Mid-February Monte Report

Overall, I'm doing better than I was when I last posted. Maybe the higher dosages on my Abilify and Seroquel are starting to pay off. Evidence of this is seen in the fact that I've been doing my dishes regularly, I've been working on my current jigsaw puzzle, my Xanax consumption is somewhat down, I've gone on several long walks on my lunch breaks, and over the past couple weekends I've gone out with friends, hiking, seeing movies, going out for lunch or dinner -- that sort of thing. But things also seem to have returned to the roller coaster mode of life, where I'm up and down several times a day (as opposed to just being down all day long). Thoughts of suicide still dance around in my head on a daily basis, though in that roller coaster way such that it's not as constant as it was a couple weeks ago. I can "perform" at work much more easily than a month ago, with much less anxiety. My apetite remains insatiable, though: my ice cream and popcorn consumption are still at unhealthy levels. It's also still difficult to entertain myself in the evenings after work (which means I've still pretty much been going straight to bed when I get home). This compulsion to stay in bed is a manifestation of my depression that is relatively new to me (when considered in the context of my 20 years of battling depression, that is). There was a time when I would drown myself in popcorn and movies at the theater after work: when the movie "Billy Elliott" was in the theater, I saw it something like 16 times over a period of a couple weeks (I even saw it twice one day at two different theaters!). I did something similar for the movie "Get Real" many years ago, too. But for some reason my bed feels like a safest place to hide these days.
Anyway, despite the roller coaster, I'm very much looking forward to my Hawaii trip, where I'll spend a week with good friends, with a warm ocean and with some exciting birds (my flight is tomorrow and I'll be there for about a week). And speaking of birds, I'll close with a couple of pretty decent (for my puny camera, at least) photos I managed to get a few days ago of a cooperative Townsend's Warbler on my porch.