.my point of balance was askew.

It's Saturday and thus, about three days into my return to meds. Awhile back, I had made a decision that I could not continue on medication. I hated the side effects when I had them and hated not feeling any difference at all when I didn't. I had a hard time remembering to take them and a harder time coming up with what to say about how I was doing on them, because I didn't really know. I was glad to be normal again – feel what I felt and know it had nothing to do with chemicals. If I wanted an altered state, I'd get drunk – another thing that being on psych meds would not allow me to do.

But I have had a rough several months. There were no particular reasons for them to be especially so, but I have been plagued with constant worry and anxiety (over everything from money, finding a new second job, relationship concerns and my health to whether or not I was doing enough, if I would ever achieve anything in the literary world, why I feel consistently tired and unmotivated or, most morbidly, how numbered my days were) and occasional (though, it seemed, more occasional than usual) depression accompanied by crying jags, feelings of complete worthlessness and hopelessness and just about the most richly layered self-pity you could probably imagine. It wasn't productive...it's not productive. I had to do something about it.

My therapist was as shocked as I was by my decision to go back on medication. He kept asking, “Are you sure?” because I have been so adamantly against the idea. I would say they wouldn't do any good, they killed my libido, I wasn't fun anymore, I couldn't drink, I could never tell a difference in my anxiety (which, for me, is the worst part – the depression doesn't seem to come as often without the anxiety, but the anxiety is always there; it manifests itself in so many ways, in so many situations – social or ordinary or in cleaning, organizing and rituals that take up little pieces of my day, day in and day out). He was concerned and reasonably so. But I assured him that I didn't think I'd given medication a real chance before and that this time I was going to try. After all, something had to give. I have too many things to lose.

So my therapist referred me to a psychiatrist who I saw this past Thursday. He decided to put me on Cymbalta. 30 mg the first two weeks, 60 the next. I see him again in a month to discuss results.

The results so far? I have woken up each morning, shaky and restless, at odd hours: 5am, 6:35am. I have dizzy spells throughout the day. I get nausea and a touch of headache just before breakfast and I go from feeling completely without an appetite (more often)to feeling voracious (rarer). I'm a little more spacey than usual – even for me. I feel, in turns, tired and very, very awake. In other words, it's awful so far. But it's not so unbearable that I can't put up with it. It's something I want to give a chance, so I will. Maybe soon I will feel myself becoming slightly calmer. Maybe soon everything will fall into place and I can breathe again.

.open up your plans and damn you're free.

I'm posting another entry about nothing, but I am posting two in one week. A woman I work with - another shelver - told me this week (after asking how my writing is going and hearing my reply that it's just "ok, not great"), "at least you're writing. Some people can't even do that." Simple as it is, it's just so true. I may not always produce something with a point or that is particularly brilliant, but I do write...and constantly, too. I write long, long emails to people and jot down ideas and thoughts almost daily now. Once I am back on meds (yes, that will be soon...probably, anyway), Kathy thinks I should keep a log of any changes I feel - so that's another thing that I can use my journal (or rather, my "everything book" as it has become more of a place for everything: to do lists, fragments, recipes, quotes and other things to remember, ideas, etc.) for. I'd keep a second one especially for that, but that's just too much for me to carry around or remember to use.

Anyway, I just wanted to save and share some recently found checkout receipts from the library.

I really like this one, just because we have similar literary tastes:

Title: Survivor: a novel/by Chuck Palahniuk
Due Date: 11-27-07

Title: Invisible Monsters/by Chuck Palahniuk
Due Date: 11-27-07

Title: Haunted: a novel of short stories/by Chuck Palahniuk
Due Date: 11-27-07

Title: Save Me The Waltz/by Zelda Fitzgerald
Due Date: 11-27-07

Title: The Haunting of Hill House/by Shirley Jackson
Due Date: 11-27-07

Title: Just An Ordinary Day/by Shirley Jackson
Due Date: 11-27-07


Since I am putting them in order of dates, the next one is from earlier this year. I have no idea why some receipts tell you the author or creator of an item and others don't.

Title: Masquerade: a Blue Bloods novel
Due Date: 03-30-09

Title: Love, Ghosts & Facial Hair
Due Date: 03-30-09

Title: Forever
Due Date: 03-30-09

(I wonder if that's the Judy Blume book. I'm sure there are half a dozen books called Forever, though.)

