Progress notes: 27th September 2006

New words: 2.253
Total words: 60,316
Reason for stopping: End of scene.

Exercise : 45 minutes walking.
Other work: Nothing. Which is bad, since I have a review due
Reading: Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart.

Finally my head is clear enough to actually write more than just the bare facts here. Message to the world – withdrawing from an antidepressant while trying to be creative is a bitch.

Yes, I, like far too many people in the world, have been reliant on some kind of antidepressant medication for far too long. I suspect a lot of my depression is just something that I came with – but a big part of it is tied up with my health, and the way that it’s affected my life.

Those who read my regular blog would know most of this already, so I’ll be brief. In 2002 I travelled overseas to New York, London and Dublin. I returned home with what I thought was a very bad flu. Which I never recovered from. I was labelled with chronic fatigue syndrome, post-viral fatigue syndrome, and eventually the correct diagnoses of lupus and fibromyalgia.

These illnesses stole what I had planned my life to be. I was midway through my PhD, and was forced to switch to working part time on it. Everything else pretty much ground to a halt until, after six years of work, I finished my PhD. It was utterly non-groundbreaking research into the molecular structure of some particular house dust mite allergens, by the by.

Post-PhD, I haven’t worked. I went onto a pension, and married (thus cutting out eligibility for a pension) and have been dependent financially on my husband since. Thankfully, he’s a lovely bloke who lets me stay home and write (as well as running the household).

So, I’m in a much better situation. My health is actually improving (aided in part by being able to exercise – something it’s taken me years to work up to – and by managing my diet and being able to rest as needed). I have no plans to seek work other than writing at the moment, though that may change in the future.

One of the things I’ve been doing is trying to get off all the medication that I no longer need. One of these is the antidepressants. Withdrawing has been quite smooth for me (for which I am thankful, for it appears to be rare) – time will tell how things go with depression, of course.

The bonus of it all is that my head is much clearer. And though Thought and Memory is a horrible muddle right now, I am planning how to fix it. I am going to finish this draft first, which may end up shorter than I had planned, and then the overhaul begins.

It will be a unique experience.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Progress notes: 27th September 2006

New words: 2.253
Total words: 60,316
Reason for stopping: End of scene.

Exercise : 45 minutes walking.
Other work: Nothing. Which is bad, since I have a review due
Reading: Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart.

Finally my head is clear enough to actually write more than just the bare facts here. Message to the world – withdrawing from an antidepressant while trying to be creative is a bitch.

Yes, I, like far too many people in the world, have been reliant on some kind of antidepressant medication for far too long. I suspect a lot of my depression is just something that I came with – but a big part of it is tied up with my health, and the way that it’s affected my life.

Those who read my regular blog would know most of this already, so I’ll be brief. In 2002 I travelled overseas to New York, London and Dublin. I returned home with what I thought was a very bad flu. Which I never recovered from. I was labelled with chronic fatigue syndrome, post-viral fatigue syndrome, and eventually the correct diagnoses of lupus and fibromyalgia.

These illnesses stole what I had planned my life to be. I was midway through my PhD, and was forced to switch to working part time on it. Everything else pretty much ground to a halt until, after six years of work, I finished my PhD. It was utterly non-groundbreaking research into the molecular structure of some particular house dust mite allergens, by the by.

Post-PhD, I haven’t worked. I went onto a pension, and married (thus cutting out eligibility for a pension) and have been dependent financially on my husband since. Thankfully, he’s a lovely bloke who lets me stay home and write (as well as running the household).

So, I’m in a much better situation. My health is actually improving (aided in part by being able to exercise – something it’s taken me years to work up to – and by managing my diet and being able to rest as needed). I have no plans to seek work other than writing at the moment, though that may change in the future.

One of the things I’ve been doing is trying to get off all the medication that I no longer need. One of these is the antidepressants. Withdrawing has been quite smooth for me (for which I am thankful, for it appears to be rare) – time will tell how things go with depression, of course.

The bonus of it all is that my head is much clearer. And though Thought and Memory is a horrible muddle right now, I am planning how to fix it. I am going to finish this draft first, which may end up shorter than I had planned, and then the overhaul begins.

It will be a unique experience.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.