I’m sitting here surrounded by books and papers, needing to do homework, but wanting to postpone it for a while.  I’m not sure why, except that I’m still feeling a tad overwhelmed.  Maybe it’s because it’s only the end of the second week of school and I’m already swamped.  Avoidance is my way of dealing with it – not a good thing, really.  I’ll get to my homework in a bit.  I’m just going to clear my head a bit by whining in my blog about how much I have to do.

I feel a certain amount of loss, too.  I had a lot of free time this summer, a lot of supposedly non-productive time.  I was able to devote a lot of time to blogging and keeping up with my cyber-friends.  Now, however, I feel like I’m losing touch with everyone.  The perils of trying to live the stereotypical “productive life,” I guess.  It’s not just my cyber-friends – I have been remiss in keeping in touch with my IRL friends as well.  I used to have coffee with Julie at least two or three times a week.  I haven’t had coffee with her since Labor Day.  I might be able to hook up with her today, assuming that I get enough homework done to feel like I can afford the time.  No, I think I’ll make the time.  I need to keep up with friends – that’s important for my mental health, too.

Speaking of mental health, aside from the pangs of panic arising from my schedule, I’m still feeling pretty good.  Not too good, so it’s not mania, but generally I feel “normal.”  As I’ve written before, one of the many problems with being bipolar is that you’re always waiting for the next episode, either up or down.  “Normal” people have ups and downs all of the time and can just accept them as a part of life.  A person with bipolar is always on alert for the mental illness rollercoaster to start up again.

Well, I’d better get back to the pile of books.  I’m also starting on the web page for my friend, Jane.  There is a lot of information she still needs to get to me, but I can start on the formatting.  And then there’s the PowerPoint presentation I need to do for Norton for his recital.  <sigh>  Okay, getting overwhelmed again.  I just need to break it down into manageable steps and take it one step at a time.  That’s doable – I love making lists.

I want to also thank everyone for continuing to visit my blog even now that I’m not posting every day.  Maybe I’ll get enough done today that tomorrow’s blog will be a little more thoughtful and less whiney.

There are some things I should remember about this time in my life.  It was just a couple of months ago that I was certain that I had no future, that I was worthless, that I was damaged goods that would never amount to anything.  Now I’m not as certain of that.  In fact, I’m feeling pretty positive about the place I am now.  It’s kind of scary, this positive feeling.  In the past, it’s been a fleeting feeling, something that didn’t last past the start of the next depressive episode.  As soon as I started feeling a little down, I would plummet into a sea of self-recrimination for all the failures in my life, real and perceived.  So I want to keep writing about the “good times” so maybe I can keep the “bad times” from being so bad.

First there are my friends, old and new, including my cyber friends.  I started blogging on MySpace – in fact I still mirror my blog there since I have friends (and mysterious others) who like to read it there.  Then I found Bravenet when I was looking for a hit counter and guestbook for my website.  I added the blog component on a whim, found a whole community of fellow bloggers and made some really good friends (and some more mysterious others) who read my blog and comment, giving me some great support and encouragement and things to think about.

My IRL friends have really stuck by me through my ups and downs, too.  There are times I couldn’t understand why they would like me at all – I sure didn’t like myself.  They would just patiently wait until the bad times would end, all the time providing support and guidance and love.  When the depression would pass, they were still there with laughter and joy and fellowship.  I’ve reconnected with a few really old friends from my high school years who have given me some insight into why that was such a difficult time.  Now I’ve met new people here at the college who also seem to like me, so maybe, just maybe, I’m actually a pretty likable person. 

I also need to remember my experiences here at the college with classes and now with work.  During each semester last year I went though really dark times and had to spend some time in the hospital, yet I was able to maintain my grades.  I feel that I was basically liked by my professors and fellow students as well, further refuting my own self-image.  With this new job, I’m proving to myself that I am indeed a quick study, and feel pretty confident that I can handle anything they throw at me.  Well, almost anything, anyway.  The work I’m doing as a student is the kind of work I’d like to continue to do when I get out of college.  I feel unbelievably fortunate to have found this position.

