More analysis of depression as an affliction

Sounds like the title for a bad psychology 101 paper. Heh. I guess that's one benchmark for sucess in this culture - if you can't inspire brilliance, at least get a disorder named after you on your way out, right?

I've been trying to think of how come I can detach sometimes from the depression and look at it analytically, and then other times it's just too much and I can't sit back and separate it out. You know what the one consistent factor is? Sunlight.

Yep, sunlight. When it's sunny out or I'm sitting by a window and getting lots of direct and indirect sunlight, I feel perfectly fine. Normal, even. Sure, the depression can be raging around inside my mind, but it gets much thinner and quieter in the sunlight. I don't think that happy lights do the same thing. I think that I need to be in a well-lit area during the wintertime.

Well, at least it's a simple solution, but the problem is that I don't get enough of it in the wintertime and there's nothing to be done about that when the sun has set each night. But at least in my current job I get to sit right by a window and look out at the sunlight each day.

Hey, I'm counting my positives and blessings. It's not that I'm stuck in despair, but I just need to figure out how to get myself motivated and in motion again. Funny thing, that... with motion comes stability. Momentum will overcome slight bumps in the road. If I can build up enough momentum it makes the path seem straighter. Like attaining aerodynamics through rifling a bullet (so it spins as it flies).

Those are my thoughts on the matter. We'll see if they bear out.

Back in the saddle again

Depression is a bitch. A bitch, bitch-itty, bitch-bitch-bitch.

Let's just say that the last few days have been tolerable and pleasant by comparison with those endured earlier, but that I wouldn't wish this kind of crap on my enemies. Well, not chronically, at any rate. It's time to get back into the saddle again with regard to meds and doctors and mood altering substances of the legal, economically viable sort.

I'm actually fine and out of the "Gods, I just want to die and the world to go away and something to be -easy- for a change," stage, but lately I've been languishing in the "I'm making an effort, be happy with what you've got" stage. I don't feel despair, but I do live it constantly.

*sigh* I just found out that all of my files are somehow missing from my computer's shared folder. All of my candidates are gone from the hard drive. Sucks to be me.

More later.

Road to Recovery

It's been a hell of a week, but I'm finally beginning to get back up into the healthy ranges of emotional variance again, instead of stuck down in the depths of despair. It's snowing lightly outside of work, and I've got a late appointment happening tonight at 6pm. Just interviewed someone who had very unreasonable expectations for salaries and parroted back all of my own recent questions to me. Should she stick this out or jump to another career path? Is it just a phase or is this a greater trend?

Had a call with an old manager and a competitor yesterday... in chatting about the industry he told me that my old supervisor has just posted excellent results and returns for January. *shrug* It's not a competition. I'm still recruiting and doing well, so I'm not worried. It's just a further commentary on how different a mindset I've got.

I noticed that one of my favorite shirts is now threadbare and with broken buttons today. Unfortunately the shirt is black so the threadbare part wasn't noticed until I was already here in the office. To cover it over I've put on my indoor fleece which keeps me warm. Even with the office heat on and toasty elsewhere, my desk sits me by a window and I'm constantly chilled here, so it's not unusual for me to wear the fleece.

I want to get HM's materials over to PM for presentation today. I think she'd be a good fit there, and they have an opening, so let's put da lime in da coconut.

Big Trouble from Desperation

Yesterday I had a minor breakdown. I left work 2 hours early and dropped an email to my boss saying that we had to talk, the job wasn't working out the way I needed it to, should I go back to freelancing, yaddi yaddi yadda. I went home and just broke down and lost it, told my husband I thought I'd be better off if I could just lay down and die right now, said that I couldn't be the strong person anymore because I'm not, I'm weak and I feel like I'm drowning in misery and ... of course the only words that kept coming out were "I'm just so tired."

It's not fun. We're heading to the local mental health clinic to see what kind of help I can get which is not going to break the bank when it comes to buying medications. With no insurance or benefits through my job and a life-long disease to try and manage, I don't know what kind of help I can get. I mean, I do earn money, but there's precious little in the way of actual luxury in my life right now to strip away and free up the cash.

