Our outing to the park for sunset photos was a success.
The kids particularly like the odd swinging structure we found in a corner of the park.
When the light dimmed and the air got chilly, we traversed back home.
These were photos that I took. Some of Link’s are better than mine, but he’s not going to process his until tomorrow.
The sun was setting out the window to my right sending warm rays of light through the wind shield and into my eyes. Link was napping in the seat next to me. He was along on the road trip to fetch his sister simply because he likes road trips and he likes his sister. Three hours to her college dorm and then three hours back so that we could have her home for ten days of spring break. On the other end of those days we’ll make the trip again. But I was not thinking about the drive, I was measuring the height of the sun. Link had a digital photography class and his current assignment was to shoot sixteen photos by the light of sunset. We’d hoped to arrive in Cedar City in time to shoot photos at the historic cemetery there, but the sun was fast vanishing. It would be gone before we arrived.
“Hey Link, if you want sunset pictures today, you’d better take them out the window of the car.” Link blinked himself awake and mumbled that he would just take them some other day. My head filled with unspoken arguments. After being sick for four weeks, Link had lots of assignments to make up. Photography was among them. My task managing brain wanted him to knock out all the assignments as quickly as possible so that they would be done. But they were not my assignments. They were Link’s and I had to get out of his way and trust that his more measured approach would result in work completed by the end of the term. It was a careful dance, sometimes nudging him to do a little bit more, mostly trying to keep my hands off. The sunset was right there. The camera was in the car. Maybe pictures taken from a moving car would all turn out bad, but it was worth a try. I said all these things to Link and he pulled out the camera to humor me.
The sunset hid behind some mountains and then peeked out again. Link began to revel the challenge of trying to catch an object, a tree, a passing vehicle, in relation to the sunset. Once a flock of birds flew across the glowing sky and he attempted to capture that.
“It’s like Pokemon Snap!” he said to me smiling. “Only I need a better camera.” I watched him managing the low batteries by turning the camera off between shots. Unfortunately this meant he was not always ready when a shot appeared. We definitely need to upgrade the batteries, or figure out why the camera manages to drain batteries dry in less than ten minutes. Photography would be more fun for him if he could just shoot without having to worry that the batteries will run out.
Link reviewed the shots on the camera screen and claimed that some of them are good. We planned another photography outing to a park for the next day, just to make sure that he’ll have sixteen good shots before the due date. Going to a park with ducks and a pond at sunset sounds like a lovely way to spend a Saturday evening. We’ll probably bring the other kids with us. They won’t care so much for the photography or the sunset, but they’ll like the park and the ducks.
The light dimmed and Link put the camera away. We sat together in companionable silence. I thought how different this March felt compared to last year. Back then so many things in our family were shifting. We did some relationship recalibration with Link because somehow our love for him was not getting communicated to him in a way that he could see it. Gleek was just headed into the descending slope of her meltdown and stress which would result in major school interventions and some necessary diagnoses. Kiki and Patch were both picking up on the general stress and also dealing with grief over the fact that life was aimed irrevocably toward change. Kiki was going to leave for college. Life was going to be different, and none of us knew how that was going to feel. The emotional landscape of our household in March of last year was a rocky, treacherous, messy place.
This year March arrives with a sense of things coming together instead of falling apart. We’ve passed through the transition year and arrived in a place that is different, but better in many ways. Kiki’s life is hers to direct and she does it well. Link has begun to take the helm and steer his life. Gleek still has many things to learn about emotional management, but we’ve got the right structures in place for her to learn them. Every day I see her unfolding and engaging instead of curling tight to keep herself safe. Patch has discovered his own strengths and how to face anxiety by teasing himself out of it. Everywhere I look, I see growth and family members aimed in good directions. I am no exception. I am less afraid than I was and more ready to embrace the joy that already dwells in my life.
