Taking Stock

So obviously I am not the same as I was a few weeks ago. I am sleeping more. I seem to be losing weight - at least, my belt went up a hole today. I want to withdraw from the world and be solitary and silent. I am in a different mode or mood.

This rising and falling, expansion and contraction, seems like something natural to me, something like the seasons. The days are always either getting shorter or getting longer, and I am similarly never quite the same. The key is managing and moderating it so it doesn't become so extreme as to be disabling.

I feel like I should draw a Venn diagram of my selves, to identify what is in the section where all the circles overlap, because that is the core of me, and those are the things I can trust.

I went into town today. I had to buy some catfood and to get some cash to pay a friend for something. They said there was no urgency for the money, but I don't like to owe my friends, and I don't want them to know how close to the line I am operating at the moment. If I haven't yet learned how to stop myself spending excessively when I am in an episode of elevated mood that is my problem and I must deal with the consequences. