I started off last night trying to write some of the thoughts floating around in my head during the past week, but couldn’t really get anywhere with it. As I started writing I found myself getting into a worse and worse mood. That coupled with the fact that I was overly tired(I’ve been staying up too late at night researching soundcards for digitizing vinyl, which has led me to read up on better cartridges and phono-pre amps and so on) made me decide to go to bed instead.

This morning I made the mistake of listening to a show on public radio that was discussing some political topics, but what affected me the most was the reminder that politics has been completely co-opted by the super wealthy in this country and I believe we are headed back into another gilded age. I despair so much every time I think about it too much. So many indignities and abuses going on in this country (and others), it’s overwhelming. A regular trigger for depression is a sense that things are out of control, (for example this country, politics, pollution, poverty, erosion of civil liberties and to a less extreme level my finances, inability to figure out my career path, not teaching my kids Spanish) and feeling either powerless or too overwhelmed to do anything about it.

I ran across a post on reddit that seemed relevant to my condition and the blog in general. The main thread(is that the proper Reddit term?) is someone wondering if they were the only person who didn’t find Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT) useful. I tried this out a few years ago through and found that usually it didn’t work for me. However, with my coach last week, having someone help me discover the contradictions in my depressed mind-state was useful. I very effectively craft arguments and reasons for why I can’t do something or what is wrong with me. To defend one belief I had to concoct something else to account for a flaw. In the end, I was still not in a good space, but I was aware of the fact that I had to go through some convoluted mental gymnastics to stay hold on to those beliefs. Back to reddit, in that thread was what I thought a very good list of techniques to deal with depression. Some of those are very similar to the list in my man(bag) of tricks. The self.depression subreddit looks interesting.

Another article that stuck with me was by James Altucher. His website often has what I find at times very irreverant yet inspiring posts. The post in particular was about quitting your job. I’m not looking at a fiery departure, but I have a very real cut-off point and need to do something about it. What I took away from that article was that I should try to meet as many people as possible and to allow myself to indulge my interests or passions from time to time since they can lead to unexpected benefits. I was thinking about that this morning after I went to go pick up some parts from a 3D printing studio. I sent in a resume for some job listings there several months ago and never heard back. Maybe I should have made more of an effort to just get to know the people I interacted with so they would recognize my name in case they ran across my resume.

More generally I think that part of me is scared to leave the depressed state. It’s an escape from having to do what seems like the impossible task of crawling up out of this pit. It’s an escape from having to take responsibility for my behaviors or for neglecting stuff at home or elsewhere. It is so much easier to just give up and wallow in the despair and depression. Once again while writing this I am realizing how much more depressed I am than I normally realize.

To close, I will go over the positive experiences this week.
1) We had a nice family nature outing on Sunday. I enjoyed the change of scenery and being outdoors. I also feel that it’s important for the kids to get a better sense of nature, and living in an urban environment it can be tough to get out enough.
2)Work has been a bit more involved this week. I still wasted a lot of time on the internet, but I ran several experiments and got to do some basic data processing. I feel better when I am actively doing something, it makes me feel productive and useful. Also, I finally got a physical copy of the journal with my latest scientific manuscript. It’s my second first-author manuscript(not a lot for someone in my position), but it’s something.
3)I started the process of re-capping the stereo I’m working on. It’s a small step in that I just labeled the capacitors to prevent mix ups, but it’s something. It makes finishing this thing seem more manageable.

On that reddit list of things to help combat depression was getting small tasks done. I actually do feel better now that I finished this post. Now off to eat my lunch(thanks goodness for leftovers) out in the sun.

I’ve added the option to subscribe to this blog. The box is in the RHS(“right-hand-side” for the non-physicists) column. It’s setup to e-mail subscribers when a new post comes up. Enjoy!

The illnesses continue! My older daughter is beginning to get better, her cough isn’t as constant as it was, and she doesn’t turn as red when she does cough. However my younger daughter is now going through it. Over the weekend she developed pink eye and an ongoing fever. Today we found out that she has 1) Pneumonia 2) each ear has an infection and 3) hives! It’s gotten to the point that even though I was up every hour last night and am quite sleep deprived, I still find this so absurd that I have to laugh. Maybe it should be “because” I’m so sleep deprived rather than “even though” But seriously, when things get so over the top (and no one is horribly suffering) what else can I do? In more upbeat news I fixed my modified infrared camera.. For sometime it wouldn’t see anything when I tried to take pictures, I could look at old ones on the screen but any new ones would come out black.  I think the CCD cables were loose. I was so happy to get it working again, I had already started scoping out replacement cameras to dismantle and modify. The cover photo for this post is my older daughter shot with that camera, still a little sick.

