In Search of Small Happinesses

How do I kick myself out of these blahs?

These aren't bipolar blahs, they're just plain blahs. Lots of rejections, one dead cat (RIP Snowy), nothing exciting to look forward to. Except my birthday, and I have my psychiatrist's appointment that day. So lots of reasons to stay blah.

If I want to stay blah, I can rehearse my hurts and aches and pains, hoping that I can win some sort of concession from God ("Look at all this crap that's happened to me. I deserve some compensation!"). Note: It doesn't work, and it keeps me from seeing good things that could be happening. 

It's my responsibility to do what I can to get into a better mood. I wouldn't say happiness is a choice, because that's unfair to people like myself who face depression. But I can help myself until I feel better or. in the case of depression, till the meds kick in or I can talk to someone else. When I'm depressed, it's so much harder to think of these, much less do them. Work helps me connect with people, and that helps a little, as does forcing myself to write. These things don't get rid of the depression, but they take the edge off it.

What can I do? I think I've talked about this before, but I need a refresher, so here I go again:

• Gratitude journaling -- three things I'm grateful for every night. I admit I fall behind on this, because at night I generally want to sleep.
• Walking -- I could walk to coffee this morning. That might be a good thing.
• Pet therapy -- with five cats, this isn't hard to do. 
• Getting out -- I'm contemplating the Board Game Cafe, as usual.
• Accomplishing something using my character strengths -- I have a story I'm writing which I'm not currently in love with; I can send Whose Hearts are Mountains off to dev edit; I could come up with a new story. Or submit more queries/submissions.
• Connecting with people -- Board Game Cafe works.

So I'm off to take care of my mood.

Looking for the Good in Today

It turns out we had to put Snowy to sleep yesterday; she had had a stroke as suspected. It's always a little hard to witness, the anesthesia and then the needle to the heart. 

I'm a bit subdued today -- a little tired, a little down. It's about Snowy and it's about a lot of rejections lately, with no glimmers of hope on the publishing front. I don't despair as much as I used to with rejections; I've become inured to them. I am wondering once more if my writing is unmarketable, and if so, why.

Looking for the good in today -- my classes are going well and I'm getting enough sleep. I've been productive both in writing and in submitting (short stories and the like). I stirred myself up enough to write this.

For a dying cat

My cat Snowy is dying.

My husband and I think she had a stroke because we discovered her laying in front of the dresser and occasionally meowing strangely last night. We don't have an emergency vet here, so we have to wait till the vet opens at 8.

The next morning, she hasn't moved, and she meows piteously when moved. She's limp, except for her two front paws, which seem curled into themselves. Eventually, she doesn't even meow, only breathes. Barely breathes.

I doubt there's anything the vet can do. If she's indeed had a stroke, the chances of her having another are high, and she may not recover from this one. As I've said, it's highly likely we'll say our goodbyes at the vet's office.


I will remember Snowy as a peculiar cat. Black and long-haired with a white locket (we didn't name her), she carried herself like a diva and sat with her front feet crossed daintily. She had a fascination with doors, and would paw at them trying to get to the other side. 

Soon, she will be on the other side of the door, where I am told she will climb a grassy hill to the Rainbow Bridge and wait for us. All pets go to the Rainbow Bridge, it is told, which makes it more charitable than the Christian view of Heaven. We, the humans, stay behind, taking care of our other cats, missing the presence of our Snowy.

Writing Small

Stories have several aspects to them that make things interesting:

1. The plot -- what's actually happening; the action. In a novel, there may be more than one plot (designated as A plot, B plot, etc.)
2. The themes -- these are the wider messages of the piece. They have big implications: man vs. nature, greed doesn't pay, etc.
3. The characters -- these are the people in the story. Generally you will have one or two main characters and maybe up to 8 point of view characters in a third-person ensemble piece.
4. The setting -- people want to know where something happens and what it looks like.

When I write novels, I seem to start with character and plot first. Like "who is this person and what have they gotten themselves into?" Inspiration comes from that kernel of the story and spreads out from there as I'm writing.

Writing short stories, on the other hand, feels strange -- all the parts of the story are there, but they're a lot smaller, with one sentence often carrying the seed to all the parts: For example, "A woman hallucinates about the end of the world -- or does she see visions?" With that idea/character/plot, I proceed with the story. 

