JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

Today marks the six month anniversary of the day that I decided that there was too much “stuff” between me and the facts that made up my life, and I thought it would be a good idea to look back and see what has changed in my life. Here is the six-month status report, organized (loosely) by spheres of my life:

Physically

Since I dropped out of the rat race, I have lost 16.6% of my body weight and am only about ten pounds away from the ideal weight for my height. In addition, through near-daily five mile walks and/or a couple of hours of physical labor a day out in the yard, my muscle mass is way up from where it was before. By paying closer attention to what I eat and simply only eating things I truly enjoy, my cholesterol is no longer elevated, but right on target, and my blood pressure is in the “low-normal” range for the first time in several years. All in all, I am pretty happy with the progress I have made so far.

On the other hand, I am still smoking cigarettes, though far less than before.

Emotionally

I think that this is probably the part of my life that has seen the greatest gains, which is to say, this is the part of my life that was suffering the worst previously. One of the worst parts of MDD, at least in my case, is something called anhedonia; the loss of interest or pleasure in daily activities. For me, basically it meant that the only emotion I ever felt clearly was somewhere between rage and spite.

Fortunately for me, my psychiatrist has been able to find a pretty good medicine regimen for me, and though the dosages continue to increase in the short-term, in the long-term he thinks that I will level off at a reasonable regimen of only a few pills a day.

The changes in my emotional state are hard to overstate. I know that I have become a firm believer in “better living through chemistry”. I am finally able to see my depression as a thing, a disease, instead of assuming that “that’s just how I am.” There is still much progress to be made in making peace with myself and understanding who I am and who the depression made we think I was, but things are definately looking up.

Mentally

The mental and emotional are so tightly linked in humans that I hesitated before seperating out this into its own sphere, but recent changes in my thinking patterns made me decide to do so. I think that the biggest change so far mentally (and there have been many) has been the sudden realization that I do not have to have an opinion on everything, not even on “hot-button issues” that everybody and their brother is talking (or blogging) about. Immediately upon realizing this, I lost almost all interest in discussing politics, which was before one of my favorite topics.

I am also experiencing a bad case of the “so whats”. Perhaps because of my discovery that I didn’t need to have an opinion on everything, I have also discovered that more than 95% of what passes for news has abslutely no effect on my life, and therefore is of no interest to me. I mean honestly, what do I care about a shootout at a Denny’s on the other side of the country or whether or not the Australian government is arresting alleged child pornographers? What exactly is knowing that going to do for me? Nothing.

Maritally

I am still married, which means I am way ahead of where I was six months ago. At that point it didn’t look likely that my marriage would survive much longer, not without a major change. However, major changes were made, and now I am happy to report that I am much more happily married than I have been in several years. It’s almost as if we are having a second honeymoon.

Financially

Well, I still don’t have what anyone would call a job, but I have been able to generate enough income here and there, doing things that I don’t consider “work” that I am now completely convinced that a job is not necessary, and is part of a vast conspiracy by Forest Rangers and State Park employees to not have to ever deal with people.

Honestly, I have been amazed at just how easy it is to make money when you stop worrying about it so much and just do whatever comes naturally to you. Paradoxically, being out of work has had the effect of putting us in the best financial state we have been in in a long time.

Socially

Heh. This one makes me giggle. The fact that I no longer think that talking to my cow-orkers about politics and work while getting hammered constitutes a social life, I would say I was making progress. I had become a truly sad bastard, and I’m willing to admit it. In the last six months, however, I have re-learned how to interact with other people as if they were human too and not either assets or competitors. Yeah, I think that counts as progress.