Winter Blues

I've been struggling to stay awake, stay energized, stay focused. Overall, this winter has been better than others of late, but at last the shorter days and not so much sunlight have taken their toll. I've been playing around with the Vitamin D and just get through the days as best I can. At least March will be here soon.

Roadblocks

Hope today's sewing adventure goes better than yesterday's. Spent a good bit of time cleaning up after the last project, thoroughly cleaning the lint out of the serger, getting the cutting table re-organized to get space to work. Only to have the serger stubbornly refuse to serge. The threads kept getting snarled and breaking, and I couldn't really see a reason why. So I pulled all the threads, and I'm going to try to absolutely thread it from scratch. I really hope it works, or it's going to kill the positive, productive mood that I'm in.

ETA: I did get the serger working, and I got some sewing done! One or two of the tension discs feel a little bit loose. Wonder if that is normal, or how they could be tightened. Yes, the machine could use a tune-up, but I'd like to wait until after the holidays, and until our financial situation improves.

Looking Around

I hope this doesn't turn into the Saga of the Air Conditioner, but there was a mix-up and we didn't have a repair guy come out today after all. Now we're looking at Wednesday, sooner if someone else cancels. Fortunately, the weather will not be too stifling in the meantime. Sadly, I wasn't feeling too well today, so I won't be posting anything very exciting until at least tomorrow. :) I hate not feeling well so often. It makes it worse when I compare myself to other people, because of course I look at the people who seem to accomplish everything and never have any problems. Then there are certain forums that I visit and I am reminded that everyone's life is not perfectly smooth all of the time. It's a constant go-round!

Cooling Off

I feel normal again today! Our air conditioning unit needs a cleaning/tune-up/whatever. The HVAC guy is finally coming out tomorrow. In the meantime, we've been suffering in the heat. It's amazing how much the high temperatures sapped not only my energy but my interest in anything. Mr. BTEG and I have been seriously depressed this week for no good reason; we can only attribute it to the heat. Today, the outdoor temperature was much more... temperate, and so I think I might make it, after all. I cannot even describe how awful this week has been; it was very surprising. After all, I survived hot summers as a kid, without air conditioning. I don't know what the difference is now, but I will be so happy to be able to have air conditioning back!

So Much to Do, So Little Time

The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

I go through dry spells where everything is dull and boring and the world a yawning wilderness. Then I go through periods like where I am now, where I want to sew things and knit things and buy things and sell things and be wildly crafty and do it all all at the same time! Right now I feel like the world is *too* full of wonderful things! Since I am getting better at understanding my motivations and my moods, I'm hoping to have a productive winter, but not getting unrealistic. :)

Self Improvement

In conjunction with my previous post, I am on a quest to shake up my life a little. I get this way periodically. This time, it's because Mr. Evil Genius was ill for so long, and since then we have been going through a period of not much cash flow. Plus just when Mr. Evil Genius got a new job and things were looking up, we found that we have to move. That was a serious blow which took me a while to overcome.

I will also bring up here, that though my bipolar medicine has done a good job of taking out the bad parts, or the bottom of my moods, it also seems to have taken out the top part of my moods as well. Was the most active and productive part of me the manic part? Can I achieve without that high? Time will tell.

I'm starting to feel like I'm ready to tackle life head-on again, instead of just going through the motions. I hope it will last, even if where we end up moving is not ideal. I miss the old me.

Improvement

I have been very lethargic and sluggish recently. I was starting to worry about myself. Was it depression due to our housing situation? Was it a result of my meds/mental situation? Well, the temperature has dropped and all of a sudden I am full of win again. It seems likely it was just the hot and humid weather bringing me down. We have not been running our air conditioning because of our financial setbacks earlier this year. Which is good overall, but apparently not so good for my physical state. At least I am feeling better about my overall state.

