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!

Donde la claridad misma es noche oscura

The title of the post is the title of a book from a latin-american writer, I haven't figured out an english phrase which transmit the same degree of despair as the spanish title. Any sugestion is welcome. Hey people, write some comments, will you?, it's lonely here..

By the way, last time I wrote I was expecting, and somehow feeling, the effects of the prozac. I though it was starting to work on me. But oh my, was I more wrong? Not only it hasn't worked, but I'm feeling more depressed than before. I feel void, never the title of this blog was more accurate, heck. I have stopped any writing of my thesis, and the course I'm taking this summer is going not too good, to say the least.

It seems like if anything I do, I don't get any pleasure from it. That's one of the symptoms of the depression, I know, but hey, why doesn't the medication work? For a concrete experience: say I'm at home and I start thinking what nice would it be to go to the nearest bookstore, drink a capuccino, browse over some books, maybe buy a couple of books I may find interesting, spend some leisure time. Then, I go to the bookstore. And it happens that the reverse thinking occurs to me: I long to go back to home, and rest, and watch some tv and maybe read some book (isn't that ironic). But I know when I get back to home the reality will not be as I imagine. And that closes the circle.

I think it is clear that I want to escape from me. But everywhere I go, I am there, no escape, only the expectation of escaping, that's the only time I feel some relief. But, by definition, it is transitory. Pretty gloomy post, huh? Well, that's the topic of this blog.

The joy of summer

What were you doing? Why don't you post more often? I ask myself, since according to the statistics not too many people read this blog (although there were some interesting comments in the past). Well, I was hoping and waiting for the prozac to kick in, the doctor increased the dosis to 40 mg, but I haven't felt anything too much different. I wonder if I'd be inmune to this medication, other people seem to enjoy it a lot more.

Anyway, I'm about to start the summer term in this fucking town and more fucking university. I still have to complete some courses, which means the usual stress to pass with A, and it also means having to talk with people and to move around the big masses of students happily walking between classes, thinking in their bright future, dreaming in the wonderful and easy life after they graduate from such a "prestigious" university. How I hate them, man. How I hate their big trucks (you know of which college and town I'm talking about, right?). Hey, if nobody read this what's the point of anonymity?

By the way, the experiment of passing a course with B or C failed. And as usual the satisfaction lasted a microsecond, while I'm still wore out, sad and defeated. But cheer up my dear me, there are still oportunities, some classes still to take, and most of all, we can still fail in the decisive moment of defending my thesis. Or easier, I can fail to write it! (which is more or less what is happening...).

Prozac, not Plato!

On a not so unrelated topic to the previous post, I finally went to the doctor and told him: "hey, I'm depressed." "Ok, here you have some prozac", he said. Heck, it was too easy. Or perhaps I was really convincing that my symptoms were fucking my life. Well, if you think that it took me years to have the strength to go and to say "I'm depressed", that is probably a strong enough symptom. But I haven't felt any change, this is already my third week on this stuff. I wonder if the dosis is too low, or if I have to wait (I heard it takes several weeks to produce some effect), or even if I need some stronger kind of antidepressant. Sometimes I think in taking more than one capsule. I haven't done it. But how would it be like to take 5 capsules? 20mg times 5 = 0.1g. What would be to take 0.1g of prozac? The answer is probably one google search away, but I have resisted the temptation of looking for information about this thing. I don't want to know of side effects or so, I only want that it works. I also wonder how would it be mixing prozac and marijuana, but that is just a rethoric question, as you would notice if you read the previous post.

Weed

There was a time, last year, when I went back to my country for a congress. I really didn't want to go, conferences are a lot of stress for me, too much people, relations, meeting my old fellow grad students, sharing hotel rooms... But I had to go. Then something weird happened. Every day, after the activities of the congress, we went out for beers. In those nights I discovered that most of my peers smoked marijuana. Man, how can I be so outsider?!? How can I be so blind? I had spent lot of time around them, mostly around the university, and although I'm not close friend with most of them, we had been in bars, pubs and parties (yes, sometimes I go to parties to suffer). I know them from almost ten years! Did you want a proof of my social skills? Here you have.