Title: Head Games
Due Date: 03-30-09

Title: Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
Due Date: 03-30-09

Title: The Devouring
Due Date: 03-30-09

Finally, we have a receipt from this month. I found it on the shelf in the mystery section.

Title: On the Prowl: tales of an urban werewolf / Karen MacInen
Due Date: 5-20-09

Title:A Body To Die For / G.A McKevett
Due Date: 5-20-09

Title: The Columbian Exchange: biological & cultural consequences
(it actually cuts off at “consequ”)
Due Date: 5-27-09

Title: Dirge for a Dorset Druid: a Penny Spring and Sir Toby Glendower mystery
(another one that cut off but I finished it by looking it up on the SPL catalog)
Due Date: 5-27-09

Title: Running Hot / Jayne Ann Krentz
Due Date: 5-20-09

Title: The Chicago River: a history in photographs
Due Date: 5-27-09

Title: Crucified / Michael Slade
Due Date: 5-20-09

Title: Headless Body in Topless Bar: the best headline from America's favorite newspaper
(it cut off at “from Am” but I looked it up, too)
Due Date: 5-20-09


--------

I am just being random right now. It's a lovely day, but hot. Still, maybe once I manage to get everything I need to get done indoors out of the way (a couple of phone calls and updating my mp3 player playlists for work tonight - which isn't a big deal, but it's something I want to do) I will go for a walk or sit outside and write a little.

This weekend my plan is to not overdo things. I have clean clothes, I will try not to sit around the house and grimace over how dusty and disorganized things are and I will go to the park and people-watch, do some journaling. Perhaps I will do some reading out on the deck, out in the sun. I have a hair appointment on Saturday to finally get it cut - it's time for a change.

One of these days I'll get around to writing a little more about what I have been up to lately (it's a lot...so much that I want to schedule myself free time the way my friend, Ammie does). For now, I'll just end this here and go get be productive elsewhere.

.between the moon and you.

I've been struggling with myself for the last hour to not get frustrated and annoyed with all I have done today, but it isn't working. I just took a walk to the local branch of the Chicago Public Library. They're not open today, but I wanted to drop a book I recently finished in the outdoor drop. On the way there and back, I took note of what a nice day it was. Lots of sunshine, not too hot or too cold. This was the first time, though, that I had left the house today.

I know that I have been productive this weekend, but I hate that nagging feeling that I wasn't quite productive enough. Yesterday, I even managed a somewhat social outing when Kathy and I joined my friend, Bill from the library for an early dinner/late lunch and a movie in Lakeview. We did a bit of walking and I got to enjoy the nice weather yesterday.

I actually even tackled a number of things from my daily list, leaving only two or three unaccomplished for today. I backed up all the files on my laptop, did some laundry so I'd have clean socks for the upcoming week, picked up a Reader (something I do weekly in order to check out any upcoming events and to read Savage Love and News of the Weird), put the first few discs of a new audiobook on my mp3 player, finished my Netflix DVD and finished editing the second draft of my novel (i.e, it now has an ending I am mostly happy with - or as happy as I will probably ever be with an ending that I wrote).

Still, I feel like I really have done nothing. I know what it is. The nagging feeling that it's never enough - I have this desperate need to have more reflective time and always, I have this strong urge to write. To get it all down. Every single thing I think or see or hear. And yes, I know - I am writing, but it's not what I mean.

I realize I have written nothing fresh in so long that I am beginning to feel I don't have it in me anymore. It's the one thing, the major thing I always wanted to do with my life and I am just barely doing it. I wrote a second novel in November, but it was terrible and needs a lot more work before I can do anything with it. The first novel, the one I just finished editing (again), is the same one I have been working on forever and a day - and I still don't feel like it's perfect enough for publication (though, thank god I have an ending now that isn't completely lame and I said what I wanted to say with it, too). It would be wonderful to get it out of my own head for awhile and into someone else's hands, but I can seem to stop feeling worried that it isn't good enough.

In the meantime, I walk around in a daze, writing long pieces of creative nonfiction (i.e, personal nonfiction/memoir - as that is the kind of creative nonfiction I lean toward writing most) in my head - but with little time to jot down ideas or notes. All these long passages of prose in my head that I never get to put on paper - or by the time I do, they are gone.

I guess what I need is an outlet. I need to write some smaller pieces and I need time and quiet (back to the need for reflective time, which has been another persistent gnawing lately) to put them together without distraction (i.e, work, the Internet, pets, errands, worries, people, television and even just being uncomfortable). Then I need some timely feedback.