We arrived in Cedar City just barely too late to photograph in the cemetery. The sky was still light, but Link pointed out that the magic hour was gone. Colors and sun had faded from the sky. We still drove into the cemetery to take a look at the generations old headstones and the looming trees. Link was somber at the quantities of grave markers. I felt a little of that too, though I noted that almost every single marker had flowers or decorations of some kind. They fluttered in the evening breeze. These people were not forgotten. I would have liked to get out and walk around and read some of the stones, but Link was ready to see his sister and he was hungry.
Once we collected Kiki and got back on the road, I listened to Link, who often doesn’t talk much, tell her in detail all about taking pictures on the road. I thought about the road ahead, and not just the one we needed to drive that day. Truthfully, we have as much transition ahead as we’ve just weathered, but not all at once. We know how to survive transition and we know that good things come after. Next March will be different, but I don’t need to worry about that now. All I need to do is catch some moments so I’ll have them to remember later, like sunset photos snapped quickly out the window of a moving car.
Last September I wrote a post about Public School Resources for Parents of Special Needs Kids: Elementary Edition. I’m still collecting information for the Junior High and High School editions. This week I collected lots because I had my first IEP meeting with the high school team and I scheduled a meeting at the junior high to set up a 504 plan for Gleek. (There was an incident that demonstrated need.) Last week we picked Gleek’s classes for next year. Next week we’ll do the same for Link. So I’ve spent a lot of time squinting toward the future and trying to predict what they will need six months from now. I’m going to get it wrong. I know this because I did the same thing last year and we ended up shifting Link’s schedule around three different times to adapt for unexpected developments and complications. The teen years are so huge developmentally. Even if I craft the perfect plan now, they’ll change between now and next school year. So mostly the plan is based on current needs with an addendum that we’ll adapt as necessary.
I really want to unfold this further, but it is nearly midnight and I spent the last six hours driving to retrieve Kiki from college. (She’s home for a week of spring break. Yay!) So let this post serve as a reminder of the detailed parenting post I need to do soon.
This was my desk about halfway through this morning.
My desk is not usually this buried in piles of stuff, (that would drive me insane) but yesterday I was in the middle of copy edits for LOTA which spread out everywhere. The arrangements of those papers would allow me to pick up where I left off. Then this morning we ordered some lapel pins, which poked the financial section of my brain and I could tell I was going to fret over the bill for those pins until I opened up the accounting and proved to my brain that yes, we really do have the money and this is a good idea. So you can see me mid-accounting on top of being mid-copy edits. You can also see a stack of Strength of Wild Horses art, a manila folder full of postage and invoices ready to be shipped from the warehouse, a returned package, the black binder with the rough cut of Massively Parallel, and lots of other reminder notes. I took this photo at the maximum messy point of the day. Within an hour all the financial stuff was cleared off. Within two, I’d taken care of the shipping things. The copy edits are still using most of the desk landscape because I’ll tackle them tomorrow.
Despite the messy desk, things are going very well. I don’t know if we’ve caught up after being sick, but I’m not really trying to keep score anymore. Mostly I’m just trying to make sure that each day contains the right mix of work, parenting, house stuff, writing time, and relaxing time. It’s been pretty effective the last couple of weeks, so I’ll continue.
The Messy Desk of Many Projects in Process Read More »
Yesterday I published a post that resonated with a lot of people. Many of those people offered further thoughts and asked me excellent questions. As a result I have a few more things to say.
First, I want to post some links to resources. I’ve actually added these resource links to the bottom of the prior post, because in hindsight I can see that they needed to be there all along. These provide a starting place for people who are exhausted from struggling alone and would love to have help and support.
NAMI is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. They have a page dedicated to helping people connect with support groups and discussion groups both online and in person.
Google also led me to DBSA the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. They also have a page devoted to helping people connect with the resources that they need.
There is the ASCA, Adult Survivors of Child Abuse. If a history abuse of any kind factors into your loved one’s depression, it is probably best to talk to someone who knows how to thrive after that.
If you want a faith centered approach to healing, you might consider looking at the LDS addiction recovery program. Reading through their 12 steps, most of it applies if you just substitute “depression (or anxiety, or mental illness) for the word addiction. You do not have to be a member of the LDS (mormon) faith to use these services.
