It’s a birthday-licious time of year, it seems. Three of my colleagues at work have had birthdays in the last week, while in blogworld, Jimbo of the cul de sac has passed over the yardarm of forty and Mrs. Roboto (whose template I love) has saluted thirty-one. As for me, I have but two days of my twenties left, which is fine. I’m hopeful that the coming decade will be considerably more equilibrious and considerably less angsty than its predecessor.
Arthur had his biannual day at the groomers today, and has emerged a trimmer, slinkier, leggier sort of Norwich Terrier. He is much happier in the muggy heat and I am enjoying the sight of the black Cleopatra lines around his eyes, which are usually obscured by general shagginess.
Next week will be Millie’s turn (appointments need to be made six weeks or more in advance–it’s a popular business), after which I am anticipating a few months of less vacuuming before their coats blow and it all begins again. Today is also the first day of Millie’s second season. At least forewarned is forearmed this time; we’ve got a window of about two weeks before we have to double-pen her while a blissed-out and exceptionally horny Arthur humps the air anywhere within a five-metre vicinity for three straight days.
Tonight I am taking a deep breath and going to the All*ance Française in order to find out which French class I will be taking. Will I make it into the advanced group, or will I be placed in intermediate two or one? I feel very wanting in my francophony, but at the same time I don’t want to talk myself down into a class that doesn’t stretch me. The plan, as I’ve said before, is to Frenchify myself to the levels of at least 2001 (when I was on the Riviera) before attempting an assault on Spanish and Italian in the next couple of years. The latter two I don’t speak–not yet, at least.
Certain professional development exercises at work yesterday led to Bill and I finding ourselves here by six o’clock, whereupon we let off steam while making use of a socialist sort of vocabulary. Or at least I did; the spectacle of a political agnostic using, curl-lipped, such phrases as “mollifying the bourgeoisie” made Bill laugh and laugh. I rather hoped I might get a red star for my sentiments, but it seems that hardcore Marxists don’t actually give ‘em out like that. They do, however, go to Cuba on occasion, so those were stories that I was intrigued to listen to, given my currently burgeoning interest in Things Latin American.
One of the reasons my rate of posting has slowed of late is a general burgeoning of interest in Things All Over the Place in my life. Whether it’s being about to pass through the door of thirty, or no longer studying for qualifications, or something in the water, I don’t know, but there is definitely a Renaissance of harvestbird happening at present. I’ve talked before about how depression strips away, like nothing else, the ability to enjoy everyday sorts of pleasures, and I can only think that the further I get from my last middling to major episode (close to five years ago now), the more that capacity gets restored. This means lots of reading, many many movies and just generally a sense that my mind is voyaging in the world, as well as being able to derive actual happiness from actual ordinary things.
I’m still iffy about feeling happy, since the experience of it during depression is usually followed by a vicious falling away of mood that cancels out any euthymia that came before, and it’s memories of those experiences that stay in my mind rather than any more stable kind of happy. Even though I’m not in that state at the moment, my habit is to live as if I am. I find particularly when I’m out enjoying myself with friends, a part of me is waiting for the sting to creep into the conversation, the misunderstanding, the falling away of mood. That this isn’t happening any more is both scary and nice, but it’s going to take a while longer before I’m not surprised by it. Enjoying life as I imagine many non-depressives enjoy it will take some practice.
New Kid on the Hallway has been discussing anxiety and depression recently, and made one remark that caught my attention and made me think about myself. This was her comment, of herself, that “[i]ntrospection and self-observation are not things I do; I just turn that outwards and observe everyone else”. This got me thinking about how depression has affected my own temperament in this regard. I think I’ve always been doubly-directed, both introspective and an observer of others, but depression has sharpened my powers of self-observation to an exceptionally heightened level. That’s not to say I don’t have blindspots, because of course I do. But I hated so much the experience, at seventeen or eighteen, of my symptoms being under constant observation and interpretation by health professionals, that I took the attitude that, if I don’t look after this shit, then no-one else really can.
