A good day
Apr. 16th, 2011 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grinninfooleToday was the Paint & Pixel Festival, an art intended to showcase the wealth of talented cartoonists, painters, web comics, and other visual artists out here in Western MA/Vermont, and it was a great success. The show is the brain child of Peggy Twardowski, and she's a force of nature. We had about 45 artists come, a great mix of styles and interests.
I got some of the higher profile guests, specifically Howard Cruse and Jeph Jacques, to come. Peggy got most of the other people, booked the space, signed up all the paid attendees, arranged for sponsors, created the program, got signs made, rounded up volunteers, and did all sorts of publicity (and put the seed money.)
All the tables were full, we had a fine turn out of paying customers (at least 200, I think), and there was a relaxed and friendly vibe for the whole afternoon.
I was surprised at how many people there I knew, and the connections between some of them. I was especially gobsmacked when one of the featured guests, Ruth Sanderson, knew who I was because I actually knew her daughter.
I got to chat with Raf and Dave and Morgan for the first time in a while, hung out with Howard Cruse and his husband Ed (good chat), and enjoyed seeing all sorts of people meet and appreciate each others' work.
And I was frequently praised for how great the show was, which was fun, though I kept deflecting credit to Peggy. But, you know, she let me get on the microphone and make all the announcements, which of makes me instantly happy. :)
More generally, I have officially survived another year on earth, and am once again prime. I go back and forth on whether or not I'm really depressed, because maybe I'm just sad, and is it really so uncommon to feel listless, and it's not like I can't get anything done or am incapable of joy.
A week ago, I started taking zoloft, figuring that I might as well try everything to deal with my depression (I still think maybe the problem is that I avoid making decisions, and thus have a life by default, but be that as it may), and right now I feel like it might be helping. Maybe it was that I had a good day, but I feel lighter, more mellow, than I have in a while.
This past week, I have felt run down, even exhausted, but I can't tell for sure yet if that's the drug, or the fact that I haven't been sleeping. Certainly, I'm noticing changes in my libido, which is a common effect of Z, and it's supposed to take a while to start helping. So, I don't know if I'm feeling better because I have gotten some rest, or because it's helping. But I hope it's helping.
I stayed up late in part because I was watching the final season of Avatar The Last Airbender with usakeh. She's been feeling low, and the show was improving her mood... and watching with her was improving mine. My god, it's just such a great piece of art. I eagerly await the Legend Of Korra next year. I also stayed up reading a book George gave me for my birthday, the Name Of The Wind. It was fun, and very-well written, but I also feel a certain distance from it, because the protagonist/narrator (Kvothe) is such a massive Barry Stu it feels deliberately manipulative. He's super smart, magically gifted, has traveled all over, has a tragic past, a secret mission, an epic destiny, he's an awesome musician that all the chicks dig, he blends in everywhere, he survived on the streets for three years before becoming the youngest guy ever admitted to the University (and they gave him a scholarship!)....
Yeah, OK.
Still, enjoyable enough to finish.
... and that's my timer chiming, so I'll post about other stuff another time.
I got some of the higher profile guests, specifically Howard Cruse and Jeph Jacques, to come. Peggy got most of the other people, booked the space, signed up all the paid attendees, arranged for sponsors, created the program, got signs made, rounded up volunteers, and did all sorts of publicity (and put the seed money.)
All the tables were full, we had a fine turn out of paying customers (at least 200, I think), and there was a relaxed and friendly vibe for the whole afternoon.
I was surprised at how many people there I knew, and the connections between some of them. I was especially gobsmacked when one of the featured guests, Ruth Sanderson, knew who I was because I actually knew her daughter.
I got to chat with Raf and Dave and Morgan for the first time in a while, hung out with Howard Cruse and his husband Ed (good chat), and enjoyed seeing all sorts of people meet and appreciate each others' work.
And I was frequently praised for how great the show was, which was fun, though I kept deflecting credit to Peggy. But, you know, she let me get on the microphone and make all the announcements, which of makes me instantly happy. :)
More generally, I have officially survived another year on earth, and am once again prime. I go back and forth on whether or not I'm really depressed, because maybe I'm just sad, and is it really so uncommon to feel listless, and it's not like I can't get anything done or am incapable of joy.
