Same old semester

About to start again the semester. Tomorrow I have to teach classes, and the most scariest thing of all: I will meet my advisor again, after all this summer in which I worked nothing. The psychologist suggested to increase the prozac to 60mg/day, so I guess that the anxiety is really showing up (or they are really "prescription"-easy with this kind of medication, who knows).

Yesterday I went to a dinner organized by a professor, with several grad students and postdocs, as a way to reconnect before starting the semester. Oh my, it took me so much "get your ass up and go" to myself..., didn't want to go. At the end it wasn't so bad, I could even speak a couple of times without thinking to myself that I was making the most ridicule act. But after the dinner I felt happy to return to my cozy loneliness. I don't want to be around people, really. It makes me anxious.

Sometimes I like posts in other blogs which contribute with links to stuff of similar "flavor". So, if you like comics you may like (or you probably already know) the great Pearls Before Swine (hats off to Stephan Pastis, the author).

B

I don't know if blogging is my thing, it takes me a lot of effort to decide to write a post. Anyway, there has been same changes. Finally, I passed a course with a B, hey! Hurray! Fuck. It wasn't nice, but at least now I know how it feels. This summer has been pathetic, I didn't study for the course and I totally stopped any advance for my thesis. Every day is a continuous stream of guilt.

The medication is not helping at all, I guess I'll have to talk to the doc and see if he can change it. However, I started sessions with a psychologist, only one session so far. He diagnosed "anxiety" and some "endogenous depression". The "anxiety" part surprised me a bit, I have never thought of me as an anxious person, but after he explained it to me it looked a good diagnostic.

On a very different note, I started studying music. I think it may help to fight the void from inside. I had some musical instruction when I was a child but I never followed it. This summer I bought a harmonica and tried to start learning. I found it a bit difficult, and the music for what the harmonica is most suited is not really my style (blues and so on). It is a really portable and cheap instrument, though. After that I bought a basic keyboard, not so portable, but cheap anyway. That is more of my taste, now I can learn more music theory and I have been enjoying it for a while. I know that I have no talent at all, so I hope that the anxiety and the self pushing in this activity doesn't get too hard.

And on another very different note, some days ago I found a page which I visited a long time ago, but now I gave it more attention. It is a constructed language called toki pona. It only has 118 words and it's supposed to express only the most basic things in life. I'm reading the lessons and trying to express things with this language. I found it really calming, soothing.

o pona!