I know there are more resources than these, both locally and nationally (or internationally.) No one has to struggle alone because the world is full of people who’ve been there and would like to help.
My further thoughts:
Several people brought up how sometimes depression can manifest as irritability and anger. This was one of the things that surprised Howard and I when he first took medication. Over and over again I would brace myself for an event that I expected to be stressful and then it just wasn’t. It was little things over and over which failed to make Howard cranky: loud children, dishes undone, lost items. We didn’t see until after it was gone the hundred little ways that depression crankiness was adding stress to our lives.
When Howard and I first started naming and discussing the depressive cycles as a problem to be solved, we spent a lot of time wondering “was it always this bad? Or are we just noticing more because we’re paying attention?” I still don’t have an answer to that. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that is a common stage in the process.
Thirty days makes a habit. This means if your loved one has been depressed for an extended length of time, you’ve forgotten what it is like to live with them not depressed. You can work to revive that memory, but your family habits have adapted to the depression. I saw this when my sixteen year old son was sick for six weeks. When he finally recovered I spent a lot of time re-realizing how capable he is. I don’t have a solution for this, just an acknowledgement that this is really, really hard. Perhaps some commenters will have suggestions for how to keep the memory of happy things alive.
Depression has many causes and therefore many treatments. Depression that is driven by the PSTD of an abuse survivor is a different animal than a rapidly oscillating manic depression caused by brain chemicals. Sadly, having one type does not exclude another. Treatment is often very complex and takes place over an extended period of time. Don’t expect to treat all of it at once, just start in a corner and focus there. People at the resources listed above can help you figure out where to start.
I found myself musing on some of the bad coping strategies that I used to deploy. Most of them were only semi-conscious. If they’d been fully conscious I would have known they were bad. One was to try to counter act a depressive cycle with a crisis. Sometimes the adrenaline from a crisis would pull Howard right out of a depression. Other times it would just sink both of us into a morass of emotion. So Howard would swing downward and suddenly I would be ready to melt into a puddle of incapacity. Some of that was real, but some of it was my subconscious trying to jump start normality again. Bad strategy. Life is not happy when pinging between depression and crisis. Fortunately I left that strategy behind somewhere in my twenties. I mention it here though, because it is a real thing and may be playing into the life of your loved one.
This afternoon I checked in with Howard to see if he felt weird that my post about his depression had gone a little bit viral. He shrugged and said not really. This is why I can say these things now, when I would have been afraid to say them a year ago. I would have been terrified that my words would send him crashing down into depression and then it would be All. My. Fault. Instead I said some things that I felt were important and needed to be said, even though I knew there was a possibility that it would effect him emotionally. But it didn’t. He’s fine. He even said it was interesting to see the depression from my perspective. So all is well. And we go onward.
Married to Depression: Additional thoughts and resources Read More »
I started writing this post six months ago. I started again four months ago. This week I opened it up again. It has been very difficult to get the words right, but then I realized that getting them right is impossible. There is no way that I can convey everyone, regardless of their experiences, what it is like to be married to someone who struggles with depression. The audience is too diverse and the experience is as well. My thoughts and feelings on this matter maybe similar to that of another spouse, or they might be quite different. It is impossible for me to get it right, because there is no “right” when discussing a subjective experience. I can only write about my experiences and hope that something in the story is useful to other people. When I look at it that way, the only way to get it wrong is to not write the post. So I wrote it. All 3000+ words of it. The first part is personal history for context. The rest is things I think will help other people in a similar situation. I put those things in bold for those who want to skim. At the very bottom are links to resources for those who need them.
Howard and I have been married for twenty years. It was not all bliss. Parts of it were gut-wrenchingly hard. In hindsight, many of those horribly difficult parts were directly related to Howard’s struggles with anxiety and depression. Other difficult parts were directly related to my personal stash of neuroses and emotional baggage. Yet our marriage is good. Our life together is more than good. We have built a partnership through the years that sustains us, a business, and our four children. Part of the reason our marriage is still good twenty years in, is because we pulled together when things got hard instead of pulling apart. That required conscious decision from both of us and bucketfuls of forgiveness that we splashed all over everything.
