Caffeinated Elf: Having a Bad Brain Day

Sorry

2005-02-11T11:18:00.000-05:00

I've gotten really overloaded with other stuff. I don't know when, if ever, I'm going to get back to working on this blog.

Off the wort

2004-12-30T11:23:00.000-05:00

I stopped the St. John's Wort although not entirely on purpose.

I noticed that the irritability continued and, if anything, got worse. There were a couple incidents where I found myself getting really really angry over little things, and it often seemed to happen within an hour or so of taking my second dose of the day.

Eventually, I wound up missing several doses (taking it regularly three times a day with meals is hard to do when your schedule is all over the map) and just decided to let it go. The angry incidents stopped.

Fortunately, my general mood is still OK. At least I don't find myself in tears for no reason as frequently anymore.

Hopefully, things will continue to be OK. We'll see.

Worts and all

2004-12-13T06:16:00.000-05:00

So I started up with the St. John's Wort last week. I haven't noticed a major improvement thus far -- in fact I was a bit irritable on the weekend. (Maybe that was a coincidence?) Presumably it'll take a week or two before I can really feel the effects. Or not.

A few links with info about St. John's Wort that I found useful:

Wikipedia on St. John's Wort
St. John's Wort FAQ from MentalHelp.net
How to use St. John's Wort from eHow.com

Creeping up on me

2004-12-01T23:50:00.000-05:00

Woke up at 11:47 this morning. Yeah, way to take on the day...

I don't feel depressed; if you were to ask me, "Are you depressed?", I'd say, "No, I'm fine, thanks."

But...

I keep finding myself in tears, or nearly in tears, at the stupidest times. Like when I'm walking down the street and I see an old lady hobbling along with a cane. Or when I'm eating lunch in a restaurant somewhere, and some dorky piece of MOR pop -- like Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" this afternoon, for instance -- starts playing. Or when I'm shopping for toothpaste.

Maybe I do need some meds, although I'm tempted to give St. John's Wort a try first.

sigh

Still without the meds

2004-11-24T22:31:00.000-05:00

It's been a little over two months now, since I went off my meds (having mislaid the bottle, and also having missed my last shrink appointment wherein I could have gotten another scrip).

I'm actually feeling pretty good at the moment, largely because I finally quit my job a couple weeks ago. I feel so much better, not having to play any more twisted politics. And I can now get a job that's more in line with what I want to do anyway.

Optimism is nice. Let's hope it lasts a while...

Yet another blog

2004-11-20T21:03:00.000-05:00

As if I don't have enough going on, I decided to set up another blog:

Chubby Elf: Notes from the Battle of the Bulge
My weight has been on an upward trend for some time. I'm going to try and get things back under control...

Because, well, I have gotten chubby/fat, and I really need to do something about it.

Hopefully it'll have more actual writing by me, instead of the ongoing link vomit that I have running here. We'll see.

(If you scroll down in this blog, I've added a feed in the sidebar that shows the latest post from the other blog.)

Holiday Gift Ideas

2004-11-18T11:19:00.000-05:00

Here are some good ideas:

gifts for depressed people
gifts that promote relaxing and getting a good sleep
a review of the Sleep Posture Pillow, which would also make a nice gift

Heck, maybe I'll just buy them all for myself...

"A confused, disoriented state of mind"

2004-11-07T15:09:00.000-05:00

Lights go down
It's dark
The jungle is your head
Can't rule your heart

It's been a crazy, crazy week. Too many highs, too many lows. Shit hits the fan and all goes flying.

Hello, Hello (Hola!)
I'm at a place called vertigo (¿Dónde está?)
It's everything I wish I didn't know
Except you give me something I can feel
Feel

Might be a while before I get back to this.

Red flag

2004-10-28T21:05:00.000-04:00

Yep, got one those classic signs of depression going on: "Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities that were once enjoyed."

Been off the meds now for about six weeks. At this point, I've no idea if it's the withdrawal that's hit me, the lessening daylight, or the usual bullshit that life tends to sling at you. Or all three.

Maybe it is time to get that scrip filled again...

How to get along nicely with others and be less of a spazz

2004-10-17T23:26:00.000-04:00

I'm still functioning (if you can call it that) without the benefit of meds. Been too damn lazy to do anything about it.

At this point I'm wondering if I can just give them up for good, or if in fact going back on them would benefit me. After all, the days are getting shorter (less sunlight: boo), and the "annoyances" at work continue. I wouldn't say no to a bit of a mood-boost.

