with dumb and rude people everyday.  After awhile I might get jaded and just think that dumb and rude people are all there is.  I hope it never comes to that.  I wouldn’t be happy as a nihilist.  I see the potential in people.  I see that my species is making positive changes and scientific breakthroughs on an almost daily basis anymore.  I know we can be better than we currently are.  I know we can make ourselves more ethical and wiser.  I would love to someday live in world where wisdom is as valued as ignorance is now.  It just gets discouraging during the day to day grind when it seems like no progress is being made around you.  But I guess low income housing is probably going to be the last place in the US that sees any kind of technological progress.  We still have people who don’t own computers or have email accounts. I just try to keep reminding myself that progress is happening even when it’s not evenly spread out.

Easing Back Into Normal

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Started spending a little more time on Facebook and talking with friends the last couple days.  I’m also starting to get out of my apartment more often.  There would be times in the last several weeks when I would leave my apartment only to get something to eat.  I’m cooking more of my meals now.  For a couple weeks I had fallen out of the habit of cooking and got quite lazy about my diet.  I’ve probably gained some weight over the last few weeks   so I’m going to address that.  Hopefully I can get back to eating less and making most of my own meals  and get used to that before the weather gets real cold.

I still haven’t gotten out of my hometown much these last several weeks.  I’ll probably go to my parents’ house within a week or two because my cousin is coming back to Nebraska for a couple weeks with her baby.  Her husband is career Navy so they have to live on the coast.  I don’t get to see her nearly as often as I would like.  I’m also going to my aunt’s place for Thanksgiving at the end of next month.

I’ve also been lazy about exercising and dieting the last several weeks.  No doubt I’ve gained weight.  I haven’t gotten much physical activity so I’m starting to get more unexplainable aches and pains.  I’m slowly easing back into activity.  I’m spending a little more time outdoors too.  It’s been nicer weather than typical late October so I’m enjoying this more.

Slowly I’m easing myself back into more normal routines.  Not much has been normal for me for months.  Between being in a car accident, spending the winter in chiropractic therapy, spending the summer with a bad back, and then spending the fall depressed and discouraged with how irritable people are over the election, I’m ready for some quiet and normal.