Howard is a bright spot in my life. He makes me laugh. He makes my days better, which is why it hurts so much when this amazing person vanishes into himself and radiates despair or anger. Suddenly instead of having a life partner who is carrying half the load, or even saving me because I’m stumbling, I have a person who is faltering and struggling to carry only a fraction of what he usually does. Not only that, but he radiates the bleakness and it permeates the house, actually creating additional stress and strain. These days we have good strategies for minimizing the impact of a depressive episode. That was not always the case.
The first time I really got to see inside Howard’s pit of despair was on our honeymoon. I was twenty, still trying to figure out who I was as an adult. Still trying to choose which life patterns I wanted to emulate from my family of birth and how I wanted to do things differently. I’d been around depression before with one of my siblings, but my family did not name it. It was the elephant in the room around which we all danced, trying to create a peaceful life. I carried that approach into my marriage. I knew Howard had mood swings. I’d witnessed some during the course of our engagement. But there we were, about halfway through our honeymoon, laying in the dark together while Howard cried and talked. He was letting me further into his heart than he’d ever let anyone before and it was terrifying for both of us. I stared into this deep, dark, seemingly bottomless pit and knew it could swallow me whole if I was not careful. It could swallow us both. And I did not want that to happen.
The next morning the bleakness had passed and my wonderful Howard was back, but I did not forget that the pit was a possibility.
Our family, the new one that Howard and I made together, danced with the elephant for decades. We built habits in the hopes of increasing the good times and reducing the bad ones. We looked for cyclical patterns. We evaluated. Early on I might have suggested therapy of some kind, but Howard had done therapy following the death of his parents and he reported it hadn’t done much for him. We were smart people, surely we could figure out the right diet, or exercise program, or spiritual regimen. All of these things were good management tools and we used them. Sometimes they helped. Other times they were powerless. We were powerless.
It was not until eighteen months ago that we named the elephant. That was when we finally saw this thing that had always been in the middle of our lives and said it was
A. real
B. a problem
C. something we should address.
That shift came because of many things, the most obvious being when our friend Robison Wells began speaking publicly about the mental illnesses that plague him. Rob and a couple of other friends showed Howard that admitting a problem could be a step toward better answers. There was also quite a lot of spiritual guidance and inspiration. Howard and I are religious people and we believe that we were guided. We also wish we’d been a little less thick headed to inspiration when we were younger.
The other thing that shifted was me. I’d been sorting some old emotional baggage (because of inspiration) and finally realized that my job was not to fix Howard, nor to save him. I was to love him no matter what. In fact that was a very clear inspiration directly to me, that Howard is strong and that my job was to love him, not fix him. After realizing that, I changed my answers. When Howard was filled with despair and said “I’m broken.” I stopped saying “No you’re not. It’s fine.” I allowed broken and suddenly let’s get this fixed became an option. Howard no longer had to live up to my need for everything to be fine. He finally had the space to consider and then seek treatment. This is exactly what I mean when I said that some of the difficulties were caused by me, even though I am not the depressed person. He worked so hard to be fine for me.
Howard has a problem with the chemicals in his brain. They sometimes make him feel like a complete failure as a human being, even when everything in our lives suggests exactly the opposite. It means that yesterday was happy, but today is miserable even though nothing has changed overnight. We tried all of the non-medicinal options for nineteen years and we still found ourselves occasionally trampled by the unnamed elephant. It was not good for us, nor for our kids. But a year ago things changed. That was when Howard saw a doctor and we started fixing the chemistry by applying medication, and it worked.
When I say “it worked” that doesn’t mean everything is all better now. Howard still has depressed days, but they aren’t as often and they don’t get as bad. Visits to the pit of despair are a rare occurrence, where they used to be regular. Howard has had the chance to experience a steady happiness where life feels generally good. More important, when Howard is having a bad brain chemistry day, we see it, we name it, and we know how to adjust for it. This is quite different than trying to adjust for an elephant that no one wants to admit exists.
