New year

Winter solstice is passed, so the days will start getting longer again. I need to make it to March though as the worst of my winter blues tend to come in January/February. I am keeping up at work, at times it's difficult but I've gotten through with the occasional Xanax.

Not feeling very social. A friend of mine is looking to get together for dinner, but if I do it it will be more because I think he needs the support for feeling down than because I particularly want to.

The presence trap

My ex-wife sent me a link to a talk by Eckhard Tolle on presence. It occurred to me that the panic attack state is also the person being focused on their present state. When in the attack state I am entirely consumed by the present, it doesn't "pass through me" to use Tolle's wording. The brain is not necessarily off, but overwhelmed by the autonomic actions of the body. In other words, while having an attack I am living entirely in the present, with my brain "turned off". "Brain turned off" is the same state we are encouraged to be in as meditators, focused on my body to the exclusion of the outside world.

So presence seems to be a dual-state. It can relax, or it can panic. What flips it from one to the other?

back on fluoxetine

Despite focusing on getting plenty of sleep, I continue to have high anxiety and low energy. I saw my doctor and got a prescription for Fluoxetine and Xanax. Since I did so well last year being consistently on Fluoxetine I hope to have the same results again. The Xanax is for the immediate anxiety. I had Xanax last year and it was very effective for me, though I only took it when having an attack because of my fears about it's potential addictiveness.

Since I knew I was headed in this direction I had started the fluoxetine from the leftovers I had, and am now one week into the new prescription. Monday and Tuesday I had to take Xanax for work. Felt better Wednesday, ok Thursday and kind of got through Friday. Not good yesterday or today though.

I stopped in at a local coffee shop yesterday morning and the coffee drink made me super anxious yesterday, plus gave me upset stomach/diarrhea. I fought off an anxiety attack while doing grocery shopping and couldn't fall sleep last night. I need to find a non-caffeinated drink.

I was also prescribed hydrochlorothiazide for high blood pressure (135-95). It seems to have several side effects for me, I have had some headaches and nausea since taking it. In fact I am nauseous today. The nausea makes me anxious too. Bleh.

There is a cause

Since it's the summer, I started an experiment about a month ago to test the hypothesis that lack of sleep was at least partially to cause for my anxiety and depression. I got the idea that it might last year when I was out of work and decided I would sleep as much as I wanted to, and I felt better during the winter than I normally do.

For the experiment I purposely kept myself short on sleep, going to bed later and getting up earlier. It took a month and the anxiety came back, finally giving me what would have been a panic attack except that I saw it coming and averted it with a Xanax as I was at work and had work that needed to get done that day (or it would have been a big hassle to reschedule and caused more anxiety). A good night's sleep and the anxiety went down. It stayed high for the next few days as I kept going to bed early in order to catch up on sleep.

So the experiment confirmed that lack of sleep is at least a contributing factor for my anxiety. Something to watch for. Also I need to make sure I get good quality sleep, not going to bed with stuff on my mind for instance.

I see I haven't posted in a while

Doing ok right now. Getting enough exercise just walking though the workplace.

Three days in a row

I turned out to have to go to the work location a few hours away three days in a row to get things under control there. I learned an important lesson, namely that I can do that. I made sure to carve some time for myself, stopping at a rest stop each drive to stretch instead of driving straight through. I also made sure I was in bed early each night so I could get a good night's sleep. Success.

It also got my portion of the project complete. It feels good as for me at least, it marks the ending of the catching up that had to be done when I joined the company. With the backlog from when they were searching for a new employee to the slowness as I was getting up to speed and trying to prove to myself that I could do it.

Also in my recent past, I took my car in for regular service only to discover it needed two thousand dollars or work. And needed as in the dealer told me they would pay for a rental car for me until I got it fixed or traded it in. That was an unexpected financial blow. I decided to get it repaired, and spent five days in the rental while they did the work.

Driving to work

I get to drive out to the other city for work every day for the rest of the week until a project is finished. I have not yet had to go there on back to back days. We'll see how this goes. A day at a time is how it will go. I did go out there twice last week without issue. In fact on Friday when I went I was quite energetic. I am considering seeing if I am allowed to stay a night at a hotel for work. That way I can go one day and come back the next. My cats would miss me, but it would be less driving. I'd actually make less money doing that, as I can expense my driving.

Another month

One anxiety day in there, when I couldn't fall asleep the night before and had to wake up at 5:30 for work. Got very anxious and sick to my stomach driving to work.

Three days ago one of my two cats turned up missing. He wasn't anywhere i could find in the house, and didn't come sleep on the bed with me. I live in a duplex, with an inner door to stairs and the basement, and an outer door to the outside. I searched the basement and unused third floor storage space and didn't find him. I couldn't imagine him getting all the way outside without me noticing. Every morning and night I searched the basement and third floor again, and put out food and water which didn't get touched. I felt terrible and couldn't sleep.

Finally I saw him yesterday. It took a couple of hours to track him down and get him, he is a scared cat by nature. I felt so much better with him safely in the house again.

More running in place

I've done the 20 minute continuous run about 10 times, and have been combining it with three and five minute runs. Yesterday I did 20+5+5 for 30 minutes of running! Even better today I did the 30 minute continuous run. I had to go to quick walking some near the end, but I did it! Yay me!

My attitude at work has been one of being able to get things done by doing them one at a time and just focusing on that one without trying to worry about the other things that need to be done. For now this is working well. We will see when there's some sort of crisis type thing, I'll have to remind myself I can do things one at a time.