It’s interesting seeing how differently the girls behave when they are sick or at least run down. My younger one gets a little destructive when she’s not feeling well and she appears much more withdrawn than usual, she also gets a little defiant but nothing major. She’ll tell us that something hurts, but she doesn’t really complain or put on as big of a show as my older daughter. My older one complains to no end about the slightest pain, to put it bluntly she whines a lot, and also tends to get really obstinate or defiant and act out.

Whining is always annoying but I’ve noticed this past week that when I’m tired whining REALLY bugs me. But what gets me even more worked up is when my older daughter starts yelling and becomes defiant. When I’m reasonably rested I can tolerate it to some degree, it still really upsets me, but I manage to keep it under control. However, if I’m already in a bad mood, the defiance and yelling trigger something deep in me. It is a huge task to stay calm, to not get aggressive with her. A few months ago during one of her screaming-and-kicking hold-the-door time-outs I got so upset that I threw the door open, restrained her and got right up in her face and yelled at her to stop it. She was kind of freaked out and crying and my wife had to go in and calm her down. I was too upset that night to apologize, and the next day she was telling her teacher that I had yelled at her and scared her. I apologized the next day for losing control and scaring her. I don’t like the way I acted and it really scared me that I could get so worked up. I guess what most bugs me about all this is that I get so deeply resentful when she acts this way. She’s just a 5 year old who is prone to tantrums and acting out. I actually just ran across an article talking about things we can still teach girls to empower them in the future. It’s an interesting problem because I really want to empower her, to have her feel free to express her emotions and act against injustices and I want her to grow up not being afraid to act out because she is a woman. However, gender aside, when that acting out is against me it’s so hard to take.

I think I have such a hard time with her acting out, because I learned early on that it was not okay for me to act out or have strong emotions. I still remember being put into a cold shower with all my clothes for “being out of control” when I was 6 or 7. I don’t remember what the issue was but even years later my parents just said I was too upset or worked up. Later, while coming into puberty I started having fights with my dad. They weren’t full on punching fights, but more an aggressive and angry wrestling. Once, coming back from the mountains my dad and I started fighting over leg room in the back seat. This was before the super strict child seat laws so my sister was up front with my mom. It got heated and my mom pulled over so my dad could drive, so as to separate us. I was so upset that I jumped out of the car and ran up an abandoned off-ramp. My mom had to eventually coax me down back to the car. At another point I was watching TV in my parent’s room and my dad came and grabbed the remote and changed the channel. I got mad and tried to take it back. We ended up once again in an angry aggressive wrestling match. My mom came in screaming at my dad to knock it off and tried to break us up. She ended up with a sprained wrist, and I was sent to my room. I jumped out the window and ran away for several hours until my dad found me and asked me to come home. I still remember my sister crying in her window watching me ride away on my bike. The other incident I still remember is my dad trying to talk to me during a camping trip. I don’t remember the details, but I must have done some earlier in the day and he wanted to talk to me about it. I kept saying no, or repeating something contrary to what he was saying and he got fed up and punched me in the mouth. I didn’t bleed but it hurt and really scared me.

It wasn’t until I saw my first therapist during graduate school that I even considered that what my parents had done wasn’t okay. I had always figured that was how one dealt with an “out of control” child and that I had deserved it. But I now realize that my parents probably learned at an early age as well that it was not okay to have really strong reactions or to appear out of control in any way. I also find it interesting that my dad was acting in such a childish manner. You’d think that a grown adult could handle an unruly child in a better way. However, I can see that it’s only a small step between restraining a child and fighting over a remote control or leg space or punching someone in the mouth.
What I think I am working on these days is learning that is okay for me to have strong emotions or to get worked up at times. How that gets channeled is important, but I think in the long run it’ll be healthier than trying to bottle everything up. It’s amazing to see my older daughter who really has no problems with that at all. She is very free in her emotions and behaviors, even if it does annoy me at times. I guess my other work is finding out how to teach her to respect her emotions and not make her scared to let people know what she feels, but also how to deal with it as a parent. I think she, and her sister, have a lot to teach me.