Whatever. I just hope I don't lose my job today. It would serve me right, I suppose, but ... I can't contemplate anything at that point. Either way, it's becoming clear that I am in a sort of economic slavery. I just wish I could see a way out that didn't entail relying on medicine for the rest of my life which I have no way to pay for, or losing what little I've got right now. I'm going to see if I can switch to a 1099 form instead of W2. I know that I can, and what that will mean is that the money normally taken out of my paychecks for taxes will come to me instead, but it means that I will have no ability to claim unemployment should I fail and it also means that if I don't pay my quarterly taxes myself I'm fucked beyond belief. But the ship of my life -is- sinking fast right now and I just need to buy some time against the hope against all hopes that something will give and I'll get the break I need in order to keep going. Otherwise I've got to start looking around for a place to house the cats while I return home to live with my folks again because I can't make this lifestyle work on my own.

Either way it's equivalent to a kind of suicide.

Please let the economy shift in my favor and the commissions start to rack up. Or let me find a job which will allow me the stability and salary and benefits I require to make this life _WORK_.

Wrestling with the demons

Well, the shittiness of the weekend hasn't ended. I've been wrestling over and over with demons and not doing so well with it just yet. All of the other readings said that I'm where I need to be, just put up with it and let it pass.

"It'll all be over soon," said the priest, quoting God's response to the suffering of this lifetime. Too bad eternal anything is just as much of hell as brimstone and damnation.

I did have a wonderful dream of being special in a weird way and having no one left to share it with. What a strong message, eh?

Oh, and I read up on Time Magazine's articles about mapping consciousness and the human brain. Apparently scientists think they're getting closer to the point at which they can conclusively prove that the brain is the source of consciousness instead of merely its seat within the human body. How odd that quantum mechanics is rapidly approaching the point of convergence with the spiritual theories of planes of existence, energy, magic, and acausality while the neuroscientists think they've got a lead on eliminating the concept of soul.

That will never happen, mainly because science cannot -ever- conclusively establish causality, merely disprove something. And besides, the arguments which were put forth on why the soul needs to be removed as a concept were pretty pathetic and weak, philosophically speaking. "Because the last folks to die in celebrated means in order to attain a reward hereafter were the 9/11 Terrorists." Fuck off, Time writers. That's got to be the single weakest argument I've EVER heard. Just because there's a spiritual system which doesn't play well with modern sensibilities doesn't mean that the spiritual truths are to be so conveniently discarded. I don't care whether anyone actually believes like me or not, yet I'm quite the spiritual being.

So sad. Science is a tool for understanding, a system for learning, but it is not and never will be a voice of authority prescribing reality. Every single scientific achievement and advancement and all of its wonders must be conditionally accepted with the phrase "...as well as we can determine given the state of technology and our comprehension right now." Nothing so fluid as the establishment of fact by consensus can ever truly understand anything at its essential levels. And a fundamental principle of the universe is that those who understand a thing simply cannot describe that understanding, because mystery veils itself.

Well, I'm not trashing science. I believe it has its place, and I heartily approve of all of its advances, but when it starts trying to reach for the place of authority in declaring the nature of hidden things... well, let's just say that no one ever expects a scientist to be able to give comfort in the face of the overwhelming human condition. They can alleviate many conditions, but comfort is a spiritual matter. Even doctors learn that when the medicines and technologies fail, they must return to something described as 'bedside manner'.

"And all thy learning and seeking shall avail thee not, unless thou knowest the Mystery: that if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou shalt never find it without thee."

Kinda applies to my own situation as well. I don't rail too much at externals anymore when the angels and demons do battle in my head. If I can't find the peace and comfort and love and support within me, then it's no wonder that I get ridicule instead of support from those around me. Yet I'm human in that I expect some kind of support, need that support, and get so hurt when it doesn't appear.

I guess I haven't yet learned how to communicate my needs in an appropriate manner. And I also guess that I'm goddamned tired of being the one to initiate patience and understanding. Last night was remarkable for me in that I refused to apologize just to make the peace. It was a strained, strained night, but I'm so very tired of being let down.

Apropos, I suppose

I came in to work to find a fire drill waiting for me. I was here early, made some furious calls, and then ended up finding out when I spoke with the client that no, no need for the fire drill after all. An hour's panic and activating the phone tree, so to speak, for a false alarm.

Grrrrreeeeeaaaaaaat.

In my professional life I rely upon my reputation and good name in the industry. It's how I earn respect and trust. And it's not something I'm used to having to rely on, and I hate it when shit like this happens.

