It's been an exciting few weeks.  A great mix of friends, car troubles, anxiety, and apartment hunting.  I've been coming off one medicine, but I feel like the stress of this move is getting to me.  I still haven't been able finalize an apartment (anything with a credit check is terrifying after years of medical debt).  I have a short list, but still haven't one that meets all our preferences.  I'd really rather not get trapped like we did moving to Seattle, but we've got much better tools for finding a place now than during that move.  Between walkscore, padmapper, and placeofmine I've been able to put together a short list, and ensure they're within close enough to work/groceries, and not in high crime areas.  Just need to contact them and confirm somethings, then decide which of our preferences we can compromise on.

It doesn't help that for the past few weeks I've been dizzy and fatigued.  I'm not sure if this is brought on by stress or illness, but pseudoephedrine and mucinex seem to help with the worst of it.  Of course, those knock me out, so that doesn't help with getting things done.

On the plus side, we've really pared down what we're bringing with us, and picked up a roof top carrier that will hold almost all the clothes.  The ferry is booked, the cat's flight and the shipment of supplies are booked, everything in my slowly failing hard drive has been backed up onto an external, we have all the gear we'll need to sleep on the boat, the couch is at the dump, and I've got a good checklist of next steps going.

selfish

So....masks.  Keeping up appearances.  It takes a lot of energy to maintain the pleasant fiction that I'm not screaming inside my head.  Unfortunately, it's been 9 months since this bout of depression started, and now I'm having more and more trouble keeping up that mask.  I want to hide.  I want to howl.  I want I want I want.

How selfish.

And so my mask stays up in public.  My wife has had to deal with seeing me take it on and off.  See me fake it for other people, but not for her.  I don't want to be fake, I really want to be the generous, outgoing, and likable guy. (again, selfish).  Would faking mood for her be a good thing?  Or would she see it as a vain attempt to appease and please her?

I know that everyone says to act the way you want to be, and you will be that way.  I want my battery back so I can do that.

</selfish>

Only cause work is slow today

Without work to keep me busy and buried, I've had too much time to think at work.  While friends of mine joking plan for a zombie apocalyse, I regularly dread the collapse of modern infrastructure, mass starvation, the end of life as we know it.  At the same time I'm oddly comforted we can't manage to extinguise all life on earth, only most of it.  Reflecting on this, and the various steps I see as helpful but not strictly necessary to continuing my family/tribe's survival after such an event is perhaps a red flag on the anxiety scale. 

I live currently in a remote part of the United States.  It's a very large town, with very little agriculture or other renewable natural resources.  Most everything to keep this city of 300,000 people going is shipped in.  Things are already very expensive here, about 12-25% more than in the rest of the country.  If fuel prices spike to where we can't afford to ship food in, it's hard not to imagine large scale starvation, resource competition, devestation of natural resources.  I don't believe I stand a good chance of surviving that, especially since I'm not a hunter or fisherman.

Prior to the Russian fur trade, human life here was managed by severe resource limitations, and while not the most populated area in the world, it did manage to support several thousand people.  However, these were scattered into small, mobile groups, rarely settling in one place for overlong.  Combine that with incredibly high mortality rates, it's hard to find a better example of sustainable life in these high latitudes.  Certainly not one similar to the western methods of consumption.

Life and climate is beginning to change all over, and the general trend seems to be that it happens quickly rather than slowly.  Gotta get out now while I can.

Bit by bit.  I've been ill these past few weeks.  With that said, I spent a perfectly gorgeous Saturday sitting in the living room, eating anything I can get my hands on, and watching my little pony with my partner.  Good weather has been so hard to come by up here, but when the mind and body can't function it's impossible to enjoy those things.  The guilt about wasting this time is toxic.

In medias res

So, facing another big move (several thousand miles), and starting over with new doctors/therapists, no nearby friends (3 hours is not close), I'm attempting to do something I have not yet been able to complete. 

Keep a journal.