January
Sick of keeping all my balls in the air. Much of life feels like juggling. Throwing balls up and not having to worry about them until they come back down again in a few days or until someone throws it back to you. And it's nice when other people throw balls back, it makes me feel less alone, makes it all feel easier and more fun. I get tired and discouraged when I feel like I'm throwing and throwing and throwing and I don't get any message saying that someone caught my ball.
At the beginning of 2012 I was tired of many things, especially of all my questions that remained unanswered for too long.
February
Being an adult is hard. You have to keep an open mind, keep track of your budget, cook a healthy meal every day, clean up after yourself, correct your mistakes, be respectful to others, remember your appointments, make sure you're insured, call your loved ones regularly, never waste your time, be constructive when giving feedback, wait patiently, call again when you don't get a reply, remain polite at all times, listen to others and let them finish, discuss things rationally, overlook your differences with others, be kind, wear the right clothes to the right occasion, never show up empty-handed, watch your language, keep your promises, let go and learn to put everything into perspective. And it's days like this that I think I just can't do that all the time. Because it's hard.
I was at the edge of depression and I didn't know it yet.
March
I've decided to come out of my cave again, because the world outside is not as hostile as I imagined it to be and because it can get pretty dark and alone in there. I'm pleasantly bewildered by the amount of support I have been getting. I had never expected any doctor, let alone two, to prescribe me "several weeks of active relaxation and avoidance of all stress" but they have, my own GP and the company doctor. There you have it, it's official. And the amount of support from my friends has been equally bewildering.
When I finally broke down and admitted that I was in trouble, everyone was endlessly nice to me.
April
One day after we got back from Tenerife, I got a call from work, my boss. He started to tell me, tongue-in-cheek, that I shouldn't worry about work too much. The backlog as it looks now would not make me feel better. He admitted he was surprised at the sheer quantity of things that piled up in my absence, at the difficulty he had to find people who could do it in my absence, and at the amount of people who asked after me. Then he started to explain that there had been meetings about the Library (which is just me, 25m of bookshelves and the digital archives atm). The company is starting to realise that the Library is an important thing, too important to be suddenly laid still by the absence of one person. So they will be hiring a second person to man the Library, not just in my absence, but permanently. Also, they decided that the Library doesn't belong in the IT department and now I answer to the researchers of the Intellectual Property department.
In my absence, the importance of my work became clear, and I was transferred to a different department, with a different manager.
May
If I want to fix myself and get back to doing what I do best, I'll have to take it slowly. So far, any attempt at actually doing something, cleaning the house, writing or editing a story, leaving the house for anything at all, has felt like I was pushing myself. I needed rest afterwards. It's frustrating, sitting around resting feels like a waste of time. I want to do things and fix stuff. It feels like I'm playing the Sims and every time I click on something that needs doing, an error shows that my Sim is too unhappy to do that right now.
Still at home, I was not actually getting any happier.
June
I haven't been very talkative (write-ative? You know what I mean) for a while. I remember when I started blogging, it was so that I could write about what I thought. Lately it feels... :( to talk about what I think. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm depressed. I don't want to bore you with my whining about how my life sucks and the world is unfair, because frankly my life doesn't suck. And the world is unfair in my favour. So, I felt like I had no right to be depressed. And I just shut up and wrote nothing.
I'm a rich white woman in a comfortable home, married to a wonderful man, I have no right to be depressed. The thoughts that really help you get better. /sarcasm
July
After Drachenfest, it's a bit strange to live in a house with just the two of us again. The husband keeps opening all the windows and I have a thing for going to sleep at dusk and getting up at dawn. The weather was too hot and culminated in an epic thunderstorm on Thursday night. Luckily, the weather on Sunday was dry enough to let us pack most tents with minimal moisture damage.
Drachenfest had an enormous impact on me, more than I could even try to describe. It made me decide to only go to small, low combat larps anymore, to become friends with certain people, and to cut myself off from other people. It marked the beginning of the rest of my life, a journey where I'd take more control, make my own happiness and learn new skills.
August
When I look at the calendar, it says that I've been at home sick for five months now. I never thought it would take that long. Stress. Such a complicated concept. Everyone I talk to says it's important to think about my health. But I've always been very bad at gauging my own health, or my own mood even. I always say: I wish life came with explanatory mouse-overs, I'd just right-click my properties to see how I'm doing.
