Well, since I generally open up and tell bloody everything on this website, secure in my confidence that nobody actually looks at these things... When I said "pretty bad time," up there, I basically meant "X-treme Depression Weekend 2004." Don't forget the X.

 

I bungled through all my usual made-up depressive nonsense about why things are going poorly for me. But things always turn around once I'm on the upswing. Granted, my "down" state this time lasted for longer than usual, but still, the upswing got me where I needed to be.

 

Right now... my current handle on my situation, here: I'm making friends. Emphasis on the present tense, there. Not a completed process. I've gotten to know lots of names, and people are, surprisingly, friendly enough, when I make an effort to by friendly to them. Some unnamed people have even dropped by my room. It makes me glad. I enjoy their company. Also, there's a big revelation I need to share...

 

Sitting in this room, using my computer... it doesn't make me feel better. This sounds precisely like a common-sense statement, but follow me, on this: I come back here, expecting to relax, to decompress, to just be by myself... but it's not the constructive sort of being by myself. It's the kind where I sit here, waiting for chat friends to come around, and that leads to a whole other can of worms. Generally, though, I'll just say it makes me feel worse and worse. Right now, I'm being constructive; I'm writing on my web-page, and chatting with one of the girls from the tenth. I'm not waiting around, and I'm not thinking about how everything has gone wrong. Sometimes I think it's a shame that I never caught the emo wave.

 

Anyhow... things are going well. I'm keeping myself free of the devil machine and its entrapments. I've finished a great book, lately, and on my way to finishing another. The second one's for my Introduction to Literature class. I hope to finish it this weekend; there's a frightful amount of work coming up, and I'll be hard-pressed to get a fast handle on it. But I can manage--I always do, after all.

 

-- Winning Smiles From Your Friendly Neighborhood Jenkins