Okay, I’m back. As my last post may indicate, last week was not so good. Between a lack of sleep brought on by my younger daughter’s never-ending cold, a resistant older daughter who refused to go to sleep for three nights in a row (and each night ended up in a room with me holding the door shut while she screamed and kicked for about half an hour), and who incidentally is still coughing, a snapping and irritable wife, and then stupid stuff like my multimeter malfunctioning and my car having issues, I kind of short circuited. I tried to follow some of the tips from my (man)bag of tricks but either they didn’t help or I couldn’t expend the energy to try hard enough. I walked down to the beach during my lunch break which normally helps, but I was still in such a foul mood. The “killed by muggers fantasy” that I mentioned is a reoccurring one in which I get held up at gun point and rather than hand my wallet or whatever over I just start screaming at them to kill me since I hate my life anyways. The idea behind this is that suicide makes it harder for the family to collect life insurance (though not impossible) and in my low states I see my only worth as the money life insurance would provide my family. Anyways, what was interesting was that the previous weekend and beginning of the week had gone so well. I was actually going to post on how having a concrete task or goal (at work at least) really made me feel good. After the depression kicked in nothing really helped until I attended a social event later in the week.

The beginning of the week was such a contrast. I had been very focused at work the prior weekend and into Tuesday preparing a presentation for a conference being held this past weekend. Everything involved in preparing the presentation such as generating figures from the data, making videos, editing the presentation slides etc, made me feel like I had some purpose. A lot of my issues at work stem from feeling so inadequate compared to my co-workers. I don’t seem to have the same drive or perseverance in coming up with new ideas and implementing them. I also don’t seem to have an expertise. Most of my duties fall in the support realm; at times I think I am just an overpaid technologist. Not knocking the technologists, they do a lot of work and have to put up with inane management decisions but it’s not my job title. I’m supposed to be investigating more, coming up with new ideas, creating new things. To repeat, I feel inadequate compared to my colleagues. I gave my practice talk on Tuesday morning to the group, and was so surprised to get such good feedback. I don’t know what I was expecting, and I’m generally confident on my public speaking abilities, but the critiques were minor and well thought out and people really seemed to like it. After that I was feeling capable and confident for once. Maybe I was a good speaker! Maybe I could do science! Maybe I do enjoy what I am doing!

That warm glow faded by the time I got home due to all the craziness. I’ve mentioned this before but I don’t do well when the kids are sick. A controlled experiment in which the kids are sick but I get enough sleep would be interesting, but back here on Earth, I have a hard time handling it. When adults are sick, there is much less whining involved, well usually, and especially if you don’t count me. Okay scratch that, we just seem to get sick less often. Also with my kids, I usually feel useless. They don’t stop crying when I wake up to tend to them, so that forces my wife to get up, which makes her more tired , which eventually leads to her snapping at me, which makes me feel worse, which leads me to make snide comments, which makes my wife angrier. It’s a lovely cycle.

It’s now a few days after the conference and I’m doing better. The conference was in our city, so the night before it started a colleague hosted a dinner at her house with our group and some visiting ones. There was good company, absolutely amazing wine and food and the view was pretty insane too. I got to see some friends I hadn’t seen for awhile. It was fun. My talk went well (I was the only one in the group to give an oral presentation) and I got some good feedback and interest from people outside our group. Also breaking up the normal routine and being at home so little made me appreciate my kids again. I even(wait for it!) initiated sex with my wife on Sunday night! We both commented on how when we have sex we remember how good we are together, but we are usually too stressed or tired to get around to it. It was nice to feel connected for a short while at least.

I’m not sure what the moral of this story is. The obvious points for me are that having a very clear task on hand at work makes me feel much better. I tend to enjoy and do at least a decent job of public speaking. I am able to miss and appreciate my family when I am away from them for at least two days. Also, doing something social with people I know seems to help, perhaps it’s feeling connected that does it. I’m actually going to add that to my tricks list.

Unfortunately it seems my wife now is coughing and is tired and stressed, so I’m already noticing a decline in my mood. Since I’m not deep into depression yet(really don’t want to get mugged), and I’m getting some more sleep I’ll see if some of the (man)bag tricks help. I hope so, since I don’t have a conference to escape to this time around.