I found reasons to be happy again. Big ones. And the courage to face the things that still made me unhappy. And the energy to tackle them.
September
The other day, I was updating pages on my LJ, my pages about my larp characters, and the one about me. I hadn't touched those in a while. On the page about me, it said that one of my dreams for the future was to have a baby, a child who would be like Remco and like me. I wanted to raise that child, teach it how the world works and watch it grow into an independent person. I read that on my page and cried. Then I erased it.
I spent some time mourning. I understand something more about loss and pain now. That it will never go away, but I'll have to learn to live with it and go on anyway. This is a part of my life now.
October
In the past few weeks, I seem to have fully reverted to being the morning person that I always was. When it's past ten in the evening, I'm ready for bed and when it's seven in the morning, I wake up naturally, without alarms or grumpiness. I don't need a lot of sleep to keep going, but I do like to crawl into bed at eight when I'm having a bad day. If things (like larp or roleplay) keep me up past midnight, I'll still get up before nine the next morning and plod on until I can turn in for an early night again. This is the way I've always worked and it feels good to go back to that.
Dealing with my issues magically turned me into a better person, someone I recognised from a long time ago, before I let my dead-end job and my slim chances at becoming a successful author get me down. A truly miraculous transformation.
November
Psychology says we are all egotists at heart, trying to satisfy our desires. There's a deep, instinctual part of us that just keeps telling us it wants more, all the time. As a great comedian described it: "Moar! Moar of the good stuff! Less bad stuff!" These days, I just wish that part of me would just shut up. I just want to be content, I want to sit back and be thankful for every bit of happiness I receive.
Fully realising everything I went through this year, I just feel an overwhelming need to be thankful.
December
There is nothing I love more on a cold and rainy day than to play games with my loved ones.
I seem to have gone silent. I forgot my weeklies and I haven't touched any of my writing projects for weeks. I play games a lot and watch good TV shows. I visited a lot of people in the past two weeks and I haven't really talked to any of them. I don't know how to express my thoughts so I keep them to myself. Maybe I'll open up again later.
Sick of keeping all my balls in the air. Much of life feels like juggling. Throwing balls up and not having to worry about them until they come back down again in a few days or until someone throws it back to you. And it's nice when other people throw balls back, it makes me feel less alone, makes it all feel easier and more fun. I get tired and discouraged when I feel like I'm throwing and throwing and throwing and I don't get any message saying that someone caught my ball.
At the beginning of 2012 I was tired of many things, especially of all my questions that remained unanswered for too long.
February
Being an adult is hard. You have to keep an open mind, keep track of your budget, cook a healthy meal every day, clean up after yourself, correct your mistakes, be respectful to others, remember your appointments, make sure you're insured, call your loved ones regularly, never waste your time, be constructive when giving feedback, wait patiently, call again when you don't get a reply, remain polite at all times, listen to others and let them finish, discuss things rationally, overlook your differences with others, be kind, wear the right clothes to the right occasion, never show up empty-handed, watch your language, keep your promises, let go and learn to put everything into perspective. And it's days like this that I think I just can't do that all the time. Because it's hard.
I was at the edge of depression and I didn't know it yet.
March
I've decided to come out of my cave again, because the world outside is not as hostile as I imagined it to be and because it can get pretty dark and alone in there. I'm pleasantly bewildered by the amount of support I have been getting. I had never expected any doctor, let alone two, to prescribe me "several weeks of active relaxation and avoidance of all stress" but they have, my own GP and the company doctor. There you have it, it's official. And the amount of support from my friends has been equally bewildering.
When I finally broke down and admitted that I was in trouble, everyone was endlessly nice to me.
April
One day after we got back from Tenerife, I got a call from work, my boss. He started to tell me, tongue-in-cheek, that I shouldn't worry about work too much. The backlog as it looks now would not make me feel better. He admitted he was surprised at the sheer quantity of things that piled up in my absence, at the difficulty he had to find people who could do it in my absence, and at the amount of people who asked after me. Then he started to explain that there had been meetings about the Library (which is just me, 25m of bookshelves and the digital archives atm). The company is starting to realise that the Library is an important thing, too important to be suddenly laid still by the absence of one person. So they will be hiring a second person to man the Library, not just in my absence, but permanently. Also, they decided that the Library doesn't belong in the IT department and now I answer to the researchers of the Intellectual Property department.
