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Mar. 8th, 2012 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogDigging back into Livejournal has been putting me into a melancholic headspace from time to time. Usually late at night, when I have all my work for the next day of school done, and I'm digging through communities and other people's journals, and being reminded of a great deal that I miss, both on LJ and elsewhere, in venues like usenet.
I'm trying to figure out how to best manage those emotions. Realizing two things helps. The past is static. And what I'm doing right now, in terms of starting to invest time and thought and keyboard-wear in making my places in LJ living spaces again is something I should be proud of doing. That I'm making a real effort to reach out and connect with people in a venue I care about. Whether that turns out to be worthwhile in the long run, I'm doing the best I can with it, and if the ship floats instead of sinks, its not going to be because I wasn't bailing.
And you know, if I'm not able to make the connections here that I want to, there *must* be other places where I can. I'm sure I can find other communities of people who have in depth, respectful communications with each other about things they and I and not a lot of other people care about. Places to feel at home and indulge my eccentricities. Places to feel a sense of community, something that I lacked for a very long time in my life and that, even now with my friends and network of connections that's much better now than probably at any other time in my life, I still yearn for more of. I guess I do want to go where everybody knows my name.
But on managing the occasional spikes of melancholia, I had a strange experience a few nights ago. I was, rather to my surprise, feeling so down and despondant that lying in bed under the blankets and squeezing a plushy while wearing a shirt that was a gift from my girlfriend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lisagems (a virtual sort of hug) and spending an hour reading a warm and domestic graphic novel (Castle Waiting) was still not enough to get my mind out of where it was. I was in this horrible spiral of depression and angst. It's not something that happens to me often. I really can't remember the last time I felt that way. But I sure did earlier this week! And then I had this very conscious thought about the experience I was having. My brain, I told myself, is going in circles. Thinking about a piece on NPR that I heard about using strong magnetic fields to treat people with sever depression, I imagined my mental state as a series of circuits on a circuit board with the wrong one stuck open and electricity going around in an unending loop. And I said that that was enough was enough and imagined that circuit's gate physically closing.
Bam. Seventy to eighty percent of the despair just left, like turning off a lightswitch. I was still feeling down, but it was in a much more manageable way, and before too long I'd managed to nod off. The next morning, I was feeling so much better, albeit a bit sleep-deprived since I'd been up to about one-thirty. But still, it was a really strange and memorable experience. Of course it's entirely mental; I don't really believe I was directly doing something physical in my brain. But somehow it was a good enough visualization to make it work.
---
I just learned today that the art gallery here on campus will be closed, which means I don't have to come back to Kenosha on Wednesday to work there, which means that I get the whole span from after my last class today through to Monday after next to myself! I'm going to visit my girlfriends, work on school stuff, and I'd like to see some of my family too, since usually I'm too busy during the week to do much with them. I have to think more about how I want to schedule things this weekend. But for right now, I'm just very content at my upcoming vacation!
I'm trying to figure out how to best manage those emotions. Realizing two things helps. The past is static. And what I'm doing right now, in terms of starting to invest time and thought and keyboard-wear in making my places in LJ living spaces again is something I should be proud of doing. That I'm making a real effort to reach out and connect with people in a venue I care about. Whether that turns out to be worthwhile in the long run, I'm doing the best I can with it, and if the ship floats instead of sinks, its not going to be because I wasn't bailing.
And you know, if I'm not able to make the connections here that I want to, there *must* be other places where I can. I'm sure I can find other communities of people who have in depth, respectful communications with each other about things they and I and not a lot of other people care about. Places to feel at home and indulge my eccentricities. Places to feel a sense of community, something that I lacked for a very long time in my life and that, even now with my friends and network of connections that's much better now than probably at any other time in my life, I still yearn for more of. I guess I do want to go where everybody knows my name.
But on managing the occasional spikes of melancholia, I had a strange experience a few nights ago. I was, rather to my surprise, feeling so down and despondant that lying in bed under the blankets and squeezing a plushy while wearing a shirt that was a gift from my girlfriend
lisagems (a virtual sort of hug) and spending an hour reading a warm and domestic graphic novel (Castle Waiting) was still not enough to get my mind out of where it was. I was in this horrible spiral of depression and angst. It's not something that happens to me often. I really can't remember the last time I felt that way. But I sure did earlier this week! And then I had this very conscious thought about the experience I was having. My brain, I told myself, is going in circles. Thinking about a piece on NPR that I heard about using strong magnetic fields to treat people with sever depression, I imagined my mental state as a series of circuits on a circuit board with the wrong one stuck open and electricity going around in an unending loop. And I said that that was enough was enough and imagined that circuit's gate physically closing. Bam. Seventy to eighty percent of the despair just left, like turning off a lightswitch. I was still feeling down, but it was in a much more manageable way, and before too long I'd managed to nod off. The next morning, I was feeling so much better, albeit a bit sleep-deprived since I'd been up to about one-thirty. But still, it was a really strange and memorable experience. Of course it's entirely mental; I don't really believe I was directly doing something physical in my brain. But somehow it was a good enough visualization to make it work.
---
I just learned today that the art gallery here on campus will be closed, which means I don't have to come back to Kenosha on Wednesday to work there, which means that I get the whole span from after my last class today through to Monday after next to myself! I'm going to visit my girlfriends, work on school stuff, and I'd like to see some of my family too, since usually I'm too busy during the week to do much with them. I have to think more about how I want to schedule things this weekend. But for right now, I'm just very content at my upcoming vacation!