The problem is: I really don't know what to write when it comes to smaller pieces. Especially since my future goal is always (yes, always) publication and most of my short writing seems to have no main idea. This, of course, is because all of the short writing I have done since college has been blog entries. And they're all just personal ramblings of the pointless kind. I can't even seem to keep this blog on track. Initially, I started it as a way of keeping track of my progress through anxiety and toward a more fulfilling life. I think I get off-subject more often than I am on target.

And as far as feedback, I no longer have the good fortune of being surrounded by writers and aspiring writers everyday. No one has to read and comment on my work for next week's class or next month's writer's group meeting. Admittedly, I've lost some of the will it takes to hound other people to read my work and offer their opinions, too.

So instead of feeling like finishing my novel - or rather, giving it a proper ending - is a milestone, I end up feeling like it was a device for procrastination. Which, quite possibly it was. And in finishing something that seemed to be holding me back, I should feel better - but I don't. I just feel more incomplete.

.it's food nouveau.

I don't usually post much about anything in particular - or I don't feel I do. But I read a lot of food blogs that are often more like food porn considering all the gorgeous pictures: Urban Vegan, Smitten Kitchen and (the awesomely titled) It Ain't Meat, Babe - just to name a few. And also I've been trying to cook more on occasion, when both time and my (often thin-running) patience allow.





Last night, Kathy and I decided to make tabouli for the first time this year. It's a nice, refreshing and mostly spring-like (to me, anyway) salad that I have been known to make with Neat East's roasted garlic & olive oil couscous, diced cucumbers and tomatoes, mint, parsley and lemon juice. Fairly simple. This time, though, we did cheat more than usual - we used Fantastic brand's tabouli mix so that all we had to add were the vegetables (and extra mint and lemon juice because we like it like that).





The tabouli was a side dish to our grilled eggplant.





And finally, I also made blueberry muffins last night. Not just any blueberry muffins, though. Nuh-uh. You see, I have been dying to see how well something baked the vegan way would turn out. Now I know - I made my very first ever vegan blueberry muffins.







They were quite good, actually and I have some left over for a couple of days. I'm sure they'll be a nice mid-day snack at work. I'm a vegetarian but not vegan. Nevertheless, it makes me happy to try a vegan recipe and not screw it up. :)


EDIT: I've included the recipe below. :)

VEGAN BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup soy milk
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup water
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup blueberries

DIRECTIONS
1. Mix wet ingredients. Mix dry ingredients. Add blueberries to dry ingredients and coat with the flour mixture. Mix together and bake at 400 F for about 18 minutes, or until golden brown.

.can't expect the world to be your raggedy andy.

It's one of those evenings where I feel cold and distant from everything, like I am a planet all to myself. I have no one around to talk to and nothing to really talk about, though my mind is spinning around so many things at once. Mostly because I was putting together a new playlist for my mp3 player and I was touching on songs I love, and ones I want to hear again. Songs bring memories or trails of thought attached to them. All of these things give way to the strange mood I am in which is somewhere between complacent and melancholy. I suppose I may just be tired as the hour creeps toward 11pm. It's been a long day - one of those where I work from 10am until 9pm.

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the way things are and the way I want them to be. And I've been thinking a great deal about the person I am and realizing more and more ugly things about myself that I am trying to process. How do you make something detestable into something more positive? I suppose I am talking in riddles, not giving enough information for anyone else to roll these thoughts around or provide insight. For the moment, it may just have to stay that way. You may have noticed I'm a pretty guarded individual anyway. I think it may be awhile before I can form these thoughts into words I would be willing to share with anyone else. Let's just say I am not happy with myself - with my thoughts, with my actions, with the current state of most things in my life. I feel stuck in many ways and don't know how to get unstuck. At least not without making my life very uncomfortable. I should stop there since I am clearly not going to elaborate.

I just felt the need to write something tonight and it came out like mad ramblings. But anyway...

.restless as a willow in a windstorm.

