Blah blah blah (in the teacher's voice from Peanuts cartoons)

This is sort of how I've been interacting with the world for the last few days, and I just realized it. This makes me sad, and yet relieved.

I tend to get a little dissociative when I'm under a lot of pressure, or when the pressure finally breaks and I can take a few deep breaths. Right now, I'm under a lot of pressure in one area of my life, but another huge burden is about to be lifted. Without going into the tedious details, it's enough to know that the odd combination of things going on has led to a mild state of depression. Not sadness, it's more like my body and brain go into a sort of static hold pattern.

The good thing is that I noticed it. Sometimes I don't, and it just gets worse and worse until Helper Monkey things he's living with a 5'7" slug instead of a human being. By the time I've completely turned into a puddle of goo, he'll point out the goo is starting to leak all over the floor, and maybe I want to consider doing something about it. He's lucky this time. I'm already mopping before he even realized the goo was oozing.

Battling back from the doldrums is hard. I don't want to do it. I'd rather wallow right now. That won't help anyone, and there's still stuff to do, and that pressurized situation is ongoing whether I want it to be or not. I have to get jumping on it. So that's what I'm doing today. I'm making sure the whole world doesn't fuzz out, that things keep getting taken care of, because if I don't do them, nobody will, and when I finally come out the other side of this funk, Bad Things will be waiting for me if I shut down completely now.

Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, but this post is my personal pep talk. It's sort of working, so thanks for bearing with me.

In other, more human news, yesterday was a wash because the new Anita Blake novel came out, and after reading 20 books in a series, you kind of feel obligated to read the 21st. So I did. It took up most of the day, but I'm glad I read it.

Over this past weekend, I beta read for a Twitter friend, and LOVE LOVE LOVED her concept and characters! Thanks so much, Tamara, for letting me take a sneak peek at Moondreamer! And of course, being me, I can't wait for the sequel...to an unpublished beta read....because there must be a sequel! :)

So much reading, but little writing this week. It is the last week of school, and then Saturday is the 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouts, and the huge Rock the Mall event in D.C. So I get to go sing campfire songs with 250,000 other Girl Scouts. After that, no alarm clock for FOUR WEEKS! Yay! Four whole wonderful weeks of sleeping until I'm done. I won't have any idea what to do with myself. Probably, I'll write a whole lot more, since I won't be so freaking sleep deprived.

That will be good. And hopefully, the rest of the world will come back into focus soon. At least I know it's blurry now, though, which is a huge step up from yesterday.