Foul mood(having my “getting killed by muggers fantasy” again). I tried to write something for the blog(3 failed attempts) but it all feels like shit, and I don’t even have the energy or care enough to spend time writing something other than a “Everything is shit” diatribe.

Sorry I didn’t get a post up.

My post last week ended with my daughter coughing. My premonition was correct and we’ve had a hellish week with little sleep and a sick daughter. Towards the end of the weekend I was planning on writing about how happiness is bullshit, how I hate my life, I shouldn’t have had kids and that this blog is nothing but a stupid waste of time.

I never do well when the kids are sick (makes me question my parental aptitude a bit) but that wasn’t all that was going on.  I’m stressing about a dispute we’re having with our landlord over a proposed rent increase (our city has strict rent control regulations but we may have missed our window to fight it). My wife has been primarily focused and stressing about an IEP(Individual Education Plan) meeting with the school district requesting speech services for our daughter(the one who is sick right now).  My wife’s been irritable and snapping at me much more than usual and her snapping at me always makes me feel worse. In addition I think both my wife and I have been fighting off a cold, probably our daughter’s, for the past week. I’ve been tired in the evenings so a lot of projects have been put on the back burner. Surf has been too big and I’m not feeling 100%, so no surfing either.

On Sunday we were invited, along with the rest of the research group, to my advisor’s house for brunch. My sick daughter had been okay in the morning(although she threw and broke a point and shoot digital camera) but as we started getting ready to go, she started melting down, and wouldn’t stop crying. I was about ready to scream at this point. We decided that my wife and younger daughter would stay home, and I would go to the party with my older daughter. The drive to the party was when I decided to write the “life is crap” entry.  My advisor lives near some preserved open space, so after eating and socializing I went on a little hike with my daughter and some other attendees from the party (a family with two boys). Being outside in nature, seeing the kids playing, climbing hills, and throwing rocks in the stream was so healing. I was able to forget about the stressors for a little while. Even when my daughter tripped on a rock, bumped her knee and started to cry I was able to still feel calm and actually feel empathy rather than annoyance. After the party we came home and my parents came over. My mom cooked up a delicious stew and it felt so good to have my parents there and also to be taken care of a little bit.

Monday was a holiday, so I finally got to take care of some errands(oil change!) and after reflecting on the past week, purposefully went out back to take some photos. The pictures were of my Copihue (Chilean Bellflower). My parents are from Chile, and the Copihue is our national flower.  The plant is a vine and the flower is heavy and waxy and beautiful. When I found out that I could buy a plant locally several years ago I jumped at the opportunity. I guess it can be quite finicky to grow but ours did really well, it grew vigorously and by the second year it put out a bunch of flowers. I sent photos to the family back in South America and they were impressed and heartened by my success. This continued for a few years.  Last year I changed the vine into a new bigger pot. After a month it started wilting. No flowers developed, the leaves were looking brown and dry on the tips. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then about 4 months ago I found out that the new pot (plastic) was not draining enough and the plant was basically drowning. I drilled more holes in the bottom of the pot, filled the bottom with perlite and hoped for the best.

Flower buds appeared 2 months ago and the first flower bloomed last week.

Since Monday, things have gotten a bit better. My daughter is beginning to get over her cold. Less snot to wipe up(yeah!) and she’s in better spirits. The IEP meeting was on Tuesday. I loved seeing my wife be so assertive and authoritative. She participates in many IEPs for her work (usually representing her school district) so she was quite prepared. Unlike me she is not afraid to be seen as pushy or ruffle people’s feathers if she needs to. We got pretty much everything we had been wanting.

After hitting a bit of a stalemate with our landlord and it seeming as if we were irreversibly bound for mediation (probably due to some misinterpretation of e-mails), I changed course and wrote a heartfelt letter, detailing our relationship with the landlord, our view of the statutes and offered a compromise.  We’ve had a really good relationship with our landlord for the past 6 years, and I was saddened by the prospect of getting in a nasty fight. I don’t know if the letter will help us settle this amicably or lead to anything, but I feel good that I actually made an effort to reach out.

So things are calming down for now and we’ve been sleeping better. More importantly, I don’t feel like I’m drowning anymore.