Avoiding Overshadowing

Whenever a member of a family has some kind of chronic issue, the difficulty becomes keeping that issue from becoming the family focus.

In other words, you have to be intentional about not only making sure that the condition doesn't become the center of your lives, but you also have to make sure that other family members get their fair share of nurture and care and value.

In our household, where everybody has something going on (and often multiple somethings) it can become a tremendous ring around the rosy ensuring that everybody is equally tended.  Adored Wife and Social Hurricane have the most obvious (and most severe) constant challenges; Graphics Magician is entering the rocky-for-the-whole-human-race period of adolescence with a few quirks that are uniquely his own, and Basement Artist would probably stay in her introverted socially anxious corner of the house if she didn't have the strength of character to reach out despite her inclinations and if we didn't make an effort to intentionally involve her in our lives.

I, of course, am fairly low-maintenance, in an introverted, emotionally crippled, midlife crisis, periodically depressed, pessimistic, frustrated kind of way.

It'd be very easy to have the whole household revolve around Adored Wife or Social Hurricane, and there have been crisis times when they have needed the lion's share of attention.  That's fine, crisis time are going to happen (even though we've had seasons when the "crisis times" have lasted for several weeks.)  But as a day to day guideline, we HAVE to make sure that one family member's needs don't become the be-all and end-all of what our family is about.  (May I say that Adored Wife is actually much more intentional and organized about making sure this happens than I am?)

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Quality Time

You've gotta make the time.

With Adored Wife, it's talking while playing Farkle in the kitchen, or watching funny videos together, or reading quietly in bed and occasionally reading something back and forth.  It's quick emails and texts and Facebook messages back and forth.  It's soda and asking how the day went or what's up for tomorrow or anything going on with any of your creative projects or can you believe that latest "Agents of Shield?"

With Basement Artist, it's milkshakes and walks around the store and long conversations about the future and writing and philosophical concepts and jobs and church and movies and friends.

With Social Hurricane, it's easy.  Let's do something, let's watch something, let's play a game, let's go somewhere.  Buy her a piece of pizza and let her mix up some ghastly soft drink concoction at the fountain and she's good.  SH isn't tough to get along with; she just likes to be active.  Talking tends to happen in the middle of doing, and revolves around work and friends and future hopes.

With Graphics Magician, it's "come on, buddy, let's get out of the house."  It's walks around the neighborhood and long explores along the creek and through the woods and going up to play basketball with the neighbors and going to the grocery store for a doughnut.  We talk about school and Rubik's Cubes and aliens and sports and hopes and fears and dreams.

You've gotta make the time.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Dealing With My Attitude

Do you every have one of those times in your life when your attitude just leaves something to be desired?

It's not the circumstances.  There are ALWAYS things that you could wish were otherwise, but I know people with much worse problems than I have who are in a better mood than I've found myself the past few days.  It may be the neurochemical roller coaster I've been on the past few weeks and I just need to cut myself some slack while it settles down.

But sheesh, I've been grouchy.  And I don't like it.

My Christian faith informs much of my life (and it ought to inform everything but I'm a stubborn and rebellious sort) and the "fruit of the Holy Spirit" is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  If those things aren't present in my life (and they've been sorely lacking the past little while) then something is clearly amiss with my relationship with God.

Unconfessed or harbored sin?  Worry?  Failure to abide in Christ?  Taking my eyes off God and focusing too much on the problems?  Dunno.

But clearly there's something I'm missing and I don't know what it is.

It'd be easy to self-medicate, to turn to various distractions to make me feel temporarily better (food is a frequent go-to, which is one of the main reasons I'm twenty pounds overweight).  I don't want to do that.  I want to spend intensive time in prayer and meditation and entreaty and thought and seeking wisdom and guidance, to get this figured out.

I'd appreciate your prayers, friends.  Thanks much and God bless.

The Encouraging and Uplifting Post

I'd spent the last few posts talking about depression, which is both a downer to go through and to read about, and I'd promised to make this post a lighter one.

Only here's the thing.....

I only go through these depressive episodes about every year and a half, and I always forget about the manic bounceback at the end.  I'm not sure if it's technically mania; the depression has been medically diagnosed but I've never seen a doctor about this latter part.  It may just be my neurons going wild with relief.

But for the past couple of days my brain has been in overdrive.

You'd think that would be a good thing, but noooooooo.  I'm hyper, I can't concentrate, I'm in a ridiculously good mood, and everything seems like a good idea.  I'm ready to fight a grizzly bear.  (I think I could take him.)

Given that I've had to make myself buckle down and get some paperwork done, this hasn't worked out so well.  I've done it because I've had to, all the while wanting to chuck the whole desk out the window and go bungee jumping.  Or maybe challenge somebody to a duel of honor.  Or go drag racing on the interstate.

I feel GREAT.  But concentration, not so much.  I'm grinning as I write this.  (In some ways mania is worse than depression.  In depression you feel bad, but in mania you're prone to do STUPID stuff.)

I won't lie to you, this is much more fun than the depressive episode, and history suggests it'll only be a day or two at most until it settles.  But as far as thoughtful and well reasoned blog posts goes, it ain't happening.

Hopefully this is mildly entertaining, anyway.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Brain Working Again!

I never gradually come out of depression.  I'm either in it or out of it.

As it happens, yesterday morning I woke up and my brain was working again.  It's a little difficult to describe what it feels like--the fog was lifted, the creative energies were flowing again, I was once more optimistic about the world and interested in getting stuff done.  It's not a happy-go-lucky, "everything is amazing" feeling--I'm not automatically on top of the world, and I still have things to do and challenges to meet.  Plus I could have used a lot more sleep.