So, I continue to cast about me looking for one thing or another which will make it easier, somehow, or some kind of a reassurance that I'm on the right path. I need that. I can endure much when I know there's some kind of payoff at the end of it all, but it's so very hard for me to see the goal at all sometimes, especially coming off of a weekend like the hell I just lived through. So I'm still a little raw.

I went to one of my favorite websites online; a place I've been going to for years and years and years. Facade.com. Free Tarot readings, Bibliomancy, Stichomancy, Runes, I Ching, Biorhythms, etc. I asked the question, "Is this as good as it gets? Will life ever get any better or is this the most that I can ever hope for?" Nice and light, right? ;)

Well, the reading isn't done by live readers, so the most they can do is randomly select the cards based on the spread and give you the "book" interpretation. Sometimes it fits, and sometimes it doesn't... that's the reason you need a human reader for these sorts of things. But the random number algorhythms are sufficient for bypassing the human censor side of the brain, so the metaphysics are still relevant, and being a reader myself it allows me to do a reading for myself without the attendant baggage of skewing things. I just have to be sure to not 'read' the cards myself, usually, and to take the words as written.

Well, today there showed up something rather apropos.

The middle card represents a deciding element of the present. The Hierophant: Faith in tradition and the old school. A justified and ancient source of power. Being supportive, sympathetic and loyal. Receiving instructions, learning, guidance or inspiration. The ability to hear a higher or inner voice. May also indicate a religious ritual, such as a marriage or an initiation.

Mwahahaaa! Well, the Hierophant is indeed quite the card of the present. Unfortunately, this is one of those transition times where I'm so very anxious and scared that I'm doing something wrong, or that I've chosen the wrong path, or that it will all come to nothing. I really do require emotional support to make it all better, and I do need reassurances. I just wish I could figure out how to get it from something other than random readings and a deck of virtual cards.

The interesting thing is that the card for the future was quite actually the card I typically choose as my own Significator... the Knight of Cups. Yeah, I'm a Leo so if you use astrological attributions I should technically be the Knight of Wands (or sometimes King) but Knight of Cups pretty well sums up the ideal me struggling to shine through.

I've got a solution, but it's not a step I want to take. Nor one I'll speak about here. Still, it's a good temporary means, and if I'm going to do it, I might as well go whole hog. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Helluva Weekend

This weekend was a bad weekend, in terms of mental health. Since I stopped working for TracyLocke as a Studio Manager and Web Producer to follow the new career path of Creative placement services, I've been without benefits, medication, or attention from professionals. I've been making do by managing the tough times.

I say 'managing' but really what it amounts to is knowing when the time is getting tough and withdrawing into myself or shutting down social obligations in order to not share the pain or hurt my social relationships or professional relationships by actions taken while in the throes of spiritual angst and agony. It's not so much management as it is simply 'enduring'.

Balm in Gilead

I do have one balm in Gilead... I smoke pot. It feels weird saying this on an open blog but I content myself with the knowledge that there's only a handful of folks who care enough to be interested in reading all the way through the copious notes and rambling journal entries I post. Hidden in plain sight, so to speak. There are many worse vices to have accumulated, but at least marijuana gives me both pleasure and relief. Smoking it induces a light euphoria, settles my stomach (which lately has not been a happy creature from sheer emotional stress), and elevates my mood and demeanor from the thunderbolt rollercoaster plunge to a slow, ambling geniality. Even when I was on the medications full time for manic depression, I found myself not having the same success on the medications alone as I did on the meds and the pot. So if every artist has his illness or his vice, I've got both in one.

This weekend was a bad weekend, and one full of mental despair to the point that even doing things that normally give a sort of release, or induce pleasure, were ashen and devoid of meaning, fully laden down with the burden of simply existing. My art homework has gone completely derailed, even the simple act of filling up an 8.5"x11" paper with vertical lines drawn completely by hand.

Babylon 5 Season 3 Done

I finished Season 3 of Babylon 5, and it was probably not the best choice of viewing for me in my frame of mind. It chronicles the descent and struggle against the despair brought forth by the Shadows, and ends the season with Sheridan going to Z'ha'dhum, the planet at the heart of the Shadow menace. There being seduced by false demons of his wife returned in physical form but with all sense of self completely destroyed through her bonding with their ships, trapped against his will but not completely without his foreknowledge, he crashes a ship into the Shadow citadel armed with intense thermonuclear bombs and makes one last, desperate bid for self by hurling himself off of the balcony of the highest ring of a hell similar to Dante's Inferno without the flames, and plunges down into the pit as the might of stars explode above him, wiping out the city itself. Z'ha'dhum indeed. Fade into darkness as the ambassador/resistance fighter cum Prophet, J'kar, provides voiceover of philosophical utterances of doom, despair, and the tiniest glimmer of potential hope ... End Season 3.

