Update for Everyone III - The Whinge Binge

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm not doing too well right now. Among other things going on in my life, a psychiatric medication that I started a few months ago is causing marked weight gain and if I don't stop it I will continue to gain weight even if I eat less and exercise more and it may eventually induce diabetes even though I have no family history of that. Now I need to spend weeks on end taking progressively less and less of this stuff so that going cold turkey doesn't crash my endocrine system. This is exactly why I wanted to avoid going back on medication.

Also, a friend for whom I have, shall we say, strong feelings is being really terse with me over email because she's so overworked and unhappy. I'm at a point where I don't really know what to say to her, even though I really want to try to arrange to spend time with her because I haven't seen her in a while.

Also, I suffered what I'd politely term a bad psychological (specifically, depressive) episode and had to take a medical leave of absence from divinity school.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm well-rested and feel like I should make some sort of public apology for my meltdown last night and then get back to my life.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm feeling more suicidal than I have in...weeks.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

And no, this has nothing to do with the election outcome.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've decided I have to emotionally detach myself from a close friend my feelings towards whom have become somewhat unhealthy. I hope that doing so doesn't completely destroy our acquaintanceship but if it has to then I guess it has to. I'm in a lot of pain right now.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My depression has gone from 'worrying' through 'damaging' to 'debilitating'. I tried to kill myself earlier. I couldn't go for my daily bike ride because I cried so hard that I pulled several muscles. Opinion of Nathan: Insane and a mega-HP.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yesterday while cleaning my closet I found a picture book that I wrote when I was four years old. I pinpoint it at four because it was late enough for me to have a linear sense of time (a sentence is written in the past tense) but early enough for me to not have developed the motor skills necessary to write it myself and instead dictated it presumably to a babysitter (the handwriting is neither mine nor my mother's). (If any poster well-versed in child psychology or child development wants to dispute this estimation, please feel free.) In those remote pages we read, and this is the story in its entirety: '[Illegible] is very old and worn out. A tornado wrecked it. There's no more road any more. The food market makes the BEST peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The old car is all broken. The chugga train chugs and choos and blows out its smokestack really hard. The sky vacuum does the same thing.' No, I don't know what 'sky vacuum' was supposed to refer to.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Pulled a 3.61 this semester with 18 credits. Hoping to do it again in the winter.

That's about what I ended up with as my final undergrad GPA. Congrats, man.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I might have a personality disorder. I'm getting assessed for it in a couple of weeks.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Observation: if someone likes me, or if I am admitted into something, or otherwise thinks highly of something I've done, I question their judgement and my opinion of them usually dims considerably. Sort of like Groucho Marx when he mentioned that he wouldn't join any club that would let him in.

"I did well? He must be a lax grader."

"I was accepted? They must let everyone in."

"Oh, she doesn't dislike me? Well then, she is too blasé."

Also, I managed to give myself a haircut the other day.

I have the same problem. I'm trying to force myself out of it (or force it out of me), and you should too.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Last night I drank wine and ate a lot of broccoli and fell asleep watching Gilmore Girls.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Last night I drank wine and ate a lot of broccoli and fell asleep watching Gilmore Girls.

Did you have a gas of a time?  Broccoli and wine sound like a dangerous combo.

It's possible to pair wine with broccoli in such a way as to avoid that. Wine and Gilmore Girls turned out to be more dangerous in this case.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm now in a relationship.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Got to shake Hannibal Buress's hand and share a few words with him after a show. That was definitely cool.

That is cool. He's one of the best comics out there these days.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've lost fifteen pounds in the past six weeks. I've done this almost entirely through portion control--for the most part I'm still eating the same things, and it's not really possible for me to get much exercise around here this time of year.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've lost fifteen pounds in the past six weeks. I've done this almost entirely through portion control--for the most part I'm still eating the same things, and it's not really possible for me to get much exercise around here this time of year.

I saw a picture of you, roughly a couple years ago, and you seemed fit. Did you gain weight before losing it?

Yes. I'm trying to return my weight to what it was about a year ago.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Candidate for Student Government Association (SGA) President spoke at our chapter meeting last nigh. He's the only non-Greek running, but he made a pretty good case to me prior to the meeting. Needless to say, I'm glad to see that SGA politics is full of conniving and backstabbing. I'm running as a Senator for the College of Liberal Arts & Education.

They do it by college at your university? They did it by residence area at mine.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My girlfriend's been in very poor health the past couple weeks.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm going to be out of contact for a few days. I'd prefer not to discuss why.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Generally: Medical scare, hospital, et cetera.
Specifically: Really would prefer not to say, but I promise it's nothing life-threatening.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've been sedentary this winter and my weight has stalled out at about twenty pounds below my peak (and twenty or thirty pounds from my goal range), so I need to start walking. I'm going to go do that in a few minutes. I have all my walking gear* in order so I'll just get to it!

*my normal clothes, with slightly better shoes

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

MADELEINE'S RELATIONSHIP
JANUARY 17, 2015 - MARCH 27, 2015
RIP IN PEACE, FF

(It was amicable, which is why I say 'FF'.)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

One of my friends is going through a pretty bad time--unrequited crushes on straight girls, existential crisis about her perceived ability to live up to her own standards, fully realizing that she will never not have to deal with sexism, stuff of that sort. I'm worried about her, and worried that my attempts to figure out what was going on and give her advice when I saw her yesterday may have come across as intrusive.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm having really severe self-doubts. This wouldn't be the most sensitive crowd to which to explain of what kind, exactly, but take my word for it that it's bad.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm going to write an essay for the International Shinto Studies Association's 2015 Shinto Essay Competition. A friend turned me on to this opportunity earlier this evening. The first prize is a round trip ticket and a week's accommodation expenses in Japan, the second prize is a hundred thousand yen, and the third prize is fifty thousand yen. Even if I don't get any of the prizes, I feel that entering would still be a good resume-builder and way to get myself noticed as a [semi-]serious academic-type. One of the subjects is 'Shinto and Christianity', and I'd like to write my essay partially as a criticism of exclusionary tendencies within Christianity by comparison to the way Shinto organizations understand 'membership' and its relatively loose relationship to the idea of the religious in-group.