Greetings, friends!
and welcome to my "blah-blah-blahg"!

"So how come you never call or answer my e-mails?" If you've known me for any length of time, you've probably noticed that I'm not very good at keeping in touch. OK, I admit it: I'm the World's Worst Pen Pal. I've been meaning to write back to you, honest (I actually love to write letters, when I actually have the time to sit down and concentrate), but my tendency to take on too many projects and activities, combined with a total lack of organization (i.e., I "have no concept of time," as people are constantly reminding me ... one of the many "fun" manifestations of ADHD), means that I'm always behind, rushing to get everything done at the last minute, stealing time from one project to work on another, yet somehow whatever I'm doing is never what I was supposed to be doing. "Where did the time go?" is going to be my epitaph! (For a good article on what it's like to have ADHD, click here [although the illustration at left speaks a thousand words!].)

So please be aware that (1) you're in good company, along with all my other friends and relatives and (2) I think of you frequently and wish I had time to "do it all." Unfortunately, if I wrote back to everyone as often as I'd like to, I'd be on the computer 24 hours a day doing nothing but e-mail—and developing a severe hunchback to go along with my carpal tunnel syndrome! (I already have a work-related "permanent partial disability" to my wrists and neck and have to use my left hand for mousing.) As it is now, it takes me an average of three hours just to check my e-mail and delete all the spam every time I get on this antique computer with its prehistoric modem connection, so lately I've even been allowing myself the luxury of skipping a day or two or even more. It feels so liberating! Whee!

Impulsivity is another AD(H)D trait I perpetually struggle with. Therefore, unless your message requires only a quick one-line yes-or-no answer and/or we know each other so well that I know you'll forgive me for any rambling, half-thought-out, or poorly worded comments I might blurt in my rush to get something out to you, I prefer to think about your message before dashing off a half-coherent reply that doesn't exactly express what I meant to say. Alas, that usually leads to procrastination. (In fact, there's a good chance I have at least one draft of a letter started to you somewhere.) The irony is that, the less frequently I write, the more I probably like you since I'm putting off replying until I can give you my full and undivided attention!

That's why I finally got the idea to create a "News" page—for all you friends and family members who've been wondering (and still care) what the heck has been keeping me so busy that I can't find the time to drop you a line now and then. I'm hoping this will give me more time to write back to you since I won't have to spend so much time telling each individual person the same long story over and over again, and can focus more on you.

BTW, if this page hasn't been updated in a while ... well, you know why!

The Latest as of March 28, 2006

After a rough start to the year (severe, intractable case of bronchitis; death of two successive baby finches rejected by their parents that I tried to hand raise *sob*; writer's block; ensuing depression), I'm finally getting back to "normal" (thank goodness for St. John's Wort!) with too many irons in the fire as usual. Back to working on my novel--trying to force myself to work on it at least four days a week from the time I get up till ... I actually get something accomplished (no TV, no Internet, no chatty phone conversations, no going out, etc.)--kind of like a real job. Currently working on my first draft of Chapter 46--before you ask, I'm guessing that's about 2/3 of the way through, though it's hard to tell. I can tell you it's in five "parts," and I'm nearing the end (I think!) of Part III. As J. K. Rowling said in her February 28 online diary about working on the Harry Potter series: "This always happens. I make a plan, it looks nice and neat, then I get to actually write the book and realise that Harry can't possibly do all that in just one chapter. So what I thought were going to be two chapters have now become four." This must mean I'm destined to be a successful author cuz the same thing happens to me. I'm also getting seriously into self-hypnosis, using it to overcome writer's block and reinforce my determination to stick to a schedule and finally finish my novel, as well as to alleviate my insomnia. In between, I've been doing a lot of reading--research for my novel (a historical) and for a new website I'm creating in honor of one of my favorite actors/writers, Emlyn Williams (see photo in "Favorite Actors" album). Hard to believe there's no fansite about him; looks like I need to take matters into my own hands. At the same time trying to maintain all my other websites (www.mooncove.com) and design one for a new client as well. It gets exponentially harder to keep up, the more you have! Also trying to learn some basic Cornish (the revived language of Cornwall which I've always wanted to learn), and, once I've run out of lessons (which will be pretty soon), it'll back to Welsh, which is closely related to Cornish and thus sure to confuse me. It's thanks to Emlyn Williams's fascinating autobiography that I got interested in learning his first language. (Much to the chagrin of my Irish teacher--I've been falling behind in my lessons with him.) Plus the crocuses outside are finally "croaking," which means pretty soon there'll be all that gardening to do! I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but it's past my bedtime ... Doh, the sun's coming up and the finches are crowing; it's time to get back in my coffin before I crumble to dust!