A week ago, I started taking zoloft, figuring that I might as well try everything to deal with my depression (I still think maybe the problem is that I avoid making decisions, and thus have a life by default, but be that as it may), and right now I feel like it might be helping. Maybe it was that I had a good day, but I feel lighter, more mellow, than I have in a while.
This past week, I have felt run down, even exhausted, but I can't tell for sure yet if that's the drug, or the fact that I haven't been sleeping. Certainly, I'm noticing changes in my libido, which is a common effect of Z, and it's supposed to take a while to start helping. So, I don't know if I'm feeling better because I have gotten some rest, or because it's helping. But I hope it's helping.
I stayed up late in part because I was watching the final season of Avatar The Last Airbender with usakeh. She's been feeling low, and the show was improving her mood... and watching with her was improving mine. My god, it's just such a great piece of art. I eagerly await the Legend Of Korra next year. I also stayed up reading a book George gave me for my birthday, the Name Of The Wind. It was fun, and very-well written, but I also feel a certain distance from it, because the protagonist/narrator (Kvothe) is such a massive Barry Stu it feels deliberately manipulative. He's super smart, magically gifted, has traveled all over, has a tragic past, a secret mission, an epic destiny, he's an awesome musician that all the chicks dig, he blends in everywhere, he survived on the streets for three years before becoming the youngest guy ever admitted to the University (and they gave him a scholarship!)....
Yeah, OK.
Still, enjoyable enough to finish.
... and that's my timer chiming, so I'll post about other stuff another time.
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Date: 2011-04-17 02:39 pm (UTC)/my .02
Anyway, it sounds like it was a lovely success, and I'm sure that you'll contribute even more next year to its planning.
Depression is such a hard disease to nail down. All the people I've known with it have gone back and forth wondering the same things - is this real? How do I know I have depression? Am I just being lame? It's the mind-body split in our culture, that doesn't want to believe that there isn't happening in your mind that you can't control with just a little bit more willpower. And while yes, there's something to be said to giving yourself structure and goals to strive for when you're battling a mental illness, denying it all isn't the same thing.
I think you're doing good things by trying some medicine and seeing if it helps. But I guess we have to keep in mind that it won't be the be-all, end-all solution in a bottle. Depression is a real biological condition, but it is triggered by events and by the environment you are surrounded with, and so the best thing you can do is to make your environment conducive to helping you succeed. If you have no reason to get out of bed, for example, you won't get out of bed when you're depressed. Work has been giving you that reason, and while I think you're a little overworked at the moment, I think it's good that it's there. I think seeing friends could be another reason to get going when you're not working. Also, making time to write in your journal like this is good too. Or maybe in a paper journal. But schedule it so that it happens and doesn't become one more thing in your life that your brain determines that you are failing at. Also, if you can afford it, I'd suggest making time for escapist fun - like D&D planning or writing, or whatever floats your boat, but do it somewhere out of the house. Go to a cafe or the library or something, so that it's less likely to become this stick you beat yourself up with later about how you wasted time and zoned out, etc. It's so much easier to interpret these kinds of rejuvenating activities as a waste of time when you do them at home because doing them at home somehow makes them feel less real for you, I think, like it's just lazing around the house being unproductive. I think doing these fun things (which are good to do because they charge your batteries for the less fun stuff) somewhere out in the world feel automatically more okay because you're combining them with being out in the world, which feels automatically like you're doing something productive. ;)
Anyway, I've kind of spammed your journal with this. But think about it and talk to me if there's stuff I can do to help with the environmental part at home. I don't mean to make things sound all easy as pie, but I know from the one experience I had when I think I flirted with something akin to a depressive episode, staying home with no responsibilities was kind of the worst thing for me. It made me sink into myself more and sit in the same room all day, looking at the internet and not even bothering to turn on the light when the sun set and it got dark. I was doing kind of a half-assed job when I was working during that period, but really, in retrospect I can see that it was much better than the alternative.