Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Rallying.....again....

Last week was hard. No two ways around it. I haven't had a week that hard in quite a while. My brain was in two modes: either the high-flying verbal diarrhea that was evident in my last 2 or 3 posts, or else total brain fog, staring at the laptop screen, unable to work.

The hardest thing about depression is that it doesn't have to have a root cause other than "my brain chemistry is apparently having a suck day/week/month". I can blame it on my emotions coming back into my own after the MIL visiting for a week, but it's probably not just that. The bigger reason is likely "because Melanie's brain felt like smacking her around a bit." Whatever. I didn't make my site quota for the week, and I'm just now feeling like myself again.

I'm trying to concentrate on work, so I can make up the shortage from last week, but I know there are other things I need to do to adjust myself back to me. A long walk or two. Stepping outside daily to tend the garden and breathe deeply. I have the slightest cold, almost not even worthy of complaint, just like someone turned on a faucet in one nostril. So I'm listening to my body, and getting back to eating healthier.

I itch to visit the local libraries, but will wait until next paycheck, when I can invest in a library card at UNC of Asheville too. Besides, there are magazines grappling for my attention in the evenings, and books right here at home. I started reading one of our Norton anthologies and realized I'd understand Greek literature better if I broke down and reread The Iliad and The Odyssey again. I read them in high school, if you can even count that as reading. Reading required lit for me back then meant reading just enough to pull Cs on the tests and then giving up.

I also want to read Oliver Twist again. I watched a TV version of Slumdog Millionaire the other day, and was struck by how Dickensian the story was, and it dawned on me that I should actually understand the meaning of that phrase if I'm going to use it to describe something. Imagine if everyone did that before speaking.

Image from here.

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