These are all things I need to remember when I’m feeling lost and alone and hopeless.  These are not flukes, or mistakes on other people’s part.  I am here in this place because I have good qualities that other people see.  I have skills and abilities that other people value.  My life is not wasted if for no other reason that I’ve been able to connect with some pretty wonderful people.  I may not have become a counselor, but I feel that I’ve been able to help a few other people in some small way by offering my own encouragement and support and love to them.  By setting these things down on “paper,” I have a better chance to remember them.  And if I don’t, I have some incredible friends who will remind me if I only listen.

I think I’ve come to term with my geek-dom.  It took a lot of years and some painful experiences, but now that I’m middle-aged, I’ve decided that being a geek isn’t all that bad.  I have a few things to thank for that.  Microsoft is one of them, being successfully started by one of the geekiest of geeks.  The Geek Squad is another.  With the dawning of the computer age, being a geek became somehow cooler than it was when I was growing up.

I started thinking about my status as a geek when I was contacted about my 30^th high school reunion.  I don’t have a lot of fond memories of high school, or middle school or elementary school for that matter.  It wasn’t so much that I was bullied, but that I was basically ignored.  I wasn’t thin or pretty or athletic or outgoing or anything that was a valuable commodity when seeking popularity.  I was a geek during a time when that was not a cool thing to be.  I had a small group of friends and when I wasn’t around them, I became invisible.  I can remember one class where the only thing I said inside the room the entire year was “Here” when the teacher called attendance.

It’s not like there weren’t other geeks in the school – there were the usual band geeks, theatre geeks, chorus geeks, and ROTC geeks.  I didn’t fit in with any of those groups.  I was in band my first year of high school, but dropped out because of not fitting in.  I was in police explorers by then and there I was not ignored or made to feel geeky, maybe because there were plenty of fellow geeks as members.  I was reminded by a police explorer friend recently that not all explorers were geeks.  But they were all accepting of geeks – that’s what was important.

College was no different, really.  It wasn’t until I started working in the mental health field that I found a place where there weren’t any real cliques.  You were evaluated differently there and I was able to find a niche where my knowledge and skills were valued.  When we started using more and more computers, I really found my place in the sun – I was more skilled then most in using them to their fullest.  I was still the penultimate geek, but that became a good thing.

Eventually, even my value as a geek was outweighed by my mental illness and I was fired from the mental health center where I had worked for 19 years – among other reasons, they said that they “could no longer accommodate [my] psychiatric disability.”  Yes, there is a certain undeniable irony there, especially when it was stated that some staff were “scared” of me.  So I lost my safe niche.  I also lost my house to foreclosure as a result.  But on the upside, I was able to receive Social Security Disability benefits, probably due to that ironic statement. Since the car accident I had a year later meant that I couldn’t live alone for a while anyway, losing my house wasn’t as traumatic as it could have been.

Now I’m back in school.  Since I’m so much older than the typical college student, I don’t expect to fit in and it doesn’t bother me when I’m ignored.  In fact, I think I prefer being ignored.  I’m not alone in being older – this is a small community college and there are quite a few older students – so the younger students are used to us “old-timers” in the classroom.  The more mature college age students actually are quite friendly.  And I’m a computer science major – the home of the geeks, where being a geek is a badge of honor.  So, I say to my fellow geeks – rise up and be proud.  The Age of the Geek is just beginning!  (And if we get snubbed, we can always give them a virus. *grin*)

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re in over your head?  It’s not a pleasant feeling.  In fact it’s a bit scary, really.  It has occurred to me that I’m in over my head with all of the activity that I’m committed myself to this semester.  I could list them all here to elicit some sympathy, but it’s really too depressing to think about.  When I see it all listed in black and white, so to speak, I start feeling overwhelmed.  Perhaps part of the problem is that I had an entire summer of doing nothing and now my days are positively bursting with activity.  That implies that I’ll get used to it.  I hope that’s the case.