If you have a loved one, a spouse, sibling, parent, friend, partner, who is depressed, and you want to help, there are some things I think you should know. The first and most important is this: You can’t fix it. There are dozens of ways that depression can be managed, healed, or even cured depending on the causes of it, but you can’t fix it for them. The depression exists in your loved one, maybe it is chemical, maybe it is situational, but it is inside them, not you. I tried to fix Howard’s depression. Believe me I tried. For eighteen years of marriage I adjusted all of the things I could conceive of adjusting in the hope it would prevent or alleviate the dark days. He’d have a dark day and I would clean all of the things because then a dirty kitchen wouldn’t add to the stress. I’d manage his schedule. I’d take over chores that were usually his. I’d hug him when the shape of the darkness allowed for that. (Sometimes it didn’t and he would flee from all touch.) I argued with him when the dark manifested as verbalized self-loathing.
My efforts helped some. I could see that they did, which is why I kept trying harder. I kept hoping that I could exert control over this thing. My efforts also masked the problem. When your loved one says “I’m broken.” It feels like the right answer is “No you’re not. Of course you’re not. Everyone has bad days.” The more powerful and helpful answer is to say. “Yes you’re broken. This depression is not normal. I love you anyway.” I love you anyway is the answer which allows the depressed person stop being strong, and start seeking help. I love you anyway gives the depressed person permission to change instead of demanding a status quo.
As soon as Howard decided that maybe he was willing to see a doctor, I did the research. I found out who we should go to. I made the appointment. I continue to make appointments for him from time to time. Because making an appointment is an act of will. It feels like an admission of illness. Making the appointment is a barrier that can be really hard to clear. I schedule half of the things which end up on Howard’s calendar anyway, so me doing this is a natural extension of what I already do. The frustrating piece was sitting on a waiting list for three months before they would make an appointment. (There’s a shortage of mental health professionals in Utah.) I went with Howard to the first appointment, but not any of the others. Again, this was me helping him over the first hurdle. After that I needed to stay out of the way because Howard has to own this process.
That is the second thing I want you to know: the depressed person has to control their own healing process or it will not work. I suppose it is possible to force someone to take drugs, but that doesn’t make them want to change the way that they’re relating to the depression. Howard had a huge emotional process to go through with taking medication. He had to grieve. I don’t know why daily medication requires grief, but I felt the same thing when I had to begin thyroid medication. It feels like weakness, or failure. It feels unfair. I see lots of friends who take psychoactive medications making snarky comments about the meds that they are on. Howard started taking the medicine and at first he didn’t want to see that it made a difference. Then he could see the difference and was angry at the medicine for working, because it meant he needed it. Slowly Howard is learning the ways that the medicine helps him. He’s learning that it is a useful tool and that it is okay to use all of the available tools in dealing with this.
Naming the depression changed everything. The moment that we looked at Howard’s depression and said “maybe this isn’t normal.” It changed all of our conversations on the subject. We started talking about the depression as if it were a phenomena that could be observed, which it is. We developed a taxonomy of sorts to describe the different variations. Howard directly asked me to be his spotter with the medications because he is very afraid of slipping into abusing medicine. He and I used calm times to discuss how to handle depressed times. I began to pay closer attention to the sorts of things he would say when he was sliding into depression and I learned when gently pressing him to take a pill was the right choice. I don’t have to press as much as I used to do, because Howard has learned to watch his own brain and identify when he needs the medicine. It took lots of practice. I am very much a part of Howard’s management process, but he is the director of it.
