My month long journey of trying to write has come to an end, and as you can see by me not posting any recent stories, it did not end in success. I learned early on that I was too hard on myself in making the deadline. I'm not gonna give up writing or sell my soul to a company like I threatened. Instead what I discovered after a long period of not doing any sort of writing for weeks is that my attention span doesn't lend itself to longform stories, at least not at the moment. The best way to improve at writing is of course to write, and I can't write if I've already moved on from the story I laid out. That isn't to say the Freya story isn't a dead project, same for any of the things I have started and dropped. I'll come back to them when I feel as if i should and when I want to. For now I am trying to find the motivation and time to jot down a bunch of ideas and them spin those ideas into a story as long as I want it to be.

These past weeks haven't come without their hardship, in just the last few days I have hit a low point, a very low point. I didn't think a person could feel this miserable, but I sure do. It all stems from the thing I hate: my job. For lack of a better word, it stinks. It takes up too much of my time, drains my mental faculties, and leaves me open to abuse from strangers. Ontop of that I am expected to excel and perform well at it or risk penalties. That isn't happening, so it will have to be done. I am looking at other things, but all the jobs I look at require years of experience in fields I have none, or advanced degrees. I could always settle and get something at a place I know will take me, but I'm not that desperate for finding new work, only incredible mentally strained. I am feeling better now, because I am getting back into gear. I know what life means to me, I know what I want to achieve, and I know i have to endure hardship to achieve. I thought I could hunker down for a month and put my nose to the grindstone, but I am not wired that way. I require more freedom, more breathing room to think and to express myself. I hate to say that I spent the better half of the month being miserable, but it did happen. My ebbs and flows of mood make it an inevitability unfortunately. I have put a great deal of thought about getting back on ADD and antidepressant medication, but that requires initiating conversations I am not ready to have with my folks. Truth is I have done very well without them, I don't need them to be happy or to focus, but I do have limitations that I know other people don't have. It's a matter of taking medicine that removes those blocks, or working through them. When everything goes my way I am fine, but my job ensures I have many days that don't go my way. It's a massive stressor, I need it gone, but I'm not so irresponsible that I want to quit on the spot with nowhere else to go. So I'm back to writing a journal, it won't be a daily journal, because I didn't like the setup I was doing for it back in february where I would write some of it at work. My breaks at work are where I do my best to have a meaningful conversation with someone in only 30 minutes, hasn't panned out, but I won't stop trying.

I used to think that my mood and mental health was a location, there's a certain place that want to be, and I often find myself losing where that is and not being able to find it again. For one month I'm "gone" and another month I'm "back". March was interesting, because i was somewhere inbetween. I wasn't quite gone, but i wasn't quite their either. Now, being depressed to the point where all I can think about is leaving my job by any means is pretty bad, really bad actually, but I know these thoughts aren't genuine. I've always had trouble figuring out exactly where i am in terms of mood, and how to solve my mental struggles, seems like there's always something so simple that I haven't though of doing because i am too wrapped up in my feelings. Before I seek counseling, no matter how much I would like to get it, I need to try those things. I need to get the courage to talk to my loved ones about my state of mind, which is a monumental task by itself. I need stability, I need freedom, I need the ability to understand myself, I need the motivation to work towards improving my life one step at a time. And so, I'm back. To write and jot down ideas as much as I can, to find that balance that I need to endure my work week, and probably most important, to sleep when I am tired.