meds and social media

I didn’t turn up here at all in July. I was absent from many things in July. The day job took a toll through June, and July saw the train come off the tracks. There was no multi-carriage pile up, thankfully, but many weeks have been spent in a siding while repair work has been carried out. But, enough of this train wreck analogy. My health took a nosedive. My physical health (a nasty chest infection) and my mental health too. Stress, anxiety, panic attacks. Not a good state of mind to take into a busy working environment, not that I had much choice in the matter, mind. So, I also took myself off to a doctor and asked to go back on medication, again. It’s been a few years since I had need to take anti-depressants and I seemed to be doing really well, but that’s the thing about mental health issues, they can ambush you at any time. It really doesn’t take much of a real-life issue to nudge you back over the line into illness. So I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to say, ‘That’s me fixed, no more need for any pills.’

The thing I like least about taking medication is that it takes away all my creativity. It levels out the brain and my moods, preventing the lows but preventing flights of fancy too. So since I’ve been pill popping again I’ve been doing no writing, at all, which isn’t great for the way I feel about myself generally, but I’m living with it for the short term and looking at the long term goal of getting back to whatever passes for normal in my head. Although I haven’t been able to write in any sustained way (two or three hours at a stretch is the norm) I can focus for short, intense periods, which perfectly suits interacting with social media i.e. Facebook and Twitter. So I’ve been posting and tweeting and liking and sharing as if my life depended on it. This has been great for my profile online at those sites, I gained a few new friends and followers (but then I probably lost a few while I’ve been writing this) but less great for this blog where I have to, you know, put in a little more thought and effort. Anyways, clearly things are slowly turning around for me because here I am again. It’s August and I was determined that another month wouldn’t slip by without a post here, and it has taken a lot of effort, and frustration when the words just wouldn’t flow, and I couldn’t think of a nice segue from one sentence to the next, but this is just a first step on the road.