February 21, 2006

Well, I don't know about yours (I sure hope you're doing fine!), but my 2006 has gotten off to a depressing start—literally. I actually was hospitalized for depression at the beginning of the month, and I'm still feeling pretty down. Before you try consoling me, you should be aware of what they told us in the program—depression is an illness; therefore, it's not something you can just "snap out of." For lots of people it requires medication, but, based on my past experiences with a variety of antidepressants, I've been trying to avoid that route. (I'm trying St. John's Wort at the moment, which has worked for me in the past—I had to stop taking it when they tried putting me on the dreaded Paxil in 2004 and never went back—but I'm still waiting for some results.)

Although depression is a disease I've struggled with since I was a teen (until I found St. John's Wort, I used to go into a major depression just about every winter), there were a number of events, starting at the beginning of January, that helped to set me off on this inevitable spiral of depression, resulting in my spending five horrible days in the psych ward at the hospital (the "perfect storm," as my mother called it!).

First there was the severe case of bronchitis, with a side of sinus infection, that almost turned into pneumonia and lasted the entire month of January and completely sapped all my energy. I tried three different antibiotics before one finally worked: Avelox. Unfortunately, a side effect of that medication (according to the patient literature) that no one seemed to pick up on until my last day in the hospital is "mental/mood changes" and "suicidal thoughts." Whereas the Physician's Desk Reference (which maybe I should get a copy of for myself!) warns in bold letters: "May cause psychotic episodes." I'm learning that, whenever a medication may cause mental or mood changes, they will for me, and that's an understatement. But that was really just the straw that broke the camel's back because I had already been feeling down for a number of reasons:

