No Edit. Just banged it out and posted it. 

 04/26/2017

 The mood is very low.

 My weight is dropping again. It's dropped enough that people are commenting on how much thinner I look. It's gone long enough to change my appearance. 

I'm  not sure what to do with that.

 I'm feeling very alone right now. I can't pin down a source so it's probably another chemical attack. The only thing I can every do with this is just ride it out. Don't make any life-changing decisions. In fact, it's best if I don't interact.

 Because I don't want to have to say I'm fine when I'm very far from fine.

 I'm not a rookie. I've handled a number of attacks before. I've learned lots of things, like the stuff I mentioned above, the hard way. But knowledge be knowledge however so gained. I learned things.

 This sort of episode is characterized by a general sense of malaise. Little desire to do anything. It feels like gravity has been turned up...I feel heavy, slow. I spend a lot of time in bed. I read for awhile, then fall asleep, then wake up and do it all over again.

 My nighttime activities seem to have increased a great deal.

 It was happening so many times that I'd lost track of time. I had to message Nice to ask if it was AM or PM and what day it was.

 I've been very mobile but I have no idea what's been going on. I do keep sustaining damage. I have scrapes on the tops of both feet and one on the shin and lumps and bruises on my head. The head injuries are the most common. I have no idea why.

 I'll just wake up. But I'm up already. And I seem to be moving.

 If you've ever been rendered unconscious, like for minor surgery or something. You know those first thirty seconds or so when you have no idea who you are, where you are, or why and a sense of fear or even panic?

 Well, all of that clears up pretty quickly, but in my case it's never quick enough. I get about to the point where I know my own name before walking face-first into a wall, or a door, or a cabinet...you get the idea.

 So this is on the increase. I think I understand the why of it. My level of agitation or distress is directly proportional to the number of sleep-walking events. More agitation, more nighttime foolishness.

 To my knowledge, I've never left the house during a sleep-walking event.

 I worry about that a great deal.

 I'm done for now.

 Thanks for listening

06/05/2017

 The mood is sad.

 I've finally discovered why no one wants to spend time with me outside the office.

 Apparently people think I'm a borderline psychotic who is one misstep away from becoming a raging axe-murderer.

 So all the effort I've put in to trying to fit in with the rest of you was for nothing.

 No one wants to be around me because they're afraid of me.

 It's upsetting finding out that people I've known for years have no idea what kind of person I am.

 What do I do with something like that?

 I give up. I'm done.

 I'm back to taking authors to dinner.

 I thought I was doing okay.

 But today I learned that nothing I say or do will ever make a difference.

 Thanks for listening

06/19/2017

 The mood is erratic.

 Experiencing a wide range of emotions, listing them all would be excessively time-consuming.

 This is the first time I've taken the time to write anything in nearly a month. Or, rather, I've been writing but not posting any of it. It was all just hurt and confused and really didn't make sense most of the time and I'm now a pariah so I have keep the language on the bunnies, unicorns, and kittens side of things.

 Or not.

 I was out of work for over a week. I have some decisions to make and they're life-changing decisions and I'm doing my best to avoid them. I learned a few things about myself recently. One was that I wasn't fitting in as well as I thought I was, the other is that my emotional state is also not what I thought it was.

 Today is the birthday of my brother Jon.

 Jon left this world at age twenty-four. By choice, not by circumstance. This always seems more a haunting than a memory. Memories fade, haunting doesn't. I'm usually as far away from people as I possibly be on this date, every year, but I chose to try to get through the day.

 I was dreading going back to work because I'd been out so long. I expected things to be piled up. I expected to have hundreds of e-mails I expected dozens of voice-mails.

 But I have awesome coworkers.

 Deb Weaver and Joan Wade backed me up. Things were not as grim as I'd expected. I was able to ease back into this because there are two more people in the world that care about me. I'll never forget this.

 There was also some excitement today.

 Deb Weaver sat her phone down on the counter at the pizza shop across the street from the office at lunchtime. She got distracted and didn't realize she'd lost it until she got back to the office. She wasn't sure where she'd left it so I called the number to see if we could hear it ringing.

 And someone answered.

 It was a young woman. I told her my friend had lost her phone and she was holding it. I asked if she could meet Deb in front of the office and she agreed. So Deb waited. And waited. Meanwhile, I was able to get the tracking feature in her phone to work correctly and found the phone was at an intersection two blocks away. It was amazingly precise. I could even tell which side of the street she was.

 And she was at a bus stop.

 I determined she had no intention of returning the phone and was going to abscond with it as soon as the bus arrives. I went out front, gave Deb my cell-phone, and gave her the location of her phone. She and another coworker went and found the girl, still waiting for the bus.

 Deb had words for her that are not fit for publication.

 We have a social club at work. It's a group of workers, clerks, and management that do things like sponsor trips to baseball games or Hershey Park, even New York and New Jersey bus trips. For the next five weeks they're having a Monday drawing with the winner getting a choice of gift cards.

 And I freaking won!

 So I have a gift card for Target now. Thanks Becky! (((hug)))

 The VA sent me to a civilian psychologist for a disability evaluation.

 Another one anyway. I was convinced that my emotional development stopped at age seventeen. I even wrote a poem about it. It sucked. I a writer not a poet. Anyway, we'd talked for about twenty minutes then he put his pen down and said “you have the emotions of a little boy”.

 It wasn't hurtful or anything, he just said it the same way someone will say what the weather is today. Simple statement of fact. I told him about the seventeen thing and he said it was more like eight or nine.

 So I was off by nine years? Well, that certainly answers a very large number of questions. I have the intellect of a rocket scientist and the emotions of a child. I think “erratic” is pretty much going to be a given.

 That's the whole thing. Or at least as much as I'm doing now.

 Overall, a day I was dreading turned out okay.

 Because there are people who care about me.

 Sometimes I have to remind myself of this.

 Thanks for listening 

Ever watch "Big Bang Theory"?

Perfect description of Sheldon Cooper.

06/29/2017

 The mood is calm.

 Relaxed, even.

 This had become a rare state of mind. Everything was tension, dread, guilt...too much head-noise all at once. Too many thoughts running in circles or in straight lines that go nowhere. I was actually beginning to experience physical symptoms.
 So I had to step away for a time.

 That is where I am now. This week, I've slept when I was tired, I ate when I was hungry, I read, did my laundry and my dishes, cooked...all of those things that make a life. All of those things that had dropped out of my life one by one until there was nothing left.

 I'm getting them back now.

 My doctor decided I'd be well served if I stayed out of work for a month. The alternative was the hospital at Lebanon. I'd been there once before. It's a violent psych lock-up—a prison...I don't belong in that kind of environment. The treatment is literally worse than the problem.

 I've been going to my therapy appointments. Rather looking forward to them now. Everyone is just fascinating. Such intricate pathways that lead each of us there...it's like reading stories in reverse. Having to figure out how that which is now connects to that which is then.

 It's a puzzle.

 There hasn't been a single sleep-walking episode in the past five days. At least that I'm aware of. I was having them nightly. Sometimes multiple times per night. And still the strange obsession with light bulbs.

 I was having to take a rather significant dose of sedative to keep from wandering around all night. I've been able to fall asleep and stay that way without them.

 Everything that was squeezing its way to the front of my head. All of the noise. Muted now. Slowly fading.

 I'm finding my center again.

 Relaxed.

 I honestly can't recall the last time I did something just for fun.

 There's a carnival in Shrewsbury until Saturday.

 I think I'll go have a look.

 Thanks for listening.