Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:40 PM

In case anybody was wondering, I did finish my paper and turn it in on time. You can read it here.

All-in-all, not a bad effort. Really thought-provoking. I had a lot of trouble with the conclusion, in part because I didn't like where it was leading me, and didn't want to open a whole new can of worms just as I was winding down.

Fortunately(?) our next paper in the class is supposed to deal directly with the notion of the digital divide, so I've written the perfect lead-in for that. [I honestly wonder whether that wasn't part of the purpose of this paper, since our starting point involved papers on ethics and equity.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 AM

And, as is so often the case, things seem much better in the morning.

After I wrote last night's entry, I walked away from the computer to... well, honestly, intending to have a bit of a cry. [I hope that I'm not hurting my job chances by posting these kinds of things. I actually had a dream last night that I was talking with my parents and they were concerned I was posting too much information in my journal.] Mind you, I didn't actually cry, but just wound up having a brief pity party, the "I can do this" side of myself warring with the "I can't do it" side.

At any rate, I wound up giving myself a stern talking to. The kind of writing this paper was asking for -- reading several articles, synthesizing them, and coming up with summary conclusions about what they're really saying -- that's the kind of thing I do all the time in everyday life. It's just somehow, with the pressure of 25% of the final grade and with the formal name of "context analysis" I got stage fright, I think.

So, I just started imagining verbally telling somebody what these articles were about. Just describing them and what I saw in them. And I went back to the computer, opened a new file, and started writing that way. And by about 1:15 AM, I had about one page single-space (which would be two-pages double-spaced, which is a quarter of the 8-10 pages we're supposed to produce. And that's further than my other attempts at organizing the information have gotten.

And then Ian came home from gaming, looked over what I wrote and liked it, which really helped.

So, I think I'm finally on track and on the right track. My earlier abandoned efforts to organize the material won't be for naught; I am using some of the categories and classifications I came up with as points in my paper. But I think I need to do this kind of thing more organically -- just letting it all mush around in my head and see what I come up with -- rather than trying to structure things in a more formal mind map or outline.

We'll see how it turns out, but I feel much better about the paper and about my abilities to finish it by deadline than I have for a while.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:55 PM

I'm feeling miserable

Over the last five hours, I've tried over a dozen different schemes for organizing and condensing down the data from our reading into recognizable themes and trends, and none of them seem to be working out. And I'm rapidly running out of time.

I keep telling myself that I can do this, but it's warring with an inner sense of despair/frustration/worry that I can't. And time is running out, with my deadline only 33 hours away...

If anybody's reading this, I could really use a few words of support or encouragement in the little comments field at the end of this post. It would really mean a lot to me as I'm working my way through this.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:50 AM

Continuing the updates on my mood and weekend:

Felt somewhat better yesterday afternoon, though I didn't get anywhere near enough work done as I should have. Then, last night, went to hang out with friends, including some people we knew only from online, for whom this was our first face-to-face meeting. A good time was had by all -- you can read about the evening in other journals, here and here. After the meal, when everyone decided to game, I skipped out to use the printers at Simmons (something I had intended to to that morning, but wasn't ready for then). I had fun, but my overall average mood is still low. And, on the drive home I could feel myself just shutting down again.

Even though I got eight hours sleep and woke without any alarm, I still felt tired and logy this morning. Went to the doctor's appointment and related my story. It's probably not major depression (I didn't think so, because I still do have fun, albeit for short periods) but may be situational depression. I got a prescription for an antidepressant and some bloodwork to check my thyroid and such.

I was trying to figure out how long this was going on. I noticed the other day that this journal entry from a month ago, sounds nearly identical to my posts this weekend. So, I've been trying to read back thru my journal to see if I notice when my mood started shifting. [Any readers want to chip in?]

The doctor also questioned whether another medication I started in mid-August might be precipitating the worse moods. I mean, my situation hasn't changed much over the summer (merely prolonged), but I think I'm feeling much more overwhelmed by it now. Or is that an inaccurate perception on my part. Ian's commented that I was happier and more carefree when I had blue hair. Some of the petulance I'm disliking in myself started when I was preparing to return to my natural haircolor. Which is about the same time I started this other medication. I don't know.