But I am immensely cheered up by the simple fact that my mind seems to be working reliably again.  Yay!

Short post, on account of I'm about two weeks behind on everything and need to get caught up.  Sixteen days of dysthymia will do that to a guy.  But I'm going to plan to have something more lighthearted and encouraging up on Thursday.

Thanks for all the prayers and support.  Hope all's well out there, and God bless.

Bored With Depression

One of the big problems I'm having with this depressive episode is how self-centered it seems to be making me.  I'm just plain not interested in ANYTHING, and the only thing I can think about (to the extent that I'm thinking at all) is how fuzzy-headed I am.

It's getting boring, and it's almost certainly gotten boring to my family and friends as well.

So I'm going to stop talking about it, but I'm having a great deal of difficulty being creative about other matters.  I'll take a small break, okay?.  My brain should snap back to normal on its own any time now (and if it doesn't I'm going to see what I can do about getting some help for it) and then, Lord willing, I can find more engaging stuff to talk and blog about then the dysthmic episode that's become tedious to us all.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

A Depression Observed, Part Two

At this writing I'm in day nine or ten of a dysthymic episode, clinical depression.  If it goes according to past patterns I can look forward to anywhere from one to eight more days.

One would suit me better.  This isn't much fun, and there's not much I can do about it.  I take St. John's Wort on a regular basis, which does help, but upping the dosage doesn't seem to do any good.  I could go to the doctor, but antidepressant medications always require fine-tuning and a period of adjustment; by the time we had an effective dosage (and dealt with all the resultant side effects) I'd be snapped out of it anyway.  I prefer to bull it through for now.  It's only every year and a half that I deal with this.

But yeah, it's pretty bad.  It's "mild" depression, but I'm still getting out of bed by strength of will and an awareness of honor and duty.  I can distract myself for periods of time, but I'm still having frequent moments when there's a powerful sense of despondency.  I'm falling back on my acting skills a lot; I'm behaving like a person who isn't depressed.  Lots of my friends know about it but not everybody; I'm not ashamed of having depression but it always requires explanation and people tend to treat you funny.  It's simpler not to broadcast it.

My family of course knows about it and it's tough to deal with.  I may ask Adored Wife to do a post about living with a depressive.

My faith is intact--how I feel doesn't need to affect what I know, and it doesn't need to affect what I choose to do.  And I know it's temporary, which helps a lot.  And I know not to trust my feelings right now.

But man, this is exhausting.  My sympathies and prayers for people who deal with much more severe and frequent depression than I do.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

A Depression Observed

Happy National Day of Prayer!

One of my favorite writers, Professor C.S. Lewis, penned a book called "A Grief Observed."  I'm not on his level, but I am going through a depressive episode, and I thought I'd piggyback on his title.

This is great!  I'm a little early on the episode (wasn't really looking for it until June), but I knew when I started this blog that one would be coming up this year and that it would be cool to go through it with you.

Well, okay, it's not actually great.  It's not any fun at all, come to think of it.  But it is an interesting experience.  My last dythymic adventure was in November/December of 2014, and lasted sixteen days. They've been showing up pretty regularly every eighteen months or so for the last twenty-something years (and maybe longer), lasting anywhere from eight to nineteen days.  I was in my late twenties before I had it figured out and diagnosed.

This time around I think it had started before I was really aware of it; I've been ill with a virus and I've had some stress in my life from other sources and honestly was a little down and grouchy already (which is not typical of me.)  My big tell-tale sign of clinical depression is always waking up ridiculously early and not being able to go back to sleep.

Other symptoms: Lethargy, pessimism, general irritability, the inability to concentrate, lack of creativity, and an overwhelming reluctance to do anything.  Nothing cheers me up, nothing's any fun, and it's a tremendous effort of will to get myself going.  It's not crippling, or anything like that--it's relatively mild depression as such things go.  I knew a man, poor fellow, who almost literally couldn't get out of bed when depression hit--he just couldn't see the point to anything.

I'm not like that, thankfully.  I can function; it's just exhausting.  I'm still a funny guy, but it's reflexive rather than genuine, and there's an angry edge to the humor that isn't normally there.  And I can work, as long as it doesn't require much in the way of creativity.  My sense of honor, obligation, and duty is intact; in fact it may be the only thing keeping me going.  My sense of compassion has vanished, but I still act as though I had it because I know I'll be ashamed later if  I don't.  What I feel like doing is going home, lying in bed, and staring at the ceiling.

I'll get through it and I'll keep you posted.  This too shall pass.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Basement Artist Makes a Plan

I don't know if I've mentioned that Basement Artist is engaged?  To a great guy from Montreal?

She is, and they've been together (long distance relationship) for a few years now, but officially engaged for less than a year.

We've been bugging them a little bit to set a date.  She's more of a procrastinator than her young man, but they've finally planned on sometime May or June of 2017.  We're comfortable with this, although we'll be wanting to talk specific dates soon.  A year is a comfortable window of time, enough to get everything done, not so much that we feel they're delaying indefinitely.

Plus when a girl from North Carolina wants to get married and move to Canada, better to do it in the spring; she'll have several months to get acclimated to the place before she has to deal with her first Canadian winter.

I'm excited for her.  Of course, I plan to cry like a baby when the ceremony is over and they're off on their new life together, but that's okay.  We don't own our children; we only keep them in stewardship for a while, and I'll have had her for twenty-four years before "God shall join them together."

I'm going to have to learn how to Skype.

But it's going to be a busy year.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.