work! and health!

the real kind!

WORK
i have two voiceover projects and i'm going to TN to work with two very good friends on a staged reading in january. regarding the voiceover--i'm still having this really strange meltdown process when it comes to auditioning or working. tuesday night i was just so afraid. i made naaman leave the room and i spent 3 hours trying to come up with 1 usable recording of a small segment to send to the client for feedback. wednesday, i cranked out one of the projects with much more confidence. this weekend will be very busy for me as i'm jam packed with people-stuff (helping a friend with a creative endeavor; watching a game--my teenage friend with bp invited me--i'm very honored she would even think to do that). SO--i need to really hunker down to get the second project recorded. it's 5x as long as the first one, so i think i won't be yelling at the game tonight in order to preserve the ol' voicebox for the mic.

HEALTH
i'm officially vending machine free for two weeks now. i've been making my lunch every day. it's much easier to feel satisfied at the end of it when there's variety within the meal itself. some chicken salad, almonds and some cranberries rather than a heaping frozen meal of creamy pasta followed by the insatiable need for chocolate and dr. pepper. i've had no caffeine and i even managed to get through thanksgiving without snacking or the many many M&Ms in the candy dish or even PIE! it was pretty amazing. i've also been working out more often--trying to ignore the concerned stares of the gym patrons when my face gets all red and blotchy (it's not my fault that the new treadmill was trying to kill me with its nonfunctional incline button--i was on a 14 grade within the first 6 minutes because it couldn't read my heart rate). debilitating headache monday night/tuesday morning not withstanding (ok, so there was caffeine in my headache pain killers), i've been in a decent mood and working, going to sleep at a decent hour and waking up, for the most part, on time.

i've an appointment with the neuro january 7. talked to my counselor about it yesterday and he suggested that if i am not satisfied with our interaction on that day that i should seriously consider confronting him about it. i have issues with that in general, much more so when dealing with authority figures. that's why it took me so long to be rid of dr. mitchell (first psyc) and why instead of confronting him directly i just ditched and made my last counselor trade me out for another psyc. on that note--naaman will be coming with me to my next psyc appt in december. when he first asked me about it, i was in a paranoid place and was very suspicious, but told him to come anyway. now, i'm much better about it, though i still fear cenzon will want to tinker with my meds (now balanced w/in the last couple of weeks) based on his pretty dark picture of the autumn thus far. granted, it has been pretty grim. poor guy, what he goes through with me...

GP update

saw dr. romero (my GP) this morning. surprisingly, i only had to wait 30 minutes to see her--i guess that's karmic backsplash from always waiting 2 or 3 hours...

regarding the headaches, she wants me to dum dum duuuuum see the neurologist. she said if he won't listen to me this time around that she has another doc she will refer me to. in other rx news, i'm also going off the Pill--it's been shown to interfere with the Lamictal and to cause headaches, so we shall see.

i may have a small but important theatre project in january. TN-style. i am eagerly awaiting confirmation.

Seaneen

found a fantastic blog today--24 year old Irish chica living in london. not for the faint of heart or language. it's so random--i did a personality test today (for those interested, i'm strangely enough an ISFJ) and searched for ISFJ and bipolar--through a series of links, I found Seaneen: http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive.wordpress.com/ 

of course, if i was in a hypomanic or manic phase, my answers to the questions would have been different (most psycs put me as an INFP).

i'll see the GP tomorrow and we can hopefully address the headaches. won't see the psyc again until mid-december, but there are some supplements we're looking into (5htp). 

Currently The Road By Cormac McCarthy see related

breakthrough

in the last week i experienced a breakthrough. it's been months since i was last able to concentrate long enough to get through a magazine article, let alone read a chapter in a book. after seeing the movie version of Atonement i had to read the book to see WHY anyone would want to make a film of it. (keira knightly...shudder) i checked it out of the library a couple of months ago but until this last week i hadn't made any headway. so, while N was in chicago last week for a conference i dedicated my pre-bedtime to reading at least a chapter. it was hard, but not as difficult as it had been. i returned the book (much better than the film, although the divine Ms. Redgrave was beautiful) and checked out Cormac McCarthy's The Road. i sat down yesterday at 2 and read it in one sitting. this is no doubt mostly due to McCarthy's grasp on the fine art of literature, but it's still a miracle that i was able to focus like that. there were a couple of times where i had to slow down and breathe, but for the most part i just read. lovely. the book felt like faulkner, with it's desolation, grit and lack of quotation marks, plus beckett's Waiting for Godot. it was so grim, yet hopeful. i wept the last few pages. i'd known what was coming--there's no other way the book could have ended. it's a beautiful book but not at all a recommended read for anyone in a depression.

i think the fog lifting has a lot to do with the removal of the antipsychotic. i was just so anxious and fidgety on it. i guess it just took some time to get it fully out of my system.

i started The Boy in the Striped Pajamas last night--it's a fable in the style of a children's story, so it's a "light" read (it's about the Holocaust, so it's only light in the sense that i don't need a dictionary to wade through it).

so, today, i am grateful.

advocacy