It's almost been two weeks since we got home from NS and finally we're falling back into our routines. The major thing that's been interfering with my re-adjustment is a mild bout of depression. Life's moving very slowly and syrupy for me right now. I'm tired all the time in that special way that sleep doesn't touch. Stuff either matters too much or not at all. All the familiar signs of a light depression, which always has the potential of becoming something deeper and worse.

So I've been trying to slow way down and give myself the space i need to find my balance again before it becomes worse. Sometimes giving it time doesn't help, but I have to at least try. I've taken several days this week to just nap and read and nap again instead of whipping myself into doing "what needs to be done". Problem with that is, as always, what needs to be done just doesn't get done.

So today I need to do some cleaning and stuff because we're (hopefully) finally going to have Christmas with the boys. We took the tree down last Sunday and their gifts are in a bag on the floor now. It's been a farce trying to get together with them to do this gift exchange. It's to the point where I'm wondering if I'm being avoided. Well we'll see tonight what happens.

At least under the mess the apartment is fundamentally clean. All the work I've put in over the past year pay off at times like this. When it's just a matter of finding enough energy to tidy and catch up. Doesn't take much more than a couple hours to get it to "guest presentable" level. I just know I've been neglecting PtF so here I am, grabbing 30 minutes before I start to write up an entry.

It's always so hard to naval-gaze when I'm sliding into a depression. Training says I should be finding out why, when and how to get out of it. But the smarter part of me figures it hurts nothing really to take a week off and slow the fuck down. I read somewhere that if a person starts getting considerably klutzier, when the walls themselves seem to be attacking them it's because they've worked themselves into a panicked rush. That the solution is to slow down. That our bodies will eventually reflect the internal mental state we put ourselves in.

So now every time I walk into a wall I think about that little blurb in a magazine I read once and I wonder if I'm running myself too hard.

The good thing is that I've joined in Mike's yearly contest with his Mom. They see who has read the most books that year; the one who has is the winner. I suggested that the winner should get a book bought for them by each of the losers when I joined in. So now it's me, Mike, his Mom and his Sister. Miss Sara wants to play too but she's intimidated. I figure it would be good for her to get into the habit of tracking what she reads anyways. It would make interesting reading eventually.

I'm currently on my 9th book of the year. Most of them have been Mercedes Lackey books, Valdemar stuff. With the end of this one, I'm going to go check out the used bookstores and pick up another chunk of them. It used to be the process of hunting out the books I need for a series was an adventure in itself, but now I just want them there to read at pretty much any price. (Except new -- I normally break the spines of books, so it's ridiculous to buy new books.) I actually bought 2 new books from Coles while we were out East. I figure once I have all the Valdemar books I'll move onto another author that I do have the entire series on my bookshelves already.

Most likely I'll re-read the Darkover books. I started last year but then lost my desire to read at (some book about pulling some matching nasty guy through a teleport spell). I finally got all the full size novels based in Darkover; I just need to get the anthologies to complete it. That's something I'm very proud of. It took me 2 years to build that collection piece by piece, not paying more that $4 a book. I'm blessed in that KW has some of the best used bookstores I've ever seen. Hah, blessed... more like spoiled rotten.

I'm still really, quietly disappointed in my reading speed. It used to be I'd decide to take a day to read and I'd rip through three to four 400pg novels in that day. Now it's one and half books of the same size if I focus. I'm not absorbing any more than I did before; I'm just slower -- Probably because I'm so very out of practice. When I was reading like that I lived a 20 minutes walk from the library where I went every day to use the Internet so I have a continual feed of new reading materials daily. I also didn't have access to a PC or a TV in the same way I do here. Plus my life was both more complex and simpler.

I had crazy drama going on that I needed to escape from every day, and I also had the time to myself to escape. There was less of this feeling of pressure of the things that I had to do for the good of everyone around me. Of course I read like a fiend. Heh.

So I'm taking the time right now to read and work my way out of a depression. And on that note, that's 30 minutes.