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enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Catch a falling star

NYT depression article: solid read: "...and their sadness made them more aware and attentive." The article gels extremely well with my own life-long take on depression and my attitudes towards its purpose and treatments..which I was forgetting when I wrote the following: :) .

So I started to fall into my usual Sunday funk by the afternoon, but I caught myself just in time.

I WAS ruminating over a few things in the afternoon, or at least feeling badly because I wasn't doing anything. I had a breakthrough about this though. The breakthrough came when I asked myself about why it is that Sundays are always difficult days for me.

What I concluded did not please me. I realized that since I'm OK once Monday is rolling, it's that I need activity to keep me distracted from ruminating!

EEK!

The week takes over, and I'm so busy that I can't settle into any distorted thinking.

So I caught myself with this thought, and it was interesting to see how quickly I found myself starting to relax, to calm down. I stood in the kitchen enjoying the light through the window. I sliced some cucumber and poured a glass of fruit juice.

I then sat down at my table and watched the sun slowly slide out of view as I worked on my Artist's W@y stuff. The thing with that book is that it gets better and better the more you reread and redo the exercises. At least for me, it takes very careful doing in order to permit the lessons to sink in. I've already found many useful ideas in it, and I've started to let them percolate.

One other interesting thing is that I've found a paper journal that I've had for at least fifteen years and could never seem to write in (I'd write a few pages and then rip them out, because I couldn't stand to see my stiff, self-conscious writing on the page). It's a terrifically beautiful journal that has quotes from famous women in it. So what I'm doing is opening it page by page and letting it sit on my desk. I flip to a new page when I am ready. Today's quote(s) were courtesy of Virginia Wo9lf and Dorris L3ssing. I loved them both:

"It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality." V. Wo0lf.

"What is terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or that you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better." D. L3ssing.

So that kind of cured me of ruminating.

I also have a plan this week to run for at least 40 minutes every day, whenever possible, so I took myself out for a run up to the lake. Of course, this made me feel infinitely more peppy.

I think I might be suffering from a bit of winter depression at the moment, because as I did my book exercises I found it difficult to think of anything that I really wanted to do and wasn't doing. Desire wasn't big in my toolkit of emotions today.

But then I realized that I was at work until 8 p.m. at least three days this week, slept poorly three nights, was in Montreal all day Friday and had the aller-retour on that same day as well. And then of course I was called into the office yesterday morning as well.

In spite of all of that this week I sorted out gifts for a friend, planned my May trip completely (including all reservations), and went to Italian class. I also went to the gym, studied some Italian, did my morning pages every day, finished the front of a sweater, cooked healthy lunches so that I could save money by not buying, went to see an Indian film on the partition of India and Pakistan, and studied a bit of French on my own time.

So fucking whatever...no wonder I was too tired to really conceive of going anywhere today. Sometimes, I am a GIGANTIC moron. But it does concern me, now that I think about it: the busy-ness in order to not ruminate. It would be nice to be able to meditate more readily in lieu of distracting myself.

But still, there is a point to this. Sundays really are my bugaboo at the moment. Everything becomes as silent as the forest when you stray too far and realize that there is no human within a reasonable reach. It's a silence without silence - everything is breathing and crackling and you know you're not exactly alone and yet you still feel entirely helpless. It's a bit like that in my apartment. I hear the street below, the birds when I open the balcony door, and I can see figures passing by and getting on with their lives.

The only interesting thing that I did this afternoon was listen to an interview with Zad!e Smith. It was an excellent interview. I had been planning to go out to the coffee shop at least and I never made it, so as the time dripped by and I realized that the day was done I felt rather disappointed in myself.

I just started reading L'�nigme du retour and it is such a treat - a novel in poetry form, which I hadn't realized when I bought it, so that has ended the weekend well. I had the revelation - DOH - that the reason that I have trouble self-studying to improve my French is that I'm always forcing myself to sit down with boring and depressing things like the newspaper. Trust me, world debt does not get more interesting and cheering if you read it in French. So I pick up a novel - a well-written novel, no less - and voil�: I cannot put it down. Finally, I shall likely make more progress this year, if I'm reading things I find interesting. DOH! I'm incredibly thick, don't you think?

Fin. XO

PS I realized that it's my own fault that Sundays are not good. Each Sunday I need to schedule even a couple of hours to go for a walk and take photos of odd things that I see. This is an ugly city I find, outside of the national monuments and few stately neighbourhoods, but if I pay attention I am sure that I will find lovely microcosms of activity to appreciate. I happened on the blog of a local photographer today and I absolutely loved these photos of hers:

love the top two photos (and the one with the green curtain and the building with coloured windows :)

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10:58 p.m. - 2010-02-28

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