Some Personal Comments

This will be the last entry on this blog.

I have decided that blogging has not been good for my mental health.

I have been off work now since May 13 on a leave of absence for mental health reasons, having been suffering from anxiety attacks and other symptoms of depression since January.

If you read my very first post from December, its clear that I was already suffering some (more muted) form of depression.

I had thought that having an outlet for my thoughts would -- as in a process of venting -- help me --- both when I started the blog while I was still working, and more recently while absent from work. I had also thought that keeping apprised of what's going on in the world, and contributing my own particular viewpoint, whether through original posts of my own, or, more commonly, via collections of what I viewed as worthwhile reading of other people's material that I thought was particularly germane or insightful, would be useful earlier on, and would continue to be useful by helping alleviate my guilt for not being at work as it would provide an avenue to continue contributing to my colleagues' investment research.

I'd taken breaks from posting in the past (February, and parts of June), when things were particularly bad for me. But, frankly, short breaks then resuming blogging is not the answer. I need to shut it down.

I hope to blog again in the future --- but it won't be at this site. This site is just too affiliated to my recent problems. I probably won't wait until I can give the sunny-side up story, because I remain less than confident that the sunny-side up/green shoots/recovery story will prevail in the near-term; but that's just me.

In any case, I'll at least wait until I, if not the economy, have recovered from my depression.

I don't know when I'll be back at work. I hope sooner rather than later ---- but I had sincerely hoped I'd be back by/before now.

The meds I started on in February have been helping, but not doing the full job. So I needed a 2nd med. And the second meds I started in March, and ramped up in April, ended up causing much more harm than good. So I then had to be weaned off them and started onto something new. That transition was fun --- not! In any case, the worst of the bad stuff that was going on in May has mostly gone away (extreme headaches and suicidal thoughts) but I'm otherwise not yet actually any better. Still an emotional wreck; still have episodes triggered by auditory signals (volume/pitch); still have a limited resevoir of energy, emotional and otherwise, to get me through each day; still have headaches all the time (though not the vise-like ones); still am tired all the time, typically having meltdowns in early evening (despite sleeping in to 8:30 or 9:30), and, if I don't get 10 hours sleep, am a wreck the next day.

Anyways, enough personal babbling.

This blog is over.

Thanks for reading.

Best to all.

Cheers,

M

p.s. though there will be no new posts, I will leave the blog active so that my old posts are still accessible and, more importantly, so that my sidebar links remain accessible. I don't know how long I can go without posting new posts before Blogger shuts it down.