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Thanks for visiting my diary. I've been journaling since 1984 and have chosen to share some of my entries online. They are not all positive thoughts, but I hope that reading them might be a blessing to someone who needs encouragement.
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Please also visit my music page, where you can hear samples from my debut CD, I Believe, which features songs written based on experiences shared in this journal.
I got up at 9:00 this morning--I know that's not exactly early. Anyway, it is for me when I'm in these circumstances. It's amazing how when I was feeling safe and happy I got up earlier and didn't take naps. I'm trying really hard to do the few things that are within my power to move something along in my life.
I have been thinking of submitting articles to some magazines for several months. Of course, confidence is the big thing there. I don't take rejection very well, and rejections are just a part of the writer's life. Rationally, I know that I write well and that a rejection would not necessarily be a personal thing. But with my background of thinking that humility means never appreciating my own gifts, rejections are going to be pretty difficult for me to deal with.
It's also hard for me to think of writing for magazines I know little about. I've done tons of volunteer work with parents of kids with visual impairments, and I know stuff because special education was my minor--not to mention that I've lived it. But I'm not a parent, and there's some stupid voice inside that says, "You, write for parenting mags? Yeah, right! Who are you kidding?" I know better than to believe it. I have 100 parents on an email list that I moderate who eat up my advice and have been encouraging me to write. Hello... Shouldn't that tell me that I'm qualified to write this stuff? I have a friend who I met on a freelance writer's list who looks over my stuff and says it's good and I should be submitting. Shouldn't that tell me something? What is it going to take for me to overcome these stupid old tapes and fears???
Another thing I have on my plate this week is the braille transcriber's exam. It's a trial thing that I can submit up to three times before they make me take the class. I have no doubt that I could ace it. And transcribers are in huge demand with school districts and other sources. Mostly this is just a motivation thing. I have to just sit myself down and do it.
Here we're back to the effects of the mood swings, and now I'm starting to see that it might be time to go back on meds. I really don't want to do it. Healthwise I couldn't deal with the weight gain from Depakote, and I'm not really willing to go fooling around trying other meds when I know that one works.
But more than that, I really do think this is a stress thing. When my life is going ok, the mood stuff is very mild and tolerable. That's why they don't diagnose me as bipolar. But when the stress comes and the isolation triggers never end, the mood swings get way aggravated. I'll be fine in the morning, but before too long I'm going back and forth between crying at the drop of a hat and even feeling suicidal at one end and climbing the walls, playing music at incredible volumes, and thinking I could conquer the world at the other end. They last a couple or three hours before I do the flip to the other end, and there are only momentary instances of stability.
Anyway, the bottom line is there are a lot of things I can be doing. The self-imposed routine used to work for me, but it's very hard to maintain that while dealing with these mood swings. Ok, ok, ok, I'll talk to the therapist about the meds. I can see this is not looking good at all. There's a part of me that chastises me and tells me that my problem is really a spiritual problem and that I'm just feeling the effects of not having my spiritual life up to speed, that I would be doing much better if I would just spend my daily quiet time. If you could hear the way it sounds in my head, the rationality of what I've written here would go flying out the window. It's a very condemning voice, and though perhaps there is truth in the words there is no truth in the attitude.
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