Short stories are harder for me because of motivation. I can't dwell in a short story for months at a time like I can novels, so it doesn't tempt me as much. I'm with the characters and the plot only for a short time, and I have to make the best of my time. 

Being Bipolar

I'm feeling a bit down these last couple of days, sleeping a lot, probably a letdown from the really successful first week. I hope it's that and not my moods crashing.

Being bipolar (bipolar II -- without full-fledged mania), I worry about these things. I'm pretty stable on my meds, until I'm not. There are a number of triggers that can knock me off balance -- not enough sleep, stress, certain medications (pain meds and Benedryl for example), missing a couple doses of meds, more than a tiny amount of alcohol ... some of these things I have control of; others are out of my control. 

Too much sleep is a sign of a downturn, and I've done a lot of sleeping the past couple days. On the other hand, I stayed up late Saturday night, and -- did I mess myself up there? 

Probably not. There's such a thing as temporary sadness, or a down mood -- 


That's one of the problems with having a mental illness -- having moods, even normal ones, is seen as a chargeable offense. Admittedly, losing control of bipolar can result in mania, which if full-fledged scares others with its unpredictable behavior. Depression is its own disruption -- it looks less scary on the outside, but can result in suicide. It's really hard for a bipolar person to know they're in one of these states because they feel real.

However, even in a bipolar episode, there are things I've learned to do to keep me functional during upturns and downturns. The biggest one is to contact the doctor for a medication adjustment. Making sure I'm getting to bed at a consistent time each night, using cognitive journaling to separate moods from real life, and getting to work every day helps until the med adjustment takes hold. 

So if this ends up being a depressive episode, I know what to do, and that is to manage things as if this were any other illness.

Labor Day

It's Labor Day in the US, which these days has less to do with celebrating the worker as it does one last steak on the grill before autumn. Makes sense, as the US is hardly pro-worker right now.

I'm feeling decidedly unmotivated. I have a bit of homework to grade, and a short story (flash fiction?) to tweak. I should probably send out my next set of queries (I have at least 30 to send this time around) but I'm so not feeling it.

Maybe this is a day to rest. My longtime readers know, however, that if I say that I'm most certainly NOT going to rest. 

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8:45 AM CDT:
Ok, I got the grading done. Still don't know what I'm going to do with myself today, but I do wish I had more coffee. 

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9:09 AM CDT:
Just tweaked the flash fiction.  Desperately need coffee even though I had two cups this morning. Have espresso beans, but I just found out my Moka pot is missing a gasket. I don't know if I want to drink cafe American though.

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9:14 AM CDT:
Trying to psych myself up to do querying. Also still trying to solve the coffee problem, because I'm not sure I'm up to going out at the moment to Scooter's (with its corporate air and its uncomfortable booths) ...

Ok, not gripping blogging today. Better go figure out what to do on my day off...

Bleak futures

I'm in Kansas City on the Plaza at Kaldi Coffee, drinking a cup of Ethiopian coffee. In coffee tasting notes, this cup has big berry with a tart lemon acidity. I'm enough of a coffee connoisseur (read: snob) to appreciate differences in tastes, and Ethiopian coffee happens to be one of my favorites.

In some of the futures I write, this coffee would no longer exist in the US. In one of the futures I've written, Country Club Plaza itself lies in ruins bombed in street riots, crumbling and teeming with the destitute. It's weird to sit here with double vision, questioning the peace I sit in, the calming electronic music, the superlative coffee, the pastry counter tempting me with its wares. 

But isn't this the double-vision we all face when hearing about climate change, poverty, injustice? We know these things are in the world, yet they seem unreal when we're sitting at leisure in our favorite places. 

I try to extricate myself from the spiderweb of comfort, to do something more concrete than to write, but I don't know what to do. The president of my country signs executive orders to mine and log the natural wildlife reserves and parks, guts the Environmental Protection Agency, and emasculates the regulations that have brought the US back from the smog-filled days of my childhood. I feel powerless.

Recycling doesn't seem to be enough. Driving a compact car seems paltry. I need to get out of my comfort zone to do something, because I'm the one who can afford to. What can I do? I can write about the difficult futures and their seeds in the present. I can write about the evils of the present. I can write these deftly enough that they're readable. 

And I can vote, and encourage others to vote in ways that choose nature over profit. Maybe that would mean fewer coffeehouses like this; I don't know. But I'd give up some of my comfort for that world.