Even with excellent treatment there will still be hard days. Some depressions can be worked through and resolved in a permanent way. We may yet find a way to do that for Howard, for now we still have to manage the down times. The hardest days are the ones where I’m not feeling completely stable myself. I could be ill, under stress, tired, or just feeling a little down. If Howard hits a depressive patch during those days, it feels massively unfair. I find myself angry at him for being depressed, even though I know he would never choose this. There was one day where all manner of little things went wrong, and I was ready to cry. That was the day when two of my kids had emotional meltdowns simultaneously and Howard was having a medium-down sort of day. I lamented to Howard how unfair it is that I never get a turn to fall apart while someone else picks up the pieces.
The “never” part isn’t true, of course. There have been many times when Howard has rescued me and taken care of me. This is one of the reasons the depressive days hit so hard. I depend upon Howard. He handles his things, I handle mine. We’re both full to capacity with things to do, but without warning Howard will be unable to do his things. He’ll feel like he’s never going to be able to do his things again. He’ll say that to me as he’s sorting the thoughts in his head. And the horrible little voice of anxiety will whisper in the back of my head “what if he’s right?” Right now depression shows up and lays him flat for a day or two. But we don’t know why it shows up. We have no way to make it go away. What if some time it doesn’t leave? This is the horrible fear that I lock away in the back of my brain during the hard days. I see the depression and I know it could destroy us, because when Howard is deep into a depressed day, he is different. His thoughts and attitudes are different. His capabilities shift. The Howard I love and depend on is gone and all I can do is wait for him to come back.
So that is a thing you should know too. Depression can be traumatic and terrifying for the loved ones because they are forced to face being powerless. Of course, that one is unlikely to be news to you. But it means that you are at a higher risk for anxiety and depression yourself. Be on the lookout for that. Be aware that you might also need help and treatment. It is possible that the best thing you can do for your loved one is to go see a therapist or spiritual advisor yourself. You need a support network, because this is a hard load to carry. Faith is a huge part of my support network. I have conversations with God about Howard’s depression all the time. I feel like we’re partners in helping take care of this amazing person we both love. I truly believe that any path that Howard walks toward eliminating depression forever will be an inspired walk of faith. I hope that we’re on that path already even though I can’t tell how far we’ve come or how far we have left to go. But if this is a lifetime-long walk, I’m okay with that. I didn’t sign on to be married to Howard just for the easy stuff.
Preserve your own balance. In order not to be pulled into depression myself on the days that Howard is down, I have to actively shield myself against his moods. This is hard, because I am a naturally empathetic person and I am highly attuned to the emotional states of my family members. Sometimes this means that I need to have physical space from Howard when he’s depressed. Sometimes Howard provides that space deliberately in acts of heroism. In recent memory we had a family party on a day when Howard was depressed. It was the first time I’d been able to enjoy the company of my siblings in a very long time. Howard hid himself away, keeping his bleakness contained so that I could enjoy the event. I recognized his sacrifice and told him that I did. The verbal recognition was critical so that he knew that I knew that he was making a special effort for me. Also so that he knew that I was aware of his depression and he was not abandoned with it. It was our way of working together to make sure that the depression did not ruin a party. We hope for future parties where Howard and I can both attend.
Listen without judgment. This is probably the most important function that I serve for Howard when he is depressed. He needs to process and think through what he is feeling. Over the years we’ve learned how to communicate the depression without wallowing in it. It is rare that I’m able to say something that alleviates the depression, but not being left alone with it is a huge help.
Talking about it can help. There is a silence that blankets anything that hints at mental weakness or illness. People are afraid to admit that they’re struggling with mental health issues. Some of those fears are founded in reality. Employers think twice before hiring someone with admitted mental health struggles. People look askance. The stigma is real. But part of what helped convince Howard to get help was when he first started talking about the depression with trusted friends. Part of his ongoing process is to speak up on the internet when he’s having a bad week. The responses to those posts are overwhelming support from others who have walked similar paths and thanks from people who are grateful that someone is willing to speak up. This is the reason I wrote this (very long) post. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs it. And because once I began it, I realized that I needed to say all of it. I’m certain there will be more things to say on a different day, but this is my last thought for you right now. Hang in there. You and your loved one can get through this and find a better place. Howard and I did.