One of my commitments is particularly fear-inducing.  I’ve agreed to design a website for a friend, Jane – not to be confused with my boss, Jane.  In addition to being vocal professor at Stetson University, she’s also a free-lance musician – a mezzo-soprano, to be exact – that performs all over the state in operas, oratorios, cantatas, etc.  Right now, she can only offer to send her information through the mail, so she wants a website she can refer potential “employers” to.  This is pretty important to her.  And I’m pretty scared that I’m going to mess it up somehow.

I guess at least part of my fear is just my lack of confidence in my own abilities.  I’m not exactly known for my ego.  Self-doubt is a way of life for me.  But I think the biggest part of my fear is that, in failing her, I’ll also be failing myself.  What if web design, while being something I love doing, is something that I’m absolutely dreadful at?  All of this time and energy spent going to college to learn web design would be wasted.  I suppose that is really just another example of my self-doubt.  But how will I know if I’m any good?  She’s my friend.  I think she would say that the site I do for her is good even if it’s awful.

So, how do I combat these waves of self-doubt?  Maybe one way is to listen to what other people have to say.  That’s one of the things that Ray says I don’t do enough of.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I listen, but it’s like the good things people way are whispers to me and the bad things come through like reverberating shouts.  I don’t get that many bad things said about me, though.  I’m not sure how I can reconcile that with all the bad things I think about myself.  That will require some thought.

In the meantime, I suppose that I need to get better organized, so I don’t feel so overwhelmed by everything I have to do each week.  Week Two, at least, is only four days long, due to Labor Day.  Unfortunately, I’ve basically filled the day already with a meeting with Jane about her website, a workout at the gym, coffee with Julie and laundry.  That means that I need to stop writing this blog and get back to homework.  I just want to thank everyone again for all the support and nice things you say, most especially Jaime who is unfailing in positive comments to my drivel.  Thanks, friend!

I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve posted a blog.  Time has been a premium for me lately – I just don’t seem to have enough of it.  I think next week will be a little better.  At least I hope it will be better.  This week kicked my butt.

It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed it, though.  Work is still great.  My main job at this point is learning, but I’ve been able to help some people with their faculty web pages.  It’s not much, but it’s a start.  They’ve told me about some of the things I will be doing down the line and I really hope that I’ll be able to handle them.  Oh, the coolest thing?  I have an email address at the college just like the faculty, one with edu at the end!  And I have my own faculty page, too!  Pretty good for a student employee, huh?

Sometimes I forget that I’m going to the college to take classes and not just to work, but my classes so far are going pretty well.  It’s not like I’ve had much to do in terms of homework, but I gauge how much I’ll like the class more on the professor than the content.  I’ve been lucky this term – all of my professors seem really nice with a good sense of humor.  That’s important, especially when the class seems like it could be dull.

One of those classes is the A Hardware class – that could be as dull as dust with the wrong teacher.  The course is geared toward people who want to take the A Certification exams.  I have no real desire to take this exam since I’m not going into the real hardcore computer science.  Fortunately, the professor understands that some of the people are like me and just want to learn more about how the inside of the computer works.  The downside is that I have to buy a computer repair toolkit and I don’t have the funds to do so until after the 10^th.  I can only hope that we don’t do anything that needs it until after that point.

Friday, I had my first class in Web Design.  I think that’s going to be my favorite class.  The professor is from some Asian country and stands about 4 foot nothing.  She’s very, very laid back, but warns us that she is going to seem harsh when she critiques our pages.  Since I want to design the best pages I can, I’m all in favor of being harshly critiqued.  She showed us some web pages that she considers good and they were great websites – something I would like my pages to look like.  If she can help me do that, I’ll be all in favor of it!