But the weirdness continues. They invited me to smoke, that was my first time I tried a drug. It felt really good, and I kept doing it almost every day for the two weeks that lasted the conference. The funny thing was that I started to feel less anxious around them, around the people. I felt that some kind of connection made a click between their group and me, and I could fit. That's the exact word, I fitted. And it wasn't only a subjective impression on my side, but some of them said farewell to me with a "hey, ... we really enjoyed these weeks with you". Can you believe it? I was astonished. Ok, I read later that everything may be an effect of the weed, but what the heck, I wish I'd be permanently stoned if that is one the symptoms.

The brighter vision of the world remained for a month after I returned to the US. Then, it started to fade out. And the worst part is that I'm incapable to get weed. How can you do it when you have no contacts, when you don't have anyone to ask where to find these kind of things? I guess that after you make a contact the rest is probably not difficult, but that first part is the most difficult for me. I have wandered sometimes around bars, trying to smell if somebody is smoking, so I could ask him or her (pathetic, huh?). But I'm blind, I probably won't get any result, judging from my previous lack of intuition. I've even had dreams about smoking pot again... oh, man. Let's stop here.

Any comments?

Long time no see, huh? I had forgotten about the therapeutic effect of this blog. The last posts tried to be more or less well crafted, they took some time, and they were written not because of pure fun but thinking in the (possible) readers. If you have read this blog from the beginning you probably remember that I have a strong tendency to worry about what people think of me. Now I'm trying to recover some of the good feelings that I got after writing the firsts posts, fresher posts, without hitting the "delete" key as I said in very first, almost incoherent, post.

I've received some comments in previous writings. Although I'm a not so well socially adapted person, although I have fear of people and friendship and interpersonal relations, I must confess that I feel exhuberant when I find that someone made a comment. Wow, I think, someone read this babbling and felt it worth to make a comment! Well, half of the time they are just spammers who said "great blog, you surely get a bookmark", and I believe it (how pathetic, isn't it) until I click on the name of the commenter and I walk into some porn or so. Oh well...

But sometimes is real people. And (warning: more pathetic things coming) I feel really good, for a moment at least. I get back to read the post and the comments several times during the day, until gloomier feelings and the usual depression kicks in again. So, is it people and relations the cure for depression? Is it talking and sharing good remedies? Ah, who cares. Too much effort. I always liked some lyrics from Pink Floyd, The wall, that say: "I don't need no arms around me" (*).

The arms around me feel good and warm, though. Ok, too much contradictions for now. And since I'm exercising the "write it for fun" rule I think I'll stop here.
There was a short time when I was happy among people, with some little not so virtuous help. That's for next post, stay tuned.

(*) Update: Pink Floyd, The Wall, Another Brick in the Wall Part 3.

A day in the life

Do you want to enjoy a typical day in my life? At least these empty days in spring break are like this. Come with me, over here, please. Sit and enjoy:

• 11:15AM: I wake up, sleepy, want to keep sleeping.
  
• 11:30AM: Turn on laptop and put the kettle on for tea.
  
• 11:45AM: Turn on TV and look for cartoons or similar things (actually I'm watching a lot of "Between the lions"). Start bouncing between reading blogs, mailing lists, feeds, watching the TV, sipping the tea. Dream about the whole day I have in front of me. I do this until I finish my tea.
• 12:15AM-17:00PM: Repeat previous routine (without the tea) over and over.
• 17:00PM-18:00PM: Lunch break, with net and TV, of course.
• ...3:00AM: the same, you get the idea.
• 3:00AM: go to bed, read a little.
  

After the day is gone I worked nothing. I feel guilty, empty. I got nothing from the day. Well, it's spring break, you may say. Yes, but I was planning to use the extra time to do some work, and my plans are crushed by my worst enemy (what a cliche, huh?).

Lately, last weeks, the (self inflicted)-pressure to finish the dammed phd has increased. I've been feeling physical problems, shortness of breath, things like that. I went to the doctor, something that it is not easy for me, and even more difficult when I know that the examination may involve taking off my shirt (refer to this post). They ran several tests and x-rays. It seems that it's just stress (another cliche, aren't you bored?).

Ok, to honor the spirit of this week, as if I care... but, heck, here it goes. Contrary to the title of this blog, I have one "good" thing to say about this holidays: I read usually at bed, before going to sleep. I (re)discover the pleasure to read during the day, several hours straight. At the end, after reading, I worked nothing, as in the previous schedule, but I feel less guilty. Actually reading: "Geek love", very good. Anyway, the good stuff is the exception to the rule.