Bleakness has finally let go of me, after three weeks of a mostly complete inability to deal with outside information -- reading or writing email, journals, books, music -- pretty much anything more than casual conversation and computer games was just too much. I did manage to go to work, and to go to classes, but everything else just slid away. Three weeks lost, plus a week or so on either side, at the beginning to fall into the bleakness (like falling through very cold sand), and then the week or so to climb out, brush myself off, and get my bearings again. So much for September.

There's some goodness, though. For the first time I can name what happens and know that it's a real thing, not merely some failure on my part to be responsible enough, happy enough, together enough. Instead it's a thing which occurs, and can be deduced from the symptoms, and perhaps if I can notice it while it's going on I can figure out why I get trapped in that awful frozen place and learn not to go there anymore. Norm suggested it's a sort of prolonged emotional flashback, reliving the memory of a time when the world really was so overwhelming that I had to shut down. This seems like a reasonable place to start the next time it happens... if I can tell it's going on while it's going on. That's the tricky part.

And is it just me, or does this always happen around this time of year?

Anyway. I'm back, at least for today. I've been reading again, mostly mediocre but entertaining fantasy by L.E. Modesitt, and occasional other things. I picked up The Hours at Bookbuyers Monday night, which is a book by Michael Cunningham which includes some historical fiction sections about Virginia Woolf. I've read it through and I'm still not sure if I liked it, although I don't think I strongly disliked it. The Woolf sections were plausible, which is nice; I was a little afraid I'd have to throw the book across the room.

As noted above, I've been playing a lot of computer games. I finished Might and Magic VII around the beginning of September and have now gotten deeply into Final Fantasy VII for the Playstation. It's beautifully rendered and has a reasonable plot, although it's not nearly as mind-bending as FF7 was. I'm almost at the end of the second disc -- just another night or two -- and am really enjoying myself.

Jim's new company, Disappearing Inc., is getting a ton of publicity. He got up at 6:30 this morning so he'd be in the office before CNN got there. They've also shown up in USA Today and on ABC World News. I'm cheerfully boggled, and so is Jim, with maybe a bit of stress thrown in at how much more work this is making for him. Meanwhile I'm finding my own job boring boring boring, and am not sure where to go with it. There've been a lot of meetings lately about what my group is going to do in the immediate future, and if I'm lucky some brilliant decisions will be made and I'll no longer be bored.

I'm in school again, it being fall. I was going to take thirteen hours; five of English, five of Java, three of career-life planning. Then I came to my senses and dropped the Java class, and now I'm tired but much more sane. The English class is at 9am, which means getting up at 7:45 -- yes, I know, for some of you that's late, but I've spent the past year sleeping until 9am every morning and so I'm suffering some. I think it might be good for me, though, and certainly doing organised critical writing with a friendly instructor is useful. Our first real literary essay is due a week from Friday, and I'm sort of excited, although also a little worried. What if I flake? But I know I won't.