Video-Tape Fiction

Tape-Fi. It's like Sci-Fi, but instead of science I have video tapes.

It's been a full year since I've been in school, which means a lot after a lifetime spent shuttling from one school to another to another. And it's easy to feel disconnected and aimless without that institutional structure, especially when depression unhooks you from life enough as it is. I've had actual nightmares that I was never able to go back to school and finish my degree, which is possibly the nerdiest thing I've admitted today.

Developing a work ethic that shifts focus from outside reward (a syllabus, a grade system and teacher to oversee, etc.) to personal reward has been something of a challenge, even more so since part of being sick for me has been about being constantly unfocused, constantly unable to get a grip on what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. At times over the past two months it's been difficult for me to talk or think coherently, much less write in any way that made sense. It's like a psychological camera lens that just won't come into focus.

But my projects have been slowly creeping along, and juggling medication has seemed to get a little better. I am lucky for the support of my husband. Without him, all of this would be much more difficult.

I've been trying very hard to read again. I was an avid reader as a child and a teen, and reading for pleasure has been slowly phased out of my life by schoolwork and sickness over the course of high school and college. It was such a huge part of my identity for a very long time, and losing the ability to focus on a story has been troubling, even a little upsetting. I finished sixty pages of one novel a week ago and felt actual relief, that this part of me wasn't gone altogether.

So, things are going. Maybe not well, but things are going.

#mentalhealth