Meanwhile, I happened to pass by Brain Food Blog, and found a link to The Dale Carnegie Page, where you can find neat little summaries of his books How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. There are also summaries of two books by Dorothy Carnegie -- The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking and Don't Grow Old - Grow Up!.

Win friends and influence people, huh? Right now, I'll settle for not wanting to strangle anyone.

Withdrawn

2004-10-03T20:42:00.000-04:00

I've been off my meds (the main ones, anyway) for the last two weeks. I didn't mean to stop -- I just haven't been able to find the bottle. I think it's somewhere in the apartment, although it's hard to say, since everything is such a mess.

And I missed my last doctor's appointment, which is something that's happened only once before in the last 7 1/2 years (omigod! that long?) since I've been seeing him. I just completely forgot about it, didn't check my calendar, didn't do anything. D'oh!

So now I've been cruising along, largely unmedicated (I still have my night-time meds, but they're a very low dose). And I've been really pissed off about work lately, although I think that even with the meds, I'd still be mad.

There are a few good things coming up that I have to look forward to this fall. But I still need to get it together and deal with the stuff that I've been avoiding. Like cleaning the apartment and finding my meds.

Introspective

2004-09-11T13:51:00.000-04:00

Perhaps it's just as well that I don't blog here as much as I thought I would:

Dear diary, you make me sick
Keeping a diary is bad for your health, say UK psychologists. They found that regular diarists were more likely than non-diarists to suffer from headaches, sleeplessness, digestive problems and social awkwardness.

Although I still like the idea of being able to track the headspace that I'm in at various points in time.

FuturePundit has additional commentary and linkage on the topic.

La-la la-la-la la-la la-la-la la

2004-09-08T22:56:00.000-04:00

I did OK, but not great, on this Anxiety Disorder Facts Quiz.

You'd think these surrealist games would be more fun and less pressure, but I really can't be freaking bothered.

Instead, I'll just sit and listen to more Iggy Pop.

Quote

2004-08-15T00:06:00.006-04:00

This old quote popped into my head today:

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.

It's from a book called Damage, written by Josephine Hart; the book was also made into a movie with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that what happened in the past has made me stronger.

Dreaming

2004-08-01T23:38:00.000-04:00

I don't often remember my dreams, except for certain things that I tend to dream over and over and over. And sometimes these dreams happen every single night, or I'll go for long stretches where they rarely happen.

I'm thinking of signing up for an account at Dream Journal so I can keep track of when certain dreams of mine occur, and how often. The feature to keep track of dream symbols looks particularly handy.

More stuff on sleep and dreams:

Anxiety: Sweet, Elusive Sleep -- "You toss, you turn, you worry. What happens when insomnia disrupts your night—and your dreams."

What Dreams Are Made Of -- "New technology is helping brain scientists unravel the mysteries of the night. Their work could show us all how to make the most of our time in bed"

Does Bipolar Disorder Affect Dreams?

BTW, those few intrepid souls who actually subscribe to this blog feed may also be interested in the feed for the link log, which is at http://www.furl.net/members/caffeinatedelf/rss.xml. I tend to update the link log a lot more often than the blog itself.

Needing a Break

2004-07-30T21:48:00.000-04:00

I'm thinking I need a vacation.

It's just been hard to motivate myself to do things at work, and little things have been annoying me even more so than usual. And there are things that I'd like to do outside of work that keep slipping away from me. Not to mention that summer is nearly over, and I've hardly even noticed it.

According to this article from CNN, some people find that taking time off from work can be stressful.

I don't think that's something I'll have to worry about.

Cranky... unmotivated... might as well eat

2004-07-16T11:18:00.000-04:00

My frustration-induced noshing of the last several months has taken its toll -- I've packed on about 20 pounds since last fall. Not good.

Happened to buy a book a few days back called Good Mood Food. It has some neat-looking recipes in it for foods to help you feel better. The only problem: I don't really cook much (ie. at all). It's not so much the cooking part I dislike as the cleaning up -- the kitchen is a way station for dirty dishes and there are scary things in the fridge.

I also found this Mind Guide to Food and Mood, which looks like it has some useful information (the rest of the site looks good too).

Anyway, I might as well finish breakfast...

incoherence

2004-07-05T21:02:00.000-04:00

I was hoping that listening to some pounding synthetic noise would be enough to distract me from despair and focus me, at least just enough to get some things done.

No such luck.