Edited to add: As a result of questions and discussions prompted by this post, I’ve decided to add links to some support organizations which may be useful.
NAMI is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. They have a page dedicated to helping people connect with support groups and discussion groups both online and in person.
Google also led me to DBSA the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. They also have a page devoted to helping people connect with the resources that they need.
There is the ASCA, Adult Survivors of Child Abuse. If a history abuse of any kind factors into your loved one’s depression, it is probably best to talk to someone who knows how to thrive after that.
If you want a faith centered approach to healing, you might consider looking at the LDS addiction recovery program. Reading through their 12 steps, most of it applies if you just substitute “depression (or anxiety, or mental illness) for the word addiction. You do not have to be a member of the LDS (mormon) faith to use these services.
I am certain that these are only the beginning of the resources that are available to you both locally and internationally. The world is full of people who understand your pain and would be delighted to help you find a happier way to live.
Married to Depression Read More »
This morning I have a congested head and a sniffly nose. Although it is possible that these things are caused by seasonal allergies, it feels more like a mild cold. The sensations are not pleasant. I’d much rather feel well, but I can’t help noticing how friendly and cuddly this cold feels in comparison to the whooping cough that rampaged through our household for six weeks and is still lingering. This cold feels like a fierce kitten to the angry tiger of whooping cough.
The minute people started coming down with the cough I knew it was going to be bad. I didn’t know it was whooping cough. I didn’t know it would cost Patch two weeks of school and Link four. I didn’t know that we would spend over a thousand dollars in copays, medication, lab tests, and cough drops. I didn’t know it would cost us even more in lost work time, lost concentration, and emotional distress. I didn’t know how bad it would be, but from day one I could tell that it was no ordinary cold.
I’ve come out of this experience with a new comprehension of why doctors worked so hard to find vaccines for these childhood diseases. Yes some of the drive was because they are sometimes deadly, but even when they weren’t, the societal cost for them is really high. I’m too young to remember epidemics of measles, mumps, or polio, but I do remember my school being half empty for several weeks because chicken pox swept through town. So I’m reaffirmed as a vaccine supporter. Even if the vaccines only impart resistance, I want us all to be as resistant as possible.
For today, I’m going to curl up in bed with my cuddly little cold and take some vitamin c. In a day or two I’ll feel better.
Perspectives on Being Sick Read More »
This morning I tweeted something that Link said to me in the car on the way to school:
16yo: “A lot of stuff happened yesterday. That’s probably why I was tired.”
Me too, son, me too.
Link is doing a marvelous job of taking back control of his life. He’s making lists and working hard to complete assignments. He really does have lots of things going on and less time to relax than he used to have. I’m working hard to let that be his process even though there is part of my brain that is desperate to take it over and run things more efficiently.
Howard had a bad brain chemistry day yesterday, which meant that he spent several hours miserable. He’s so much better than he used to be at recognizing the onset of depression and taking management steps. Sometimes it still gets bad anyway. For the most part he handled it on his own, but I was support crew, supplier of hugs, and manager of household things which could not wait. Naturally this reminded me of the post I’ve been meaning to write about being the spouse of a depressed person. I started writing it today and realized that it is actually three posts. Through it all, we breathe prayers of thanks that Howard cycles quickly out of depression. The deeps rarely last more than a day and the downs are usually gone in mere days.
Patch had cello lessons in the morning which is a happy thing. Gleek had her SEOP meeting in the middle of the day, where we met with a counselor and selected her classes for next year. There were twenty packages to mail. Gleek had an orthodontist appointment. Howard had a doctor’s appointment. Sam’s club gave Howard grief about refilling his anti-depressant prescription. I also had to finish putting the last pieces of marginalia into LOTA so that we could do a color test print.
All of those things, and I’d decided to try going to a writer’s group at 9pm. I was excited about it. I need social things in my life. I really enjoyed reading the submissions and was looking forward to talking about them.
