Thanks

So I've had a lot of time to think this last few weeks. That's especially true this week because I wasn't job hunting, I was waiting (and waiting and waiting) for my clearance. (Which finally is through and I start Monday. Yay!).

This blog has been on of the things that has kept me afloat through this time. Once again. But this time more than any before, all of you helped. This isn't a heavily read blog. I realized that there's no way to actually know how many people read it because of google reader, etc. I just now jumped on the technologically aware bandwagon and signed up, and I didn't know that I didn't get a hit when you read in a reader unless you actually click onto my page. But I have watched on sitemeter and this entire time people have come back and read, people who hadn't shown up before, or who had shown up rarely. And some commented, some didn't. One person vehemently disagreed and also made me think a lot about what I write and who I'm really writing for (the answer is me; this whole thing is for me to have a place to think aloud as I go through my somewhat unusual approach to life. I am not just referring to my illness there; sadly far too many of us are on the mental illness path, but there are lots of ways my life is just far from the average. And I'm fine with that, except that it makes for a lack of connections.) Realizing that, I also discovered that while I don't enjoy ugly comments, I also don't care because the point here is that I'm stumbling through life and I write about my stumbling.

More than that though, I realized that you all mean a lot in this often-unconnected-to-you directly way. You've listened, and that has made this all a whole lot easier than it might have been. I'm a lot more self-conscious that this blog may appear (ie I told one close friend the Jehovah Witness story but that will be all the real-life people who know it, yet I have a lot less trouble sharing it here.), and I've not even told most of my friends what happened. They probably wonder why on earth I've not been in touch for weeks; well, it's because I have just not wanted to talk about it. At the same time, I'm compelled to talk. And the timing here was awful; Dr. Mind has been away 2 weeks out of the 3 since this happened, although I did see him one of those weeks with an emergency appointment. Dr. Brain also has been away for a week or so. Which has left me alone with trying to sort through emotions. Which then means I write a lot here. And while I love comments, even those who never say anything but just show up on my sitemeter, knowing that there was someone who knew what I was thinking/feeling, has really, really helped. I have this problem I've worked on a lot with Dr. Mind, but which I obviously have yet to come close to mastering: I crave social connections. Yet I very rarely actually form them. This blog is a nice intermediate place where I'm just not afraid of talking to "you". After all, from this end you look a lot like a blank screen and some buttons.

So thanks to each of you. Emotionally this isn't over, and more will follow for sure as I adjust to a new job, a new commute, a new type of career, a new pay cycle (I've never been paid weekly before), and most of all working 40 hours/week again. It's a lot of change all at once. So there will undoubtedly be lots of talk. And I still have a week before I see Dr. Mind, then the next week we get on my new evening appointment schedule. (Another HUGE adjustment; part of why I started working less than FT was that I wasn't getting as much out of sessions as I should have because I was so tired by 7:00. This time I set my appts for 6:00 and we'll see what happens.) Thanks for being in my life in some oddball internet way.