Shiny Happy Clueless People

2004-06-21T20:35:00.000-04:00

FuturePundit linked to this article in The New York Times:

Against Happiness
Researchers found that angry people are more likely to make negative evaluations when judging members of other social groups. That, perhaps, will not come as a great surprise. But the same seems to be true of happy people, the researchers noted. The happier your mood, the more liable you are to make bigoted judgments... Why? Nobody's sure. One interesting hypothesis, though, is that happy people have an ''everything is fine'' attitude that reduces the motivation for analytical thought. So they fall back on stereotypes -- including malicious ones.

I used to have this friend who had everything seemingly go her way; she got married, she had an okay job -- overall, she had managed to reach a satisfactory state of life with relatively few intervening setbacks.

I didn't begrudge her happiness, but I found that she was decidedly lacking in empathy when I hit a few snags in my life -- my relationship broke up, I didn't get the job I wanted. It got to the point that I couldn't stand talking to her because she was so bloody condescending -- after all, her life worked out just fine, so if mine didn't, I must have screwed up in some way, right?

Here's more from the same NYT article:

There is one bit of the world that happy people do see in an irrationally rosy light: themselves. As the British psychologist Richard P. Bentall has observed, "There is consistent evidence that happy people overestimate their control over environmental events (often to the point of perceiving completely random events as subject to their will), give unrealistically positive evaluations of their own achievements, believe that others share their unrealistic opinions about themselves and show a general lack of evenhandedness when comparing themselves to others."

Hell, yeah. I remember wanting to scream at this friend that just because everything fell into place perfectly in her life and it didn't happen the same way for me, it didn't make her superior, or me defective -- hell, she was just lucky or something. Eventually, I couldn't stand it any more, and stopped speaking to her.

A few years later, I heard through the grapevine that she and her husband split up, among other things.

Congratulations, my friend -- maybe now you finally have a clue.

It ain't that bad (or is it?)

2004-06-11T20:46:00.001-04:00

If my results on this Clean Sweep life assessment questionnaire were to be believed, my life is a complete and utter frigging train wreck.

Granted, I haven't been doing too well, lately -- my mood has been down, I've been overeating, and my concentration is shot. But still, I've been worse, and I hardly think my life is a total disaster.

Actually, if I were to have taken this quiz six months ago, when I thought my life was going fairly well, I still would have scored poorly.

Having said that, the quiz does point out a few things that are impacting the quality of my life, like the fact that my apartment resembles a junkyard in a war zone. Must work on that.

There's also a good discussion about the quiz here.

Flooded, yet empty

2004-06-03T22:08:00.000-04:00

I've hit a certain point of exhaustion and blankness wherein I feel I have much to say but there is nothing to say.

I haven't been sleeping well lately and my concentration was shot today.

And...

I've bought a lot of stuff this week -- CDs, books, office supplies (largely to manage all the other stuff that I've been accumulating). This post from A Mindfull Life (which in turn references this post from Cup of Chicha) talks about the compulsion to acquire more and more reading material than one actually has time to read.

I can relate.

My burst of acquisitiveness is likely compensating for something. Or a lot of things. Whatever.

New Resource Links

2004-05-28T22:27:00.000-04:00

I added some new resources to the links page on my old website.

Will eventually clean up that site and make it a bit more useful.

Measuring Up (or Down)

2004-05-27T00:05:00.000-04:00

Having bashed through a few different online depression tests tonight has proved inconclusive -- on some I score as being mildly or moderately depressed, whereas other results don't indicate that I'm depressed right now.

I guess I feel flat and indifferent more than anything. That, and the fact that I haven't been able to fall asleep at a decent hour for the last 5 or 6 nights. So if this isn't depression, then what the hell is it?

Blank screens are scary

2004-05-23T23:28:00.000-04:00

I guess I'm doing better than I was a couple months ago. Work is better, although the relationship has gone and blown up in my face.

I'd like to think that I'm making progress with my life, but there's still so much that remains undone. Then I blink, and another day is gone, another week is gone...

Am I really happier, or do I just hurt less?

Ramping Up

2004-05-23T21:25:00.000-04:00

Still have to iron out a few things on this blog.

What else to do in the meantime, beside post a quiz result?

"God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless."

You are Augustine!
You love to study tough issues and don't mind it if you lose sleep over them. Everyone loves you and wants to talk to you and hear your views, you even get things like "nice debating with you." Yep, you are super smart, even if you are still trying to figure it all out. You're also very honest, something people admire, even when you do stupid things.

What theologian are you?
A creation of Henderson

Testing

2004-05-23T20:15:00.000-04:00

Is this image going to show up?

Apparently, not. So much for direct linking to images hosted on Freewebs.com.

Anyway, you can see the image here.

New Space

2004-05-23T14:16:00.000-04:00

Working on transfering stuff over from my other website.