Coming up near the "1 week" point since I last posted anything, I figure now is as good as a time as any. This time, the cause hasn't been a lack of things I could write about. In fact, there are several fresh topics that have been queueing up in my brain (and I will almost certainly get to them momentarily).

The holiday season is now over. Completely, and without question. I not only survived it, but actually managed to enjoy most of it.

(For me, the time when the "holidays" officially became truly and totally over occurred last Tuesday, when we drove bouncing to the airport and saw him off at the security checkpoint.)

For the most part, I did not become depressed during the holidays this season. The widely spread theory goes that December is the most depressing time of year. That certainly wasn't the case for me this year. Maybe it was all the fun stuff going on with friends and family. Or maybe Christmas just isn't as depressing for me in general as it may be for some people. Whatever.

No, this year, my moods did not follow the societal template. Instead, for me, it happened afterwards.

The internal depression warning flags hit what I might call the "orange" zone this week. (Hey, if the news people can make up meaningless color designations to try to scare people about the "terrorist threat", I can make up an equally meaningless color-coded depression meter too.) Things started flaring up just a bit late last week when the fest came to a close, remained at a low simmer throughout the weekend, and blossomed into what seemed like a full-blown mental freakout shortly after we left my brother at the airport.

I'm not even sure if depression is the right word to use. Maybe it's just a lot of sadness, combined with feelings of hopelessness, plus some strange guilt about all sorts of shit I did, or didn't do, in the past. Maybe if I had done things differently here, there, or that other time, things would be different and better now. Fuck that.

Eventually the nasty feelings subsided somewhat, but still left me drained and apathetic, sleeping 12-16 hours per night/day since then. (Tonight, of course, being the odd exception.) That doesn't happen very often.

It's likely a sign of one of two things: (1) It's part of recovering from having slightly less sleep than normal during the holiday weeks, or (2) my mental/psychiatric condition is deteriorating into something truly nasty that I really don't want to go through again. Right now, unless it persists, I'm going to cautiously believe the former. Sometimes, these sorts of things can even turn out to be self-fulfilling, so a certain degree of optimism is called for.

The other thing that is called for: A freakin job. With a capital J O B. A good job would of course be better than a bad job, but even a bad job would be better than the current state of things.

The holidays are definitely over. With bills coming in again, bank account depleted, and an empty wallet, there is no lack of economic incentive for me to find some steady work. As if that weren't enough, I've also got this theory, supported and encouraged by various therapists and doctors I've had in the past, that it might go a long way for my mental health to have a relatively stable schedule and work environment. So...

This afternoon (ok, now technically yesterday), I got myself to the point where I made several calls about various ads in the paper. None of that got anywhere just yet (positions I called about had either been filled already or nobody answered), but I had to give myself credit for trying, and not get discouraged, More attempts to come tomorrow. I have a suspicion that, as much as I'd like to have someplace to go into work tomorrow, it's likely to take more time than that. Suck.

I'm kind of reluctant to even be writing all this crap here right now, as I think I sometimes have a tendancy to use it as a substitute for taking real action. If I babble all day on the web about how stupid everything is, and how it all sucks, and how I'm going to do something about it one of these days, then often, by the time I'm done writing, I'll have mentally purged the issue without having taken any real action to address the problem. It's a pattern I've come to recognize. Yet in this case, recognition alone does not constitute a solution.

So...

I really do have better things to write about than these redundantly annoying statements. Let's turn the page.