So, that's my weekend.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:21 PM

Great, and now I'm weepy. My emotional yo-yo continues.

At this point, I'm partly using my journal to monitor my moods for the doctor on Monday morning. I think the word for the moment is "despair."

Ian and I had a fight this morning. It's very frustrating living with someone who has more-or-less given up food for dietary reasons. [He's mostly eating Balance bars, which have been helping with his mental fogginess and satisfying his hunger on a lot fewer calories.] But that means that he's not using the dishes so much, so not noticing when they're piling up. He's not hungry enough to cook, and the kitchen is too much of a mess for me to cook for myself. And I don't have the time to clean the kitchen myself and don't want to spend the money to eat out for ordinary meals.

Don't get me wrong; he is doing a lot better at getting stuff done. What's more, he's got a job and will be interviewing on Monday for another -- better than I've done in all my job-hunting to date. But I get stressed over the disorganized state of the house (which probably won't be entirely resolvable until we can expand into two floors), and he gets resentful because I haven't shown enough acknowledgement of what he has done. So, we fought this morning.

But, when it rains, it pours. Those who have visited our house will have noticed a sagging spot in our kitchen ceiling. It's right underneath the 3rd floor bathtub, which used to leak. Ian caulked it up many years ago, but it's just started dripping again. So Ian will hopefully go back up into their apartment tomorrow (with permission) to fix it again.

Somehow, I'm tempted to just list my litany of woe -- everything else that's been piling up on my plate:

• We need to hire someone to clean our gutters, which hasn't been done in years, because during the last heavy rain, barely a trickle was coming out our downspouts.
• We may have a rodent of some sort above our ceiling. Two nights this week, we were woken up by something scritching/scurrying above our heads. [This house has had squirrel problems before.]
• We need to hire somebody to cut down high limbs in the tree beside our house to prevent squirrels from coming into our house.
• I need to arrange for a replacement computer so I can send my current machine in for warranty repairs on the bad system board.
• I'm approaching the six-month mark in unemployment, so have to figure out how to apply for an extension and sign up for extended health coverage from my former employer

And, I don't want to spend money on all these things because I'm not entirely sure what shape our finances are and how long we can afford to live without my job.

As a positive, Ian's took the T to his game today, meaning I don't have to either spend two hours driving him round-trip twice or forfeit the car for the day. However, I do still have to go to school and use their printers. And I just noticed that there's a home game at Fenway today, meaning there won't be parking near the school and I don't have a permit to use the school's lot. Just ducky.

Part of me wonders whether I should drop out of classes and set aside my plans for a degree in May, because maybe the stress of the job search and school is too much for me. I originally chose some less strenuous courses but when those classes were cancelled due to low enrollment, it seems like the classes I switched into are much more demanding. But we've already spent the money on tuition, and I don't want to throw that away. But I care too much about what others think to just turn in a half-assed job on this paper, either. [Before he left, Ian said maybe I should.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:10 AM

Did quite a decent amount of work yesterday, so we went out to Harvard Square in the evening for dinner and window shopping. We even ran into our friends Ayesha and Bikergeek there. [Isn't the reflexivity of online journals interesting? Sometimes, I've seen so many journalers (particularly LiveJournalers) write about the same event, it feels like I'm watching Rashoman. But I digress...]

I had fun -- and I remember having fun -- so I don't think I'm actually suffering from depression or atypical depression. Still, even on the drive back home, I could feel my mood settling back down into my now-typical low malaise. I'll probably bring my journal entries since Friday to the doctor's office for his diagnosis, but beginning to doubt I'm actually suffering from anything clinical. Which is both good and bad.

BTW, Quoting an article in Reason Magazine, "Semiotically speaking, this is the most inept administration in years." Take a look at the new logos for the Information Awareness Office of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Homeland Security. Those images'll reassure those who don't trust the government... If you don't get why they're so creepy, read the Reason article. [Originally seen on Steve Jackson Games' Daily Illuminator]

And now, back to work, because I really want to reach a particular point before driving Ian to his game around noon.