Not exactly the best time to be viewing this, in the midst of my own despair. The special effects didn't captivate, the storyline felt like rough sandpaper on my already raw emotions. But there was nothing else I could conceive of to do. Nothing else I found any ability to watch at all. At one point in the weekend Storm came over to me from his stint at the computer and found me sitting alone in the living room, no cats even, the TV off and the only sound being the faint hiss of the surround-sound speakers that you get when there's no audio being fed through but the receiver is still turned on.

Rollercoaster Ride

Saturday was the worst. Sunday got better. Today? Too early to tell much, but I do feel myself somewhere back amid the midtones instead of thrashing in the charcoals. It's such a sobering thought, knowing that I'm ill with an incurable disease which will continue to grind at me for the rest of my life. No stop. Only pauses. If it were controllable by an effort of will, I would do so. I fully believe that it's only the fact that I know this is a disease which allows me some small detachment from the actual episodes, and my magical training of willpower which allows me to go to that inner place and weather the storm. Otherwise I think I would have been dashed to pieces on the rocks some time ago.

Knowing this to be an illness, I can conceive of it and deal with it as separate and external to myself. That's my path of sanity. There's times when I can't come out to play because there's just too much going on just beneath the surface, but the good news is that it's just a layer, and there's sanity on the inside. The real trouble comes when the bad times hit and you try to maintain social relations, and don't give yourself the gift of isolation and processing alone. That's when the manic depressives I know get in real trouble. Myself included.

Every single episode of social consequences in my life has happened because I didn't heed my inner weather patterns and tried to keep up appearances or maintain interactions. Faced with the choice of being perceived by others as periodically aloof and arrogant, or being forced to continually clean up and deal with the consequences of my impulsive actions during manic periods or known as some kind of drama queen during my despair, I think I'll choose to be perceived as aloof. Thankyouverymuch.

Time Wasting

The real regret that I have during those periods however is that they waste time like nothing else. All the hours spent on World of Warcraft, Civilization, and SimCity don't begin to dent the hours wasted by being despaired or maniaed into relative immobility. In fact, many of those hours on the computer game time sinks are directly related to the approaches to despair. Even though there was absolutely no pleasure in the games at all this weekend, I played two complete games of Civilization IV, built one new city in SimCity, and seriously toyed with the idea of getting Burning Crusade using a gift card that we had.

The other thing which was bad this weekend was the fact that we have no cash to speak of, and no food in the house of consequence. Ramen, Lipton Noodles, and spaghetti were the bill of fare. Not from a lack of planning, but just sheer lack of resources. Well, that and the fact that the electricity turned off and we overpaid when we had it turned back on. Folks living on the edge like us figure out that when they shut you off you don't usually have to pay the full bill, just a portion of the overdue amounts, and we paid off the balance in full. While this was good in one sense, it hit us at a time when one series of checks coming in have somehow gone astray in their timing for payouts because Storm's old employers screwed up big time on paperwork. And we suffered for it.

I'm fairly certain that this weekend would not have been so dismal had I been able to eat better. Lack of proper nutrition contributes greatly to mood swings, I think. Such was my blindsight stupidity that I forgot I had several packets of Herbalife multivitamins still up in my cupboard... I should have at least taken them. And protein and vitamin shake mix too, from Herbalife. Damn. Well, done is done, but I'll keep those in mind in case something happens like that in the future again. Now we just have to get through this week and we'll be back on some kind of regular paycheck schedule.

Some progress, at least

For me, at least, I'm not bottling all off this up anymore. I told Storm this weekend exactly what was going on, and the focus of my preoccupations. It pained him to hear it, but better to share the pain and the burden than try to be the superman who is uber-reliable and can totally handle anything. I don't have the resources and wherewithal to be a continual shield around our family anymore. I'm sure I no longer have the resources simply because I was stupid enough to try in the first place.