• Thanks to the bronchitis, the pain and discomfort of nonstop coughing which even knocked out several of my ribs which, despite chiropractic treatments, wouldn't stay in place, and complete lack of energy to get anything accomplished (and you know how active I usually am!), I didn't even have the endurance to sit upright at my computer for more than a few minutes at a time, which meant no progress on my novel, and whenever I'm not working on my novel or doing something creative, I get depressed. Thus I'm under strict orders from my therapist to do something creative every day! Well, I can usually recover from an unproductive day or two, even a week or more, but after a whole month of getting nothing accomplished—creative or otherwise—I was feeling pretty low.
• Two of the three people who had been reading my novel and giving me feedback as I went along suddenly were too busy to read it, and the third got very upset over a major plot development that's pivotal to the storyline it took me 25 years to develop, and there was no way I could convince her that this event could plausibly happen, resulting in a full-blown case of writer's block and doubts about whether I should even continue working on the novel at all.
• I received the official rejection of my first application for Social Security Disability. The statistics vary, but according to my lawyer, about 87 percent of initial applications are denied, while about two-thirds are late won on appeal. However, the appeal process can take over two years, and, even if I could find a part-time job I could do successfully and without pain in the meantime, my lawyer has forbidden me to work at all because the Social Security judges apparently all go to the Judge Roy Bean school of justice ("Hang 'im!"), and if you can work even a little bit, they consider you gainfully employable and will not consider you disabled. (It's all or nothing.) So this means I'm looking at the prospect of having no income whatsoever for at least the next two years, making me a financial burden on (primarily) Chuck, who makes it known that he's not the least bit happy about having to support me. Also, I was discouraged by the reason they rejected my application: I wasn't depressed enough! Yet, they failed to mention any of the 101 other disabilities I listed, like the anxiety, panic disorder, overuse syndrome (akin to carpal tunnel syndrome), bad feet, chronic insomnia, Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, and ADHD (which is what earned me such a horrible performance appraisal in 2002) ... They had based their decision on only four medical opinions, while I gave them contact information for at least 20 doctors I had seen, and one response I know was sent to them was never considered. They concluded by stating that, based on my previous employment, I could go back to my job as "editor." What???? My previous job was as a "caption editor"! All I did was proofread and apply captions to videotapes. That's like saying a "sanitation engineer" is qualified to be an engineer! Plus that job required heavy use of a computer—which is contraindicated given my overuse syndrome. In fact, I shouldn't even be writing all of this now or writing novels or making webpages or even answering my e-mail; I'm in physical pain even as I type this! (But at least, given that I'm not being paid for it, I can stop whenever I want.) Not to mention that, when the captioning department at NTID closed, it meant that there is no captioning being done in this area anymore! The nearest place where I could find work as a captionist is New York City—or Canada.
• My car's transmission died back in October (a month after the one-year warranty expired), and it took me until a couple of weeks ago to talk Chuck into allowing me to have it looked at by a mechanic to see if the transmission could be fixed (rather than junk the whole car) because he didn't even want to pay for the towing. (It's in the shop now; I've been waiting for word since last Thursday.) So I've had no transportation of my own since October, being completely dependent on Chuck or my parents or my sister (and other good Samaritans) to take me to appointments, dancing class, and other outings. (However, it's not like I can afford to go anywhere anyway! Or even want to drive after my last accident at the end of September—my third in two years—which resulted in a panic attack and the calling of the paramedics.)
• On January 17, my pet finches hatched a baby bird, which I found on the floor of the cage. I put it back in the nest, but they refused to go anywhere near the nest—or their other eggs—all day until I took the baby out. (The other eggs were since abandoned as well.) The vet said I had to either hand-raise the baby (which is a lot of work) or let it die. Well, you know which route I had to choose. So I got all the necessary supplies and spent the next eight days feeding it every few hours, even getting up in the middle of the night, until it had doubled in size and actually started to look like a tiny, blind, featherless bird instead of a wriggling, four-legged, pink spider. He even started snuggling into my hand after feedings, as he's doing in the photo below. (His head is on the right; the black bulge on top is his eye. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a clear photo with my webcam. He was much cuter in person—especially the two little fluffy white tufts of down on top of his head! Just imagine how hard it was to feed something that tiny; for the first two days, I literally needed a magnifying glass to find his mouth!) The literature on handraising says that the first four days are the most critical, so by the fifth day I was feeling pretty confident that he (or she—I never found out) was going to survive—and become a very affectionate pet (of the type I haven't known since Mysti died in 2003). But on the eighth day, during one of the early-morning feedings Chuck had taken over for me (I just couldn't keep doing it all myself with my worsening bronchitis, which I was afraid of giving to the baby bird with my continuous hacking), the baby choked on his food and—since Chuck didn't realize it until it was too late—died while I was asleep. (Just like Mysti. See what happens when I go to sleep?! Now you know why I can't get over this insomnia.) I was devastated! I had thought for sure he was going to make it—he was due to open his eyes any day, and I couldn't wait till we could look at each other for the first time—we had really bonded. After putting so much work into feeding and caring for him, and looking forward to what great friends we were going to be (if not his graduation from med school), it felt like I had lost my own child (again). But since it was "just" a bird that had been unlikely to survive from the outset and only lived for eight days (it's not like I carried him for nine months), no one seemed to understand or sympathize with my grief, except, eventually, Chuck. I had buried him just two days before my first trip to the psychiatric ER.