These days I tend to turn that inward eye outwards as well (you may imagine my eyeballs spinning in my head at will). I would like to think that I’m an accurate judge of character, and observing others in turn helps me understand how I react to people. Having said that, if I didn’t have the inward scrutiny, I doubt I’d be able to manage my depression the way I do–and I think I manage it pretty f*cking well–but I acknowledge that the kind of self-scrutiny I practise isn’t a standard condition of life or intellectual development.
New Kid also raises the question of whether academic life predisposes one to depression. I suspect again my position might be the reverse of the usual medicated humanities scholar, which is to say that I didn’t become depressed because I was an intellectual, but rather that I became an intellectual because I was depressed. University study–right up to the mad-arse level to which I took it–was the key for me to unlocking my own mind, a means by which to gain some distance, some perspective, on the particular tenor of my misery.
I had, temperamentally, the curiosity and enthusiasm and freshly-scarred sensitivity that all lend themselves to being some kind of artist practitioner, but higher education gave me the mental distance not to be overwhelmed by those things. I could accept being a depressive, and a writer, but not a depressed writer. It was always my intention to develop as a thinker in order to survive, mentally, life. Apparently what didn’t kill me made me stronger, but that is a kind of cosmic joke I find much easier to take as an atheist than I ever did when I was seventeen and wondering whether, if I had been weaker, god might not have tested me with quite such a gift basket of misery.
Well, lest such musings become too deadening, allow me to share the following:
And we tip our towelling sunhat and wave our jandals at Smacked Face, home in Aotearoa, a nation that doesn’t suck.
I have ceased blogging at After Nadath and archived the entries at my all-purpose h-bird diaryland addie (linked to at left, below). Three blogs, like three mistresses, are too many for anyone to maintain without recourse to a personal assistant of some kind. I’ll incorporate my more literary musings here from now on.
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Posterous
The Age of Aquarius
3 February, 2005
in commentatrix,Diaryland,dogs,O internet,the social round
It’s a birthday-licious time of year, it seems. Three of my colleagues at work have had birthdays in the last week, while in blogworld, Jimbo of the cul de sac has passed over the yardarm of forty and Mrs. Roboto (whose template I love) has saluted thirty-one. As for me, I have but two days of my twenties left, which is fine. I’m hopeful that the coming decade will be considerably more equilibrious and considerably less angsty than its predecessor.
Arthur had his biannual day at the groomers today, and has emerged a trimmer, slinkier, leggier sort of Norwich Terrier. He is much happier in the muggy heat and I am enjoying the sight of the black Cleopatra lines around his eyes, which are usually obscured by general shagginess.
Next week will be Millie’s turn (appointments need to be made six weeks or more in advance–it’s a popular business), after which I am anticipating a few months of less vacuuming before their coats blow and it all begins again. Today is also the first day of Millie’s second season. At least forewarned is forearmed this time; we’ve got a window of about two weeks before we have to double-pen her while a blissed-out and exceptionally horny Arthur humps the air anywhere within a five-metre vicinity for three straight days.
Tonight I am taking a deep breath and going to the All*ance Française in order to find out which French class I will be taking. Will I make it into the advanced group, or will I be placed in intermediate two or one? I feel very wanting in my francophony, but at the same time I don’t want to talk myself down into a class that doesn’t stretch me. The plan, as I’ve said before, is to Frenchify myself to the levels of at least 2001 (when I was on the Riviera) before attempting an assault on Spanish and Italian in the next couple of years. The latter two I don’t speak–not yet, at least.
Certain professional development exercises at work yesterday led to Bill and I finding ourselves here by six o’clock, whereupon we let off steam while making use of a socialist sort of vocabulary. Or at least I did; the spectacle of a political agnostic using, curl-lipped, such phrases as “mollifying the bourgeoisie” made Bill laugh and laugh. I rather hoped I might get a red star for my sentiments, but it seems that hardcore Marxists don’t actually give ‘em out like that. They do, however, go to Cuba on occasion, so those were stories that I was intrigued to listen to, given my currently burgeoning interest in Things Latin American.