I continue to wrestle with my decision to leap from safety into the void of my own. Jumping to Alden from TL meant leaving behind a sure paycheck with benefits and a life routine that, while boring, was steady and allowed other things to be built on top of it. And I left for the promise of money beyond my imagining that could be gotten by working hard and applying myself at the task of corporate recruiting. At least at Alden, they continually waved the promise of a big paycheck around in front of us as some kind of motivating force.

Money, Motivation, Career Changes & Despair

That's when I realized that I'm not motivated by the pursuit of money itself. I'm firm enough in my grasp on reality to know its importance, and to be able to see how miserable an existence it is when the cost of living is so very high and the cash flow is not there. I'm no fool, I live and breathe and eat in this world, not the dreams in my head. But it's not my motivating force. Sure, I would love the richness of a life lived with a high cash flow, and yes, attaining that would liberate me from a number of concerns and reduce a significant portion of the stress in my life. But money as a goal in and of itself... not so much. I keep hearing Billy Joel's line in my head "And if you can't drive with a broken back/at least you can polish the fenders".

However, it's painful to me that my foray into the recruiting world so quickly came to a choice between the pursuit of money and the need for work/life balance. I'm very afraid now, as I begin to walk down the art world path again, of seeing art in any way as a kind of a way to ever make a living. I know it can become so, but I know as well that it is far too premature to take that viewpoint or dare to hope that I will be lucky enough or persistent enough to get there. I'm already seeing the trouble I'm having in being persistent with my current career path... they say that it takes a full year of effort to get yourself to the point where you can really make a decent living being a recruiter. I'm seeing the wisdom and reality of that statement myself. and Oh, how stressful is this time between.

That's the rub, really. I've switched careers after 10 years. 35 seems to be the right time to do it. And now there's all sorts of beginner's strife to put up with once again. I'm making placements, and I'm "earning" money, but I'm not yet seeing payouts or commissions because the billing cycle for Creative recruiting is soooo long term. For example... on Friday one of my candidates had a review for possible conversion to full time status. If that happens, we the company earn a payout percentage of her starting salary offer. Of that percentage of money, I personally earn a commission. Straightforward, right? But we the company give a guarantee that the new employee will be fine for 90 days from date of hire. That means that at the very -earliest- I will see any of that money which I'd be entitled to if they had hired her -right now- would be the beginning of May.

Yeah. That's a tough time to have to wait, knowing that at any point in the process my candidate could "fall off", get fired, quit, or not fulfill her 90 day guarantee. And then, realistically, just because after 90 days the bill becomes due in full doesn't mean that the company will pay out exactly on the due date. Quite the opposite. In all realistic expectations, I'm not going to see any money for six months, unless my boss decides to pay out once the bill becomes due, not paid. She's said she would once the guarantee period is done, but there's a while to go and we don't yet know of any firm offers.

So when folks complain about recruiter fees, they need to take a real close look at how long it takes to pay out, the kinds of risks we have involved, and realize that it's going to take longer than a full year for me to begin to see any of the "money money money" that some recruiting firms like to dance in front of you.

Hope ahead? Hopefully.

The silver lining in all of this is that once you make it past your first year and start racking up the placements, yes, indeed, for those with the talent and the gift needed to make it in this industry, you most certainly can earn quite a lot of a money. But it's never fully under your control, and in the end it becomes a form of slavery in and of itself. If you walk away for something else, you lose the money still pending. You fall short of actually seeing the return on your investment of time and anguish.

So that's where I am now... in it for the long haul and hoping beyond all hope that the economy turns around and the demand for Creatives picks up tremendously. Because I see all of the hopeful job seekers, and I see some excellent talent which is going to waste because of the vagaries of the Creative hiring process. I also heard tell that TracyLocke HR folks spoke to a team of Creatives after the last round of layoffs and said "If you're thinking about jumping off, now is the time to do so since Q1 is the best time to get hired." I've got news for everyone... traditionally, yes, this would be a good time to jump, but I'm hip deep in the hiring process and this year there are far more companies handling layoffs than they are staffing up.

Damn. All I want in life is for some help with the burden of living. I'm trying and doing everything that I'm supposed to do which will lead to success, but I begin to feel as though I'm working harder, not smarter, and I'm boggled by the fact that I simply cannot figure out how to make my efforts smarter. At all. I'm 2 steps away from saying fuck it all and going back to school for Law.