October 2008 Catch-up
Very strange! My main - desktop - computer has just been taken away; it has been misbehaving for some time. I suspected that this was due to its' insides being absolutely filthy and therefore getting too hot and this is exactly what the technician diagnosed. He looked at its' innards with horror and remarked that people don't ever consider having their computer's serviced and are then surprised when they go wrong; this is wholly true as far as I am concerned. Anyway he has taken it away to the shop and to be cleaned, as apparently it is such a filthy process that it cannot be done in people's houses. I feel utterly bereft. Happily though we do now have this back-up lap-top who's function is I suppose for precisely such emergencies. Except that I can't be bothered to reconnect the printer and can't use Outlook Express because I save so much there. All of which is a long lead in as to why I thought hmmmmm I'll sit down and write a blog entry!
I have not written a proper personal blog entry since last December so the whole of 2008 seems to have been uncovered. It is hard to say exactly why this should be. The obvious answer is that I have been 'doing' a great deal more ; going to meetings, becoming involved with the Mental Health Forum, reviewing mysteries for Reviewing the Evidence,going out more. It is also true that I have had a lengthier and deeper spell of illness than any for at least 3 years. Looked at in terms of my mood chart 2008 is not going to be a good year. Set against this is the fact that however modestly I have contributed more to the world than for many years. How does one assess that; how do I judge whether this is a fair exchange? It is a perennial and unanswerable problem for depressives I imagine, certainly for me. Whatever the answer I intend to carry on engaging with 'real-life' in the way I have been. The events of the summer which led to my last 'episode' were unfortunate but looking back it is hard to see what I could have done differently even though I was treading on thin ice - what I did not know was how deep the waters were beneath the ice. It is a considerable number of years since I have had such a lengthy and deep period of depression to which I had not myself substantially contributed.
The salutary features of this bout, if such they can be termed, were in the first place to remind me - if I needed it - of the depths which depression brings and why it is right to campaign around MH issues; at a more personal level, because I was at most semi-well when we went to Galloway in September I have not suffered my usual October dip which is how I come to be writing this now!
Well that is enough of the self-indulgence for now. At least the desktop being hauled off for renovation has led to a blog entry!!