Slow Going and Turning a Corner

Anyone who knows me, or has seen me in the past couple of months, is probably aware that I have been struggling with depression for some time. It is not really a big deal anymore at this point because I finally have accepted the whole medical/biological side of the whole thing. Yes, there have been some outside circumstances that have contributed to my condition, but for the most part, I am figuring out that the real deal is internal. And on that front, I have been changing quite a bit. I'm not going to say everything I have been doing to make things better, but I will say that I think it is starting to work a little bit.


Sunrise

The evidence for this has been the past couple of days. After a significant relapse of depression that was more intense than usual, I turned myself around. I spent all Sunday cleaning my apartment. That may not sound like a big deal, but the months' worth of clutter I slowly let accumulate was significantly out of control. Today, I went grocery shopping, took a twenty minute plus long walk (to the grocery store), and did a lot of research for one of my overdue papers. I also made myself breakfast and balanced my checkbook. (Of course, I am running out of cash, but I am not going to let that bother me just yet.) While this might seem like a normal day for the average graduate student, it was quite an accomplishment for me. As cornball as this sounds, I am going to be proud of myself. Tonight, I have planned a few more things that should clear the way to getting more work done on my papers. It may be too late to make a difference in the money department, but this next week is also an opportunity that I am not going to let slip away.

Animal Games

Part of the dilemma that I have been having about posting here on my blog has been that I have not really taken very many pictures lately. I feel that, since I can, I should at least post a picture or two, right? Well, the picture of bamboo to the left here is from March of last year. I will definitely need to charge up the batteries for my camera and stop spending so much time indoors. The other part of the dilemma is that I don't exactly know what to say. The things that have mostly been on my mind are either too trivial or too personal to mention.

Therefore, I suppose I should say something about Animal Crossing. (Trivial) Yeah, the game has been out for a couple of years already on the gamecube. Now, I myself don't have a gamecube and if I am vegging out with a videogame, it is probably something on my Playstation Two. But I heard about it, and I thought my sister would be interested so I bought it for her. Long story short, I think I created a monster. She played it, and she liked it. In fact, she bought her own gamecube console ($99) just to play that one game. Since the game is played in real time, and because a pixelated Turtle asked her to, she had to "visit" her town each day for a whole week to turn on a lighthouse.

I have to admit that the game is sort of fun in that there seems to be new stuff to discover every other week or so. I created my own character to play my sister's town. Consequently, my sister and I have been speaking a weird language which, if overheard by others, sounds rather absurd. I might be saying something like: "I gave another fish to the owl at the museum and there is a shovel for sale at the store, but you really have to write that duck a letter or she'll move out of town." Anyway, so much for that. I hope to post more often, but maybe I won't.