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I'm not sure what to write at the moment. I've been clawing my way up out of a depressive episode. It's been unpleasant and stressful. Somewhere in the midst of this, I finished editing and released two Filianic texts. I am now working on my Camp NaNoWriMo manuscript which has gone completely off the rails. I was going to write some fiction and it turned into basically therapy writing on a larger scale. I'm still tracking word count, time, and how many pencils I've used. I'm averaging around 18 words a minute. I think that's not bad considering that I'm writing by hand. My writing time comes out to approximately two hours a day.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this thing. It's painful to write. It's been just pouring out of me so I know that I need to write it, at the same time it is miserable going. Very little of what I have been writing has been happy. I'm mostly recounting old trauma. It is exhausting and not doing much to help my mood.

I'm going to go work on my writing for today. I'm going to try to get back to blogging 3x per week on here. I'm also going to attempt to get back to daily blogging on my other blogs. It is my hope that work will cure me as much as time and sunlight.

Feeling down.

I've caught my son's head cold. It's made me feel pretty awful of late. My sinuses are just gunky and gross which is making me cough a lot. Oddly enough, the allergy spray that I take every morning helped clear some of it out this morning so I could sort of breathe through my nose earlier. I'm half tempted to use it again, but I know that is not a solution. So, I'm probably going to be stopping at the store tomorrow and picking up some saline nasal spray to get me through this cold. It wouldn't be so awful if it weren't for the fact that due to the diabetes I can't use any of the over the counter medications for this. I get to use Tylenol or Aleve, that's pretty much it. And sugar free cough drops.

My mood hasn't been the best. Seasonal affective disorder is really getting to me right now. Which is perversely ironic as we're beginning to get more sunlight. I have been attempting to keep working on my manuscripts and staying on top of housework despite feeling moderately depressed. It's exhausting. I'm trying not to let the accompanying anxiety run the show but when I try to sleep it's been a lot of nightmare about random stuff.

My work on serious spring cleaning seems to be going awry. This is because I have a couple of young men who haven't figured out how to pick things up. And the perpetual battle with dishes and laundry is hard to win on a day when you've got a cold making you miserable. I do, however, have several boxes of things to go off to Goodwill and be donated. Maybe I can get that done this weekend.

TL:DR - I'm feeling like I could sleep for a week or just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for a week. And I'm congested. This kinda sucks and was not what I had planned.

Menu for the week of 3/4/19

I've been struggling with putting together menus because I have issues revolving around food. Precooking for the week is helping with some of the issues. At the same time, it sucks up just about a whole day. I'm slowly making progress towards menus that are friendly for everyone in the household. The kids actually will eat pulled pork if I don't put bbq sauce on it. And it's a good thing if I don't cook it with bbq sauce because that makes it lower carb and better for me.

The recommendation of the South Beach Diet Cookbook has been really helpful. I've been making some of the recipes and finding things similar online. I've started making my own sauces based off of the South Beach Diet's version of things like bbq sauce. Because I'm so carb sensitive, I have been really careful not to use sugar in anything. It's frustrating but I think I'm making progress.

Now I just have to figure out why over the last few weeks my fasting numbers have been high. I'm tweaking things like what I am eating for a snack and when I eat snack. I just can't figure it out.

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	Pop tarts	sandwiches / leftovers	Pizza
Mon	kids: school me: oatmeal & slice of crustless quiche, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: pizza & hard boiled eggs Me: cobb salad	hamburgers & cheese burger salad
Tues	kids: school me: oatmeal, egg, coffee	Kids: school Hubby: ham salad sandwiches & eggs Me: salad	Pulled pork tacos / taco salad
Wed	kids: school me: oatmeal, slice of quiche & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: quiche, pulled pork sandwich Me: leftovers	pizza meat pie salad bread sticks
Thurs	kids: school me: quiche, coffee oatmeal & berries	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	teriyaki meatballs rice
Fri	kids: school me: veggie omelet & toast & coffee	Kids: school Hubby: leftovers Me: leftovers	Bombay style chicken breasts 'rice' & naan
Sat	eggs, bacon & fruit	leftovers / sandwiches	pizza

I'm starting to make art again, yay?

So, in the effort to improve my mental health, I've started making art again. Like, I'm busting out the sketch pad and my art supplies and doing stuff like what's to the right. That's an abstract self portrait. The blues and purples reflect what I'm feeling right now. I'm not at 100% at the moment but I'm trying my best.

I'm still kinda depressed but it seems to be improving. I feel like I've got some pieces to my puzzle missing, hence the blank spaces. My memory issues have been bothering the hell out of me. I've been trying to figure out where I put something important for the last two weeks and I haven't found it yet. I know I didn't throw it away, but I have no idea where it could be.

Hopefully in the process of my deep spring cleaning, I will find that box of trinkets. I kinda need it for some therapy work that I've been doing. I'm going to be using some of the contents in my art journal but I have to find the box with the stuff in it first. I think I put it away when I was in a hypomanic state. I'm kinda frustrated.

Journal work is a slow going process, but I think I'm beginning to sort some stuff out. I'm realizing that my imposter syndrome has some pretty deep roots and is intimately tied to my social phobia. I'm trying to work around that so that I can get going promoting my art and my writing.