One of the reasons my rate of posting has slowed of late is a general burgeoning of interest in Things All Over the Place in my life. Whether it’s being about to pass through the door of thirty, or no longer studying for qualifications, or something in the water, I don’t know, but there is definitely a Renaissance of harvestbird happening at present. I’ve talked before about how depression strips away, like nothing else, the ability to enjoy everyday sorts of pleasures, and I can only think that the further I get from my last middling to major episode (close to five years ago now), the more that capacity gets restored. This means lots of reading, many many movies and just generally a sense that my mind is voyaging in the world, as well as being able to derive actual happiness from actual ordinary things.
I’m still iffy about feeling happy, since the experience of it during depression is usually followed by a vicious falling away of mood that cancels out any euthymia that came before, and it’s memories of those experiences that stay in my mind rather than any more stable kind of happy. Even though I’m not in that state at the moment, my habit is to live as if I am. I find particularly when I’m out enjoying myself with friends, a part of me is waiting for the sting to creep into the conversation, the misunderstanding, the falling away of mood. That this isn’t happening any more is both scary and nice, but it’s going to take a while longer before I’m not surprised by it. Enjoying life as I imagine many non-depressives enjoy it will take some practice.
New Kid on the Hallway has been discussing anxiety and depression recently, and made one remark that caught my attention and made me think about myself. This was her comment, of herself, that “[i]ntrospection and self-observation are not things I do; I just turn that outwards and observe everyone else”. This got me thinking about how depression has affected my own temperament in this regard. I think I’ve always been doubly-directed, both introspective and an observer of others, but depression has sharpened my powers of self-observation to an exceptionally heightened level. That’s not to say I don’t have blindspots, because of course I do. But I hated so much the experience, at seventeen or eighteen, of my symptoms being under constant observation and interpretation by health professionals, that I took the attitude that, if I don’t look after this shit, then no-one else really can.
These days I tend to turn that inward eye outwards as well (you may imagine my eyeballs spinning in my head at will). I would like to think that I’m an accurate judge of character, and observing others in turn helps me understand how I react to people. Having said that, if I didn’t have the inward scrutiny, I doubt I’d be able to manage my depression the way I do–and I think I manage it pretty f*cking well–but I acknowledge that the kind of self-scrutiny I practise isn’t a standard condition of life or intellectual development.
New Kid also raises the question of whether academic life predisposes one to depression. I suspect again my position might be the reverse of the usual medicated humanities scholar, which is to say that I didn’t become depressed because I was an intellectual, but rather that I became an intellectual because I was depressed. University study–right up to the mad-arse level to which I took it–was the key for me to unlocking my own mind, a means by which to gain some distance, some perspective, on the particular tenor of my misery.
I had, temperamentally, the curiosity and enthusiasm and freshly-scarred sensitivity that all lend themselves to being some kind of artist practitioner, but higher education gave me the mental distance not to be overwhelmed by those things. I could accept being a depressive, and a writer, but not a depressed writer. It was always my intention to develop as a thinker in order to survive, mentally, life. Apparently what didn’t kill me made me stronger, but that is a kind of cosmic joke I find much easier to take as an atheist than I ever did when I was seventeen and wondering whether, if I had been weaker, god might not have tested me with quite such a gift basket of misery.
Well, lest such musings become too deadening, allow me to share the following:
And we tip our towelling sunhat and wave our jandals at Smacked Face, home in Aotearoa, a nation that doesn’t suck.
I have ceased blogging at After Nadath and archived the entries at my all-purpose h-bird diaryland addie (linked to at left, below). Three blogs, like three mistresses, are too many for anyone to maintain without recourse to a personal assistant of some kind. I’ll incorporate my more literary musings here from now on.