Cold Spell

Everything that the BTEG family has been through this year has affected me, and mostly not in very good ways. Still, I feel I have reasons, for example, to be more cynical. Things that I thought were there to help us were really just there to look at the bottom line. The world can be a very cold and unfriendly place, and I've seen a lot more of that lately than things in the world that are good. I've also learned more about some people's true characters. That's painful, but better in the long run than thinking someone cares about you when they don't. If it wasn't better for our daughters to be settled in a home and a school, I'd love to pull up stakes and strike out somewhere new. As it is, I'm going to have to adjust to how things have changed, both in how I relate to other people, and in myself. Perhaps some of this will change when I get back solidly on my meds and there is less stress in my life.

Keeping On

Wow, it's been a while since I posted. And absolutely nothing new has happened on the home front. Well, except that I am temporarily on an extended release version of one of my bipolar meds, and I'm afraid this med change is what led to me being rather depressed on Saturday. Been a while since I have been depressed like that. Looking back at it, I can tell it is different from normal feeling down or blue. Of course, it's hard to explain if you have never gone through it. I guess you could say it takes over your whole life. You don't feel like doing anything but lying in bed and crying.

The med change was an unfortunate result of the fact that, due to issues with getting temporary disability from Mr. BTEG's employer, we have no health insurance, and one bipolar med in particular is rather expensive. My primary physician is helping me out until we hopefully get some free pills from the pharmaceutical company. Mr. BTEG has also had to skip one of his infusions to slow down his immune system, and it is showing. BTW, when I said in my previous post that things could be straightened out in a day, I meant that things could work out in *as little* as a day. As it is, I hope things will come together by the end of this week. Otherwise we will start having serious issues to deal with.

Stress

It only occurred to me yesterday that the fact that we are planning a move might make a difference in my mood and view of life. That seems rather silly of me considering that moving is one of the big life changes, although not up there with death or divorce. I think the fact that this will be a *good* move (we're not moving until we find some place we're really happy with and that is larger) helped me forget about the stress part of it. After all, I've been looking forward to this move almost since right after when we moved into where we are now, since we had to make do with the best we could last time. But there is still stress in packing, deciding what is worth taking and what isn't, finding a new place, balancing our wants with our budget, and encouraging our daughters to sort through their messy bedroom. I need to be aware of externals to make sure I'm not just beating up on myself as I so often do.

Moody

The laptop I use for my online needs finally died on Monday after lots of problems. So after a little time shopping I am set up with a new netbook. I miss the big screen of a full size laptop a little, but the netbook looks like it will work well for me, plus it has a battery that will last longer than 20 minutes, thus not tying me to a cord constantly.

I'm feeling rather moody. Perhaps it is related to my bi-polar, although my mood swings are much easier to relate to the illness when they are more dramatic. Thank God, medicine keeps mood swings from going too far, generally. However, my counselor and I have been discussing something which I've been thinking hard about today. Can a person be friends with someone with whom they don't have a lot in common, or perhaps they completely disagree on a major issue or two? I have a difficult time doing this, but some people do seem able to accomplish it. And when I get in a certain mood, I feel like giving up on people all together and picking up my toys and going home. Not very productive to burn bridges, but sometimes my inner self urges me to do it. I've been able to stick to the more prudent option of keeping bridges intact so far, but this whole people thing just confuses me sometimes.

Propping...Eyes...Open

All I did was run around today. Not all my errands were successful, either. I'm tired. Hope all your Christmas plans are going better than I feel mine are at the moment. I think we can get everything together, but I think I will feel more sure after a good night's sleep. 'Night.

Blue

So what did you all do with your weekend? I'm feeling a little better, but I'm still not doing much beyond sewing and cross-stitching. I did finally get back to exercising a little today. I'll be glad when school starts tomorrow; it will be nice to get back into the schedule, and have more to do (besides the ubiquitous housework.)

I'm not entirely sure of the reason, but I've been feeling a little blue. Everything seems boring to me right now. Hopefully I will break out of this soon, maybe tomorrow.