Not so down: the sun appears to be out more, and even the days are longer since the equinox – it is always interesting to see how rapidly the length of the day changes at certain points of the year.
I am less depressed partly, of course, because of the impact of the world on me: more demands, and revving up to teach the second semester, which will make me far busier than I've been for an entire year. I still want some sort of analytic/psychological/cognitive explanation for my depressions and associated behaviors, so that I can get my hands on my own controls, so to speak – and no, sniggers from the back will be ignored. But if I can't get such an explanation, at least I can get a few things done.
Of course, with such demands comes anxiety – I've just awakened from my first related dream, in fact: one where new students collect in a room but no one comes to explain what they are to do, and various subsidiary academics look at each other in confusion, waiting for some sort of general introduction to start. Which it doesn't do... and then time is passing... and people are getting worried.
Ah well. At least I'm responding to e-mails, which I've largely ignored for a couple of weeks....
I don't think there are any controls in the way you are describing them; a separate you with knobs to twiddle. I think its more like an elaborate network of rubber bands linked to gether with string and some other metaphors.
Nice train pic. Keep puffing along and forget about the stations until you approach them. That seems to work.
Posted by: Dave Robinson | January 13, 2009 at 08:33 AM