In my absence, the importance of my work became clear, and I was transferred to a different department, with a different manager.
May
If I want to fix myself and get back to doing what I do best, I'll have to take it slowly. So far, any attempt at actually doing something, cleaning the house, writing or editing a story, leaving the house for anything at all, has felt like I was pushing myself. I needed rest afterwards. It's frustrating, sitting around resting feels like a waste of time. I want to do things and fix stuff. It feels like I'm playing the Sims and every time I click on something that needs doing, an error shows that my Sim is too unhappy to do that right now.
Still at home, I was not actually getting any happier.
June
I haven't been very talkative (write-ative? You know what I mean) for a while. I remember when I started blogging, it was so that I could write about what I thought. Lately it feels... :( to talk about what I think. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm depressed. I don't want to bore you with my whining about how my life sucks and the world is unfair, because frankly my life doesn't suck. And the world is unfair in my favour. So, I felt like I had no right to be depressed. And I just shut up and wrote nothing.
I'm a rich white woman in a comfortable home, married to a wonderful man, I have no right to be depressed. The thoughts that really help you get better. /sarcasm
July
After Drachenfest, it's a bit strange to live in a house with just the two of us again. The husband keeps opening all the windows and I have a thing for going to sleep at dusk and getting up at dawn. The weather was too hot and culminated in an epic thunderstorm on Thursday night. Luckily, the weather on Sunday was dry enough to let us pack most tents with minimal moisture damage.
Drachenfest had an enormous impact on me, more than I could even try to describe. It made me decide to only go to small, low combat larps anymore, to become friends with certain people, and to cut myself off from other people. It marked the beginning of the rest of my life, a journey where I'd take more control, make my own happiness and learn new skills.
August
When I look at the calendar, it says that I've been at home sick for five months now. I never thought it would take that long. Stress. Such a complicated concept. Everyone I talk to says it's important to think about my health. But I've always been very bad at gauging my own health, or my own mood even. I always say: I wish life came with explanatory mouse-overs, I'd just right-click my properties to see how I'm doing.
I found reasons to be happy again. Big ones. And the courage to face the things that still made me unhappy. And the energy to tackle them.
September
The other day, I was updating pages on my LJ, my pages about my larp characters, and the one about me. I hadn't touched those in a while. On the page about me, it said that one of my dreams for the future was to have a baby, a child who would be like Remco and like me. I wanted to raise that child, teach it how the world works and watch it grow into an independent person. I read that on my page and cried. Then I erased it.
I spent some time mourning. I understand something more about loss and pain now. That it will never go away, but I'll have to learn to live with it and go on anyway. This is a part of my life now.
October
In the past few weeks, I seem to have fully reverted to being the morning person that I always was. When it's past ten in the evening, I'm ready for bed and when it's seven in the morning, I wake up naturally, without alarms or grumpiness. I don't need a lot of sleep to keep going, but I do like to crawl into bed at eight when I'm having a bad day. If things (like larp or roleplay) keep me up past midnight, I'll still get up before nine the next morning and plod on until I can turn in for an early night again. This is the way I've always worked and it feels good to go back to that.
Dealing with my issues magically turned me into a better person, someone I recognised from a long time ago, before I let my dead-end job and my slim chances at becoming a successful author get me down. A truly miraculous transformation.
November
Psychology says we are all egotists at heart, trying to satisfy our desires. There's a deep, instinctual part of us that just keeps telling us it wants more, all the time. As a great comedian described it: "Moar! Moar of the good stuff! Less bad stuff!" These days, I just wish that part of me would just shut up. I just want to be content, I want to sit back and be thankful for every bit of happiness I receive.
Fully realising everything I went through this year, I just feel an overwhelming need to be thankful.
December
There is nothing I love more on a cold and rainy day than to play games with my loved ones.
I seem to have gone silent. I forgot my weeklies and I haven't touched any of my writing projects for weeks. I play games a lot and watch good TV shows. I visited a lot of people in the past two weeks and I haven't really talked to any of them. I don't know how to express my thoughts so I keep them to myself. Maybe I'll open up again later.
Current Mood: 
thoughtful
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