I guess I need to go now and do something productive.  I would like to just vegetate today, but I have too much to do.  On one hand it’s good that I have Monday off (Labor Day), but that means I have to work more hours during the week if I want to get my 20 hours in.  So if I want to still keep up with my class work, I need to get a little ahead.  Besides that, I have to do some serious practicing on the piano – I haven’t kept up with that very well.  I’m going to take my laptop more often for those times when I’m waiting for classes so maybe I can keep up better with my blog.  I really miss reading what my cyber friends have written.

Today was an interesting day at work – I didn’t do any.  Work that is.  My boss, Jane, was out because of a sick bunny (don’t ask).  Her boss, Bob, was going to get me set up on that work station they assigned me, but the CPU was still missing.  He “expedited” the installation of the CPU, but I still spent almost 3 hours just sitting watching the guy set up the CPU.  They also gave me a new monitor that’s a 19” flat screen, so I guess I’m considered a very important geek.

I’ve spent some time looking around the college website.  Basically, it sucks.  Well, it might not be that bad, but it’s pretty bad.  There are a lot of links on it that don’t work, largely because the college went through two name changes in the past year.  Again, don’t ask – it’s not a pretty story.  It just demonstrates the ludicrousness of the administrative mind.  I imagine there will be more changes in the wind due to the name change – new logos for instance.  Do I mind any of this?  Nope.  To me, it means job security.  They are going to need a lot of help for a while.  And who is there to help them?  Me!

I still have a class to go to tonight – Computer Hardware.  I’m a little nervous about this course.  I’ve built a couple of computers from the case out, installing the motherboard, CPU, drives, things like that.  But this is really hardcore hardware stuff.  I may be in way over my head.  I guess all I can do is try to keep up as best I can.  I hope that there really is a book required – the bookstore doesn’t have one listed for this section.  I find I do better if I can read about what the professor is trying to teach.  Yeah, the books are expensive if the other sections of this course are any indication, but it’s worth it if it gets me out of the class with an A or B.

It’s time to apply for scholarships for next semester.  I’m really counting on getting one but it might not happen if my grades start dropping.  I really should be working on my essay.  That’s the worst part of the application process – the dreaded essay.  How do I convey in 1000 characters what my career and educational goals are and how I plan to reach them?  And yep, that’s characters not words.  It’s a computerized application process so there’s no hope of slipping in a few stray characters.  I’m supposed to be this good writer – why does this seem so hard?

Well, I guess I should get going.  I need to do some grocery shopping and I need to make time to practice piano.  Oh, crap.  I forgot I also need to throw in a load laundry.  I have to have some workout clothes for my session with my trainer tomorrow.  My life has suddenly become very full.  I guess that’s a good thing.  In fact, it’s probably a good thing.  I sure as hell don’t have time to be depressed!

Well, I survived my first day of work and class.  I was only at work for 3 hours but it was great.  I’m still just observing what goes on but so far it looks like it’s within my capabilities.  So far.  I’ll have my own workstation, but when we went to look at it, someone had absconded with the CPU there, leaving just the keyboard and monitor.  Apparently desktop computers are scarce in the department and someone decided that they needed one.  My boss was not a happy camper about it, so I should probably see a desktop computer at my workstation tomorrow.

This was a fairly easy class day for me.  I just had choir, a speech class, and a piano lesson.  The first several choir classes are just getting arranged into voices and getting the paperwork out of the way, then learning warm-ups and simple music just for blending.  Norton is seldom really prepared for the first class and just gives a long pep talk about college and being a young professional person and crap like that.  I’ve heard it for 8 years now – I could probably give the speech.

Speaking of speeches  , I’m not as worried about this speech class as I would have been when I was in college the first time.  It’s not my absolute favorite thing to do, but I have some experience in speaking in front of smallish groups.  Actually, I’m also a certified Toastmaster.  If you don’t know, it’s an international group that helps people learn public speaking through a program of 10 speeches you give in the Toastmaster meeting in your area.  You get critiqued and some gentle feedback from