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25 January 2006
It's the day after the most depressing day of the year! So how's it going?
Bad, mmmkay? I have been, with good reason, depressed (mildly?) for the past few days. I've never been depressed! Raging and anxious, yes, but this lethargy stuff is maddening. Like I said, I have good good reasons for this - in a helpless place, etc., PLUS the whole day of the year thing, which someone mentioned to me. What I've learned though, is you can only play the depression card so much. It's horrible for other people to be around, I know from experience. Once I get through my follow-up-I'm-scared doctors appt. tomorrow, I'm hoping things will lift.
I am working from home for most of today, and only going in for an hours work. So it's going pretty well.
I had a freaky MeCha dream that's not worth a post about - it was long and convoluted, but just picture the Wino, Hugh and jonmc as mathematicians/rock stars. (also they had the faces of friends of mine from college - Shorty, Glen and Puzza, but I knew it was them).
Also I have nice oolong tea to drink and I'm in my jammies still. Yay!
According to the magazine, Jan. 24 is a perfect storm of misery. Credit-card bills from the holidays are due, New Year's resolutions likely have been broken, and low light levels create seasonal affective disorder, which causes people to feel as if a shadow is over them.
No credit card, didn't make any resolutions, and today was cold but sunny... plus my depression storm hit just before Christmas, then afterwards I was sick, then sick again, and sick again. But now I'm fine, so I'm feeling pretty cheery.
Sending the good vibe monster over to selfnoise, mgl's and rainbaby's places. I'm working from home on an ungodly boring military proposal that I sincerely hope we don't get awarded b/c it will suck rocks in hell and my soul out of my body if we do.
As for the debt thing, uh yeah. I have that. I stole $5k out of my shrinking measley retirement to pay off a credit card and put a small dent in another one.
On a completely unrelated note, a big black hairy cat just toodled through the backyard and peed on a drain pipe.
Thanks guys. My mom doesn't recognize me, my sister is drunk/crazy, and I'm getting pressure from my other siblings to do things I just don't handle well to deal with it all. (My family doesn't talk unless there is a crisis and now we have two of them.) But if I can avoid some sort of looming health crisis of my own, I'll be ok. It's the not knowing that sucks. I'm thinking high cholesterol, but why would they call me back in the office for that? Everybody raise one for my liver is all I've got to say. Haven't charged anything in 15 months, though! Rah!
Keep us updated, rainbaby. It's totally possible that the doc would call you in for something like high cholesterol. Mine would, just so he could chat with me face to face about whatever plan he wants me to follow.
I feel kind of strange, alternating between some kind of relief and some other kind of despair. My girlfriend just did something (totally unrelated to me) that demonstrates pretty conclusively that she doesn't have her shit together. I've been being very supportive, which she appreciates, but the truth is that these are probably the final days of our relationship (final weeks, anyway). My concerns have been a lot about whether she has her shit together (I'm talking here about fundamentals (although not mentals)), and so this incident, which is having a major affect on her life, has pretty much confirmed my worst fears.
I've been thinking of getting a pellet gun and sitting in my alley nights shooting rats. Also, last night I dreamed about spear fishing. What do you think that means.
Rainbaby, hang in there. You've done the right thing by seeing a doctor -- let him/her take care of it now, and just let go of the worry. That in and of itself will make you feel better.
omiewise: I'm no dream interpreter, but that seems pretty clear. You know, pinpointing and targeting things that you need to eliminate...whether those are behaviors, problems, or an entire relationship would be harder to say. Anyway, good luck with all that. Sad.
I often dream of fish when a break-up's in process of just ended -- I figure it's my brain's overly literal way of telling me there are other fish in the sea.
That's interesting, occhiblu... I think I'm going to try to decipher my dreams with the most linguistically obvious interpretations possible, and see what sort of connections I can come up with, because they're usually pretty much opaque to me, and I'm probably just expecting something much more profound than what I'm producing.
My dreams are probably usually telling me things like "buy coffee, you're out."
Many of mine are fairly opaque, as well, but the more crisis-driven ones do tend to be visually punny or just so literal as to seem surreal (as with the fish).
Do you feel like comparing notes? ...should we have an informal mecha dream workshop thing going on here? Might be fun! I want to know why I always dream of buildings.
Omiewise, I just came across this in a dream interp dictionary (suitably arcane, I think, but I like the image):
FISHING Creating a receptive state of consciousness which allows the deep insights or processes to become known; trying to find spiritual nourishment; 'fishing' for ideas; compliments or information; seeking intuition.
Fishing rod: Male sexuality; personal power, or feelings of impotence. Getting a new fishing rod: In a man's dream might mean feeling anxious about his ability to 'hook' a woman. For a woman it could mean a desire to 'catch' a new man. In general the rod suggests the means of pulling something out of the unknown of life or your mind. So it could suggest intuition of skill in acquiring the new, or something that nourishes.
I once came across a technique of dream interpretation that works really well for me. I like it because it doesn't depend on archetypal symbols: those symbols are good, but they don't take into account the personal meanings and associations that are also part of your unconscious thinking.
Here's the technique: You take the dream and basically interrogate it from the point of view of all characters and significant objects in the dream. So, for the spear-fishing dream, you take the part of each element one at a time, describing the dream to yourself from within that identity. First you speak as the fisherman: who am I? what do I want? what am I trying to do? How did I get here? ...you just listen to the answers. THen you do the same process, but taking the part of the fish. Then again, taking the part of the spear, and perhaps the stream itself.
It helps to free-write this, so you can keep track of each perspective. It's surprisingly revealing, as you sort of speak in the voice of each item -- it often becomes clear what you're trying to tell yourself. Try it sometime.