Next Up, My Brain

I've made a living as a "my life is an open book" type of guy, so why stop now?

After years of lamentations on an aimless "career" path, and then subsequent entry into a nonprofit field at a job in my neighborhood (yada yada - you know the song & dance - I'm suddenly the luckiest guy in the world), you'd think everything was wrapped up in a nice little bow, huh?

Well...the fact of the matter is that I am fucked up.

I can dig down a lot deeper (and have, in many conversations with Sharon in recent months), but on the surface - this appear to be the case:

In my early 20s, I was an emotional rock. Not in the stoic sense, but in the "life rolled off my back" sense. I had no crappy jobs, no prospects, next to no money, and few cares in the world. Over the years (and this is probably no rare thing), as I added cares and burdens of one sort or another, my emotional and psychological state has gotten increasingly more fragile. Particularly, in the past couple of years, I have found that going from "here" (calm, everything's OK) to "there" (I'm losing it) is as simple as a minor setback, and that my highs (and though I can still have highs, and find enjoyment in life) are less high, and my lows lower and longer-lasting, often accompanied by a feeling of despair. My "resting place" is at a general level of mild malaise, and it is almost like a fixed point to which I am tethered, and unable to fully escape. Very, very un-Dan like, the way I think of most of you knowing Dan. I am not myself.

I had some dark, dark moments last mid-summer (like, curling up on the ground dark moments) but, for the most part, things have really been at another level since the layoff last spring. It's not hard to trace the series of factors that have likely contributed in recent times, since I have been subject to a very identifiable and continuing barrage of stresses. There was not having a job, obviously - for which I bore the brunt of stress on behalf of my four-person family. Then there was/is the stress of a new job with not a single day of relaxation between job-search and new-job modes (it has been suggested by Sharon that there is actually a clinical term for this condition, called "adjustment disorder"). And, of course, all along - the declining health of my father. Sharon has actually coined a somewhat less clinical term to encompass the breadth of these, and other, of life's stresses (kids, other obligations); referring to my "ambient stress level."

Whatever it is, and whatever it's called, it's real.

And the fanciful notion of the "Dan Day" (relaxing day biking about town, relaxing in the coffee shop, and taking care of myself) being a cure-all has long since passed. As a wise man once said, "I feel like butter, scraped over too much bread." But I need more than a holiday. And I'm actually going in for psychological counseling two weeks from today.

Some other thoughts and considerations related to this topic are a little touchy to go into in this forum (even for me!), but I'm happy to talk more by phone or whatnot, one on one.