Monte Report for August 2006

And so passes yet another month in the struggle for existence, and unfortunately I must say "Good Riddance!" to August. It was not a pleasant month. My weekend with the little doggie mentioned previously was indeed pretty good, but there was little lasting positivity, and the month was full of struggles. I continued to utilize eBay as a distraction, bidding on well over a hundred auctions during the month - mostly old bird books selling for a few bucks each. It helps me pass the time when I might otherwise be engaging in some other less benign activity. I'm also playing around with a "new" laptop computer - an old hand-me-down that I recently acquired and which I hope to be able to use for accessing bird information while on the road birdwatching (if I ever go birdwatching again, that is).

Two things contributed primarily to the lousiness of August. First is the fact that my medication "regime" is still in flux. After a month on the new medication there was not only no improvement, but rather things seemed to get significantly worse. My doctor made some adjustments, and as of this writing I sense some slight improvement, though it's definitely too early to tell.

The other thing going on is that we began using a new operating system at work a couple weeks ago. It's the biggest change since I first got hired, and the result is that I feel like a brand new employee again. Transitioning from an "expert" with all the answers to a "novice" who had no answers was not easy, and my ego took quite a beating. The result wasn't pretty - plenty of tears and frustration and ruminating about suicide, and I ended up missing three days of work.

As time passes I'm sure I'll become more used to the new system, and may someday soon begin to feel like an "expert" once more. And hopefully I will soon benefit from the adjustments to my medications. In the meantime I'll just do my best to keep plugging along without hurting myself. And with that I'll close with the image here of the famed Passenger Pigeon, a bird that tried its best to survive despite being attacked from all sides. At one point it was so abundant that it is estimated to have comprised 20% of the entire bird population of North America, with flocks numbering in the billions of individuals - quite a success story, I'd say. It's eventual collapse and extinction is well known - the species quietly went extinct at the Cincinnati Zoo ninety-two years ago last Friday.