I think spring does something to me, and mostly, it's good. Days like this - sunny and warmer - make me feel more charged. I'm not a naturally motivated person, despite the things I have accomplished in life. I have to work at it and off and on lately I've felt overwhelmed. But the last couple if days I have been coming out of it, feeling clearer and thinking more about all the things I want to do. Moreso, I've been thinking about how to reach those goals. Occasionally, I feel so far away from the things I want and I obsess about dying unfulfilled. Yes, I think about that, morbid as that may be (or dramatic, maudlin - pick an adjective). I am between books right now, though, and the ones I am reading have me all over the map emotionally. And that's good. Yes, good. At work, I am listening to the audiobook of Kris Radish's Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral (not the most briliiant thing ever written, but it has its really insightful moments and it's really fun, too...for a funeral). And while I am waiting for The Host to come back my way (long story short: had to return it while I was smack in the middle because it was very overdue and the lords of the library were making a fuss; put a hold on it at both CPL and SPL and am now waiting for it), I am reading a wonderful graphic novel called French Milk that is making me realize how desperately I want to go to Paris and alternating that book with Denise Levertov's poetry. The effect is this: me wanting to write more, read more, travel more, do things for myself more. The poetry makes me want to sit in the corner and write lines and lines of verse; the graphic novel makes me want to draw, write more about my own experiences, be more aware of my surroundings and what's in my head and heart...and of course, travel; and the Radish novel makes me think about how I'd like to go out of this world and more importantly, how I'd like to live while I am in it.

So maybe it's not the change in seasons alone, but also, my choice of reading material that's making me feel this way. Either way, it's really great. I have to make a list of the things I want to do and get pro-active about getting them done.

.take this sinking boat and point it home.

I've been thinking about how I am turning 32 next month, which is strange and hard to fathom for me. I still feel, on some levels, much younger than that - though I have my "feeling old" days as well. Mostly I've been thinking of what I want for my birthday and what changes I would like to see in my life by this time next year. I emailed my sister this week to tell her that I would most likely not be taking the trip down south that I hoped to this year. Due to a funds snag (long story), I don't see myself taking any major airline trips this year and I'm really sad about that. I miss my NC friends and I haven't seen my sibling or nephews now in about 3 years. And of course, this rules out other trips, too. Not that I thought I'd be running off for a major vacation, but I like it when that's at least a possibility.

I have also been thinking about where I thought I would be at this point in my life. In a great many ways, I am at peace with who I am now. But in others, I am not where I hoped I'd be - emotionally/mentally, financially. One of the big things for me lately has been my obsessive worrying about the state of my dreams. Since I was eight years old, with very little inconsistency, I have wanted to be a writer. Sometimes I wanted to be a poet, once or twice I thought I might be a journalist and more often than not I want and have wanted to be a novelist. All roads lead back to words on paper for me. Or on the computer screen seeing as how the world has leaned that way, toward lit in cyberspace. A lot of my most recent conversations with my therapist revolved around the fact that lately, I mostly just write for myself. Even the novel I've been working on for...well, awhile, has not been seen by anyone else in some time now. My therapy assignment for the next few sessions is to work on this. To work on me and on my joy and well-being. Most importantly, the ways in which these things are connected so deeply to words and writing. There are three things I want before the end of April: an agent, a circle of writers/readers from whom I gain feedback and a completed screenplay. That last one is part of my participation in Script Frenzy, which I am looking forward to.

By the end of three months, I would also like to have begun writing poetry again and I would like to have been to a couple of open mics. I wouldn't mind attempting reading at one, in fact, if I can get up the nerve. But I just have a desperate need to get out there more. It probably is partially due to the change in seasons. As the months get warmer and the days get longer, I find myself restless more often. This is a pretty typical pattern for me. I'm trying to curb some of my less appropriate restless urges by catering to some of the more understandable ones.

Recently, I went to a hypnotist on the (yes, sorta kooky) recommendation of my therapist. It was an interesting experience and different than what I expected. My expectation was, I suppose, that I would walk into this office and there would be some tinkly new age music and incense burning. And then there would be some hippie guy with glassy eyes who would hypnotize me. Instead, it was a nice, normal looking office and the receptionist led me to a room where I watched a video of my soon-to-be hypnotist as he introduced himself - an attempt to put clients more at ease before meeting him in person. It was slightly helpful, but I am pretty much a ball of anxiety no matter what. He was nice, though and except for a very soothing voice, he was not at all what I was expecting. Did hypnosis work? I think for a time, it did. I felt more relaxed and at peace when I left his office than I had in a long time. If I had the privacy and motivation to do maintenence I might have seen more results - I'm not sure. Anyway, I go back in a week for "reinforcement." It's all very strange, I know and I feel a little wacko for it. But I think if it ultimately makes a dent in the anxiety I tend to walk around with on a regular basis, it is worth feeling like a freak.