Then at 8:15 Gleek tried to jump a curb on her scooter and missed. She tumbled across the pavement and was in too much pain to get up until after I was brought from the house. By 8:30 we decided that an X-ray was called for, so I took her to the emergency room. It was not broken. No casts for us, just medical bills and a missed writer’s group.
Today has not been quite so one-thing-after-another as yesterday was, but there were still moments where I felt like I was running to catch up with my life. Calm happiness and good perspective are hard to maintain on days like these. I think I’m allowed to be tired and feel a bit worn. But when I feel my brain headed for the running monologue of woe, I turn aside instead. I can see how this week is better than last week. I can see how we’re beginning to catch up on the things that fell behind. Life is good, even when it is an exhausting one-thing-after-another day.
One Thing After Another Read More »
I’ve been working on Schlock books this week. Longshoreman of the Apocalypse will be heading to print in about a week. I’ve also been working on Massively Parallel, which will be the biggest Schlock book we have ever made. The page count is 256 pages in the preliminary layout. It was really important to lock down the page count so that Howard could have a firm number of pages to plan for the bonus story. It is a sad day when Howard has written a ten page bonus story and the book only has seven blank pages. It hasn’t happened to us yet, but I’ve been afraid of it often enough that I started working layout early and nailing down the basic layout before telling Howard to start writing.
I knew that MP was going to be big when I started working. In fact both Howard and I were afraid that it was going to be much bigger. We worried about spine strength and whether we ought to split the story into two books. So my driving focus as I began to put strips into place was “waste no space.” In most Schlock books I’m very careful not to split up a multi-row strip across pages, even if I have to add white space to do it. For MP, I broke that rule some. I still tried, particularly in dramatic story moments, but I leaned toward taking less space. Then there we were with 256 pages and nineteen of them were awaiting a bonus story. Then I talked to Howard about my process. He agreed to the necessity of splitting multi-row strips across pages, but asked that I go back through and make sure I wasn’t splitting them across page turns. I knew that I had and we certainly had enough spare pages to re-shuffle. But how many pages would it take? Every page added meant a white space created for which Howard would have to draw margin art.
I was surprised then when the very first added page had a cascading effect through the following thirty pages. I shifted strips around, placing for dramatic effect and to keep multiple rows together. At the end of thirty pages, I was staring at a blank page. I had just majorly improved the book and not reduced the number of pages available for bonus story. I went through the whole book that way, optimizing for story instead of space preservation, and I ended with a 256 page book that had 13 pages available for bonus story.
It is counter-intuitive, but there are times when adding a thing does not result in less for all the other things. In January we added cello lessons for Patch and horseback riding lessons for Gleek. These things combine to use up at least four hours of my time per week. As packed as my schedule gets, it does not seem I can spare those hours. Yet these things slipped right into our lives without even a ripple. If anything, I’ve seen a reduction of stress and an increase in productivity. That was unexpected. I’m thinking about this because there is a writers group that I’m considering adding to my life. Logically it is going to use up some time that could be spent on other things, but I hope it is going to do that magic trick where it just enters my life without diminishing the time and energy that I have available for all of my other things.
Adding Something to an Already Full Book (and Life) Read More »
Yesterday staying focused on the positive took lots of conscious effort. Today, not so much. Perhaps that is because today was a project focused day where I tuned out everything except what was right in front of me. The noise turns off when I’m hyper-focused on a project. This was the first hyper focused day I’ve had in a long time and I re-surfaced with lots of work done. There was also a long list of things that I did not do today. I’ll look at that list tomorrow because I’m worn out this evening and would rather dwell in a feeling of accomplishment than of failure. I guess maybe that is the hard part, learning to be glad without qualifying it or tempering it. The other hard part is staring at the chocolate brownies on my kitchen counter and not eating them because I’ve finally realized that chocolate is like jet fuel for my anxiety. And, at least today, I want to not be anxious more than I want to eat chocolate. The scales may tip the other way on a different day.
After all-day layout, Gleek’s horseback riding lessons, Patch’s cub scout dinner, and all the other things. I’m tired now. Early bedtimes for all.