• OK, now I know you're going to say I need to get a thicker skin or that I'm paranoid (everybody else does), but I can't help taking these things personally and catastrophizing. (Remember, depression is a disease, not a temporary state of mind you can just snap out of! And, as the book says, telling a "highly sensitive" [or hypersensitive] person not to be so sensitive is like telling someone with sensitive skin not to get so sunburned.) Well, for a while now, there've been a couple of posters to my Robert Newton chatboard who have been critical of my approach to the site, which introduces Robert Newton as the actor who thoroughly defined the role of Long John Silver (and Blackbeard) in the 1950s and permanently changed the pop-cultural perception of pirates. (You know the classic squint, eyeroll, and "arrrr!"? That's all thanks to him.) But of course, I then go into depth on the site about his life and the rest of his career, and I've gotten support for my site from both of Robert Newton's sons, while the site itself has brought together many of his fans from all over the world. Since 1999, mine was the only website completely dedicated to Robert Newton, and it has grown considerably over the years, based on visitor feedback. Well, last year, when first Chuck and then I were going through so many health problems, I went about six months without updating the site. Suddenly, some guy posts on the chatboard asking whether I'm planning to maintain the site, cuz if not, he wants to buy my content because he's creating his own Robert Newton site. Friends I spoke to insisted I should be flattered, but his approach got me upset for several reasons: his use of a public forum to offer to buy my site; the idea that somehow I wasn't interested in maintaining the site or wasn't doing it properly; and the irony that this guy was bent on creating a new Robert Newton site although he didn't have any content to put on it! Well, I kept trying to put the topic to rest, saying I wasn't interested in selling the site, that it was a labor of love, and several people came to my support—perhaps overdoing it a little, posting replies saying that there was no need for any other Robert Newton site on the web because mine was so perfect. *aw, shucks* Well, these two British fans (sisters) were most offended, not only by my approach to the site (since, as they point out, Newton had an illustrious career in Britain long before he was "forced to accept" all that "appalling rubbish" in the U.S. in the 1950s, which, incidentally, is where he chose to immigrate in the last year before his death, which occurred two weeks after the completion of Around the World in 80 Days, winner of the 1956 Oscar for Best Picture), but also by the idea that mine should be the only Robert Newton site on the web. I tried responding politely that I had tried to do justice to his entire career on my site, but I didn't necessarily think mine should be the only site about him on the web, and if other people wanted to make their own sites about him taking other approaches (i.e., not with my content!), I'd be happy to link to them. Well, they have since created their own Robert Newton site, and we did exchange links. They've even created their own message board, although they said they weren't going to duplicate any of my work. However, they continue, by their own admission, to try to "stir things up" on my message board, saying things they know will get people riled—me in particular. Most recently, we disagreed in our opinions of the film Hatter's Castle. Or rather, I disagreed, and they attacked me, insisting that, although I had rated it a 4 out of 5 in my review, I clearly didn't like the film or Robert Newton's performance; I only liked it because Emlyn Williams was in it (when, in fact, I had stated that I disliked Williams's character, as well as Newton's, both of whom were intended to be villains, meaning they both did something right in my estimation). To make matters worse, after I had stated he was one of my favorite actors, they said Emlyn Williams was miscast in the film because his range was limited to playing comic homosexuals (I found out that's the definition of "camp" in England, BTW, so watch out how you use that term!) and laughed at his performance in the film—which was meant to be, and in my opinion was, serious—and then had the nerve to angrily demand that I change my rating of the film (which, ironically, was the same as theirs)! Yes, I know/knew I shouldn't let them upset me, but they did, and I spent a great deal of time responding to them as nicely as I could, only to be further misunderstood and berated, and, though several people again came to my aid after I asked their opinions of the situation, it was a very stressful experience and, as I'm sure these two "fellow fans" of Robert Newton would be pleased to know, have had the effect of making me want to simply give up and abandon all my webpages rather than be the focal point of all this discord. I feel like they're going out of their way to make a fool of me and discredit my website, and doing a very good job of it. (In fact, they had suggested I make a website about Emlyn Williams, whom they claim to like, but the way they went on to mock him convinced me the suggestion was a malicious joke. Also, they also took it upon themselves to move one of my comments about him into its own separate topic, declaring that the discussion on my Robert Newton board didn't have to be limited to Robert Newton. OK, I don't mean to be possessive, but I am the moderator, which means I decide what is and isn't appropriate to be discussed on the board that I created; I don't go on their message board and rearrange topics and tell people what's fair game and what isn't! See? I am making a fool of myself. Their evil plan is working!) Anyway, although I've been wanting to make a site about Emlyn Williams for a long time since so far there is no real, comprehensive fan site about him and, in my opinion, should be, and have actually started on one, I've completely lost my enthusiasm for completing it, only to subject myself to more criticism for merely trying to share what I love with other people. Can you just imagine what I'll be like if I ever glimpse a negative review of my novel, if it's ever published? Look out! Now you know why I belong in the loony bin.)
• And looming in the background is my parents' health, with my father having had a massive heart attack last summer and my mother having finally seen a doctor about her pulmonary hypertension. It's been confirmed that she has it, and, apparently, the symptoms can be controlled with medication, but she has to wait for the results of several more tests before she can start it, and the long-term prognosis isn't good. (As it is now, she can barely walk ten feet without getting out of breath.) The last thing they need is a suicidal, unemployed daughter adding to their stress level.

So anyway, though I'm still feeling down, I decided I'd better not wait much longer to update this page and let folks know why I haven't been responding to many e-mails. I don't mean to be antisocial (in fact, it was going to be my New Year's resolution to write back to people more promptly), nor is it even that I've been particularly busy like I usually am. Quite the opposite: It's about all I can do to get out of bed lately. In fact, I'm going back there right now. Nighty-night! (I'm hoping the St. John's Wort kicks in soon. I'm also going to try some hypnotherapy before I accept the idea of weighing 300 pounds and go back on antidepressants.)

Meantime I'm thinking of all my friends and hoping I'm well enough soon to be in touch with you all. (If you actually want to be friends with a lethargic nut case like me.) Take care!