Organisation and depression

Woke up at 9.00am, which I don’t regard as a good thing. I do think it is a bit harder to get going after that.

Started trying to organise the cuttings I’ve saved for future research material. This is the sort of thing that can get more depressing then you expect. As in “I have all this material, why I haven’t I done more with it?” This problem is highlighted by the amount of notes I have turned up form my depressed phrase. One of the things that I have established from this and from my father’s own spell of depression, is that recovery from this is slow. It’s about trying to change a mental outlook, which doesn’t happen overnight. I also think that there can be some triggers that can remain in your head which cause you to start feeling down again. These can fade away over a couple of hours, the trick is trying to distract your mind away from them.

Another reason why this may be getting me down, is that it reminds me of all the story ideas that I had and I haven’t followed though. This means that they build up; waiting to get out and I feel guilty because I haven’t done them yet. Because I don’t know how I can make them work and so on. This is a very good example of the trigger thinking above, really.

In attempt to be cheerful, I got hold of a copy of the graphic novel ‘Freakangels: Volume 2’ by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield, published by Avatar Press. This is the story of 11 twenty-somethings with various mental powers, such as telepathy and telekinesis, defending Whitechapel in a post-apocalypse England. It is building into an exciting science-fiction narrative with a theme about taking responsibility for your actions.

Over today, I have been getting the urge to try and organise my CD collection. Either this is just my mind looking for a source of distraction. Alternatively, it might be the belief that if you can impose a final definite sort of order on everything you own, all books, CD’s and DVD’s, you will be able to have a better existence. I admit that I love the idea of this, but I can spot the flaws in it. Firstly, it might mean you spend the best part of a month doing it. Secondly it relies on you never acquiring anything new after this, because if you did that, it would have to catalogued into the new system and what if it didn’t fit? Thirdly, what if you had to move? Then would you have to do it all again? Fourthly, you could just end sitting around, too neurotic to take out anything to read or watch, in case it disrupted the established order.

Mr Toppit and the pond

Finished reading ‘Mr Toppit’ by Charles Elton. It’s a about a family dealing with the death of their father and the aftermath of the children’s books he wrote, becoming famous. It did start well, but once the action moves to Los Angles in the second have the book loses momentum. It feels as if it’s going for a bunch of easy targets. Also it starts to build up to revelations that once revealed are not that much of a shock.

Sometime this week, I’m going to have to help my parents clean out a pond and put a new liner in. Now there are two types of garden pond. There are the ones with the nice clear water, where the Koi Carp swim, where you can see the bottom of the pond. Then there are the ponds which have gone feral. The greenery is covering the surface of the water and is starting to creep out of it. The bottom is covered with black slime that smells as if an abattoir and sewage plant were sharing the same room. Guess which one is in our garden?

First day of redundancy and it already feels as if there are a thousand things I need to do and want to do. Still I suppose that’s a good thing. This morning I was able to wake up at 7.00am. Take it from me, when it is usually 5 – 5.30am, that counts as an improvement.