One longer term goal reached

Well two. Last week I managed to take that short trip. This past week I decided since I could do that I could do the workday a two hour drive away without needing Xanax. And the good news, I did it, twice! When I got there last Friday I got a call that I had to come back to my home area for a problem. So I got there, spent about twenty minutes there, and turned around and came back. As a result of that I went back on Monday to do the full day there. On Monday not only did I manage a full day there, but I had to stay longer by about an hour, and when I got home I did 25 minutes of running in place on the Nintendo Wii.

Today I was working at my normal location. I reached another longer term goal by doing 20 continuous minutes of Wii running. Previously I had used the shorter times on the Wii sports to add up to the 20 minutes. I had been doing the "Island Lap", which is 13 minutes, plus 5 and 3 minutes to get over 20 minutes. Today I set and did the 20 minute continuous run, and then followed it with a 3 minute run. I've been building to this since the beginning of last year, when walking to the nearest corner of my block was my goal.

My next goal is doing the 20 minute continuous run in place on a consistent basis. I'm happy I reached the 20 minute continuous goal.

Poked the anxiety bear

I was able to get through everything yesterday. I did have anxiety, but it did not get out of control and I was able to not take a xanax for it. When I would start feeling feeling anxious, I would tell myself that I had recently done all these things for work, and while i had taken a xanax those days, if I could do it with the xanax I could do it without: travel 90+ minutes from home, go places I've never been before, meet people I've never met before.

Poking the anxiety bear

The past week went well from an anxiety standpoint. On Monday I did a Xanax just in case. On Tuesday no Xanax. On I had to drive out for training to a site nearly 2 hours from home. I took a Xanax for it and I was fine. Thursday and Friday I was local and no Xanax.

Since I have taken a Xanax for my two far away training sessions and been fine, today I am "poking the bear" of anxiety. I'm renting a car and driving about 90 minutes away to meet someone I've known for a few years via internet only from a message forum. So I'll be far from home and the "safe zone" of my car, in a city I've never been to, meeting someone I've never met in person. Also my work called me at 3am this morning for something, so I am tired.

I'll be bringing my Xanax just in case.

Ok so far.

The workday two hours drive away went with a single xanax but without anxiety incident other than my being tired. This coming Wednesday I have another training session at another site that's quite the drive, about 1 3/4 hours. Tomorrow and Tuesday I'll be training at local sites with a trainer who is remote.

I have to say I'm surprised that they do not do a number of things from an IT standpoint my other employers have done. In my opinion it would make their life a lot better from an IT support standpoint. But they have the way they want it do.

I didn't exercise the first three days of the job, but I've done my 20 minutes both days this weekend. While getting exercise is good for my health in general, and it's supposed to be good for depression in general, where it's helping most is when I'm walking around for work I'm able to tell myself that I can do it because I can do Wii exercise for 20 minutes and if I can do that I can certainly handle the walking around. It's a confidence boost. According to the internets and my shrink it's called "cognitive reframing" or cognitive restructuring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reframing

Tomorrow is Monday and the first full week of working.

Day one, day two

I see I haven't posted in over a month. Well, neither of those jobs materialized. In fact I never heard back from the hospital chain, not a yes or a no. But out of the blue something did happen, and I went through three interviews in a week and was hired ! Yeah me! Not only was I hired, I started yesterday.

Day one was spent with my boss taking care of the paperwork type things and seeing the places I will be most commonly assigned. While they are not exactly new office space, I will have an room with a door at each place. I tried to get a proper nights sleep before the first day, but that didn't really work. I had two Xanax (my prescription allows up to 3/day) before starting, and the third after lunch to make sure I was fine all day. The good thing is I was fine the whole day.

Day two was today and I was sent to another site to shadow someone. I was be a backup person for that site. I took a single Xanax in the morning, but didn't need any more during the day.

Tomorrow I have to go to a site around two hours drive. It'll definitely be a test.

The pay is about 5% less than I was making in my last jobs, but if it works from my anxiety/depression standpoint it is vastly better, money is not everything.

Outside of work, I've been consistent with getting 20 minutes of exercise via the Nintendo Wii.

Brrr

Had a few days where I didn't get out of the house due to the extreme cold. On the plus side once it did warm up some I went and walked around the block successfully.

My New Years resolution was to include vegetables with every lunch and dinner. One day last week I realized I'd made an entirely vegetarian lunch, and so decided to try to do the same for dinner. I'm up to 9 days now, with only one non-vegetarian meal in there. I'm not becoming vegetarian, but doing it that well for a week gave me a positive feeling.

Yesterday I had enough energy to clean the bathroom, do the dishes and laundry, and do some exercises on my Wii Fit. Today I just finished walking around the block. I've been good about taking my depression meds. Comparing today to this day last year I am doing a lot better. Last year I had to work up to walking around the block.

Monday I have a job interview. 45 minute drive from here, but at this point can't be too picky. Still have not heard back from the second interview I've mentioned before.

No word yet

No word from that interview. It is the holidays so lots of the relevant people are likely off for vacations. I should hear soon, next week maybe. I have an interview with a bank tomorrow. I hope they call and reschedule, because it's bitterly cold and the streets are snow filled with more expected.

Went and spent a few hours hanging out with a friend. That was a positive for me since he lives 45 minutes or so from here.

My tenants either made or bought me cookies for Christmas. Very nice of them. Tasty too. :-)

The perpetual snow and very cold temps of the past week are starting to drain. Having to dig my car out from a foot of snow on it today so I could go to the grocery store was not fun. Hopefully some sun comes soon. I can deal with snow, and cold, but having both for extended periods is depressing.

Still taking my meds every day. Before the snowstorms we had a sunny day so I got out for a walk, even though there was snow on the ground from the last storm.