Mid-July Monte Report

Nothing much new to report. I'm keeping busy driving back and forth to Washington. While in Washington, though, it is tough to keep myself occupied during the heat of the day, even though there is an infinite amount of weeds to pull and other work to do. I take long midday naps, and promise myself I'll work in the evenings and mornings. But instead I go to bed early at night and sleep in, so I end up sleeping through the coolest parts of the day as well. One of these days though the heat ought to let up, I imagine.

I got an unexpected chance to meet with my old psychiatrist again, and he tweaked with my meds a little. Maybe that will help. Later this week I'll see my new Washington primary care physician, and hopefully he'll have good recommendations for a new therapist and a new psychiatrist.

I just attended a family reunion where most of the family were people I'd never met before. Socializing with new people is tough for me, and even with a handful of tranquilizers I still had a hard time reaching out to anyone. I did enjoy, however, visiting with those family that I already knew.

Anyway, the struggle for existence continues with plenty of troubled thinking. My hope is that once I'm settled in Washington I can concentrate my energies on "getting better" -- by reading and writing and using Cognitive Behavior Therapy exercises that can help me to disempower the triggers that besiege me every day. When I had my breakdown in 2005, this seemed to work -- at least, it worked well enough to get me back to work again after being out for six weeks. This current "breakdown" is more severe (it's been fifteen weeks since I stopped working), and the danger is clearly much worse. But at the same time, I haven't yet gotten to the point of setting a date for committing suicide. That's what happened after the awful company holiday party in 2002. That night I was triggered so badly that I set a six week "cooling off" period after which I would kill myself if I didn't feel better. Six weeks later though, I was getting admitted to the hospital in Kansas instead.

Anyway, the point is things are bad, but they've been worse.

Today's bird of the day is the magnificent Pileated Woodpecker, the second largest woodpecker in North America (after the Ivory-billed Woodpecker). I got a great look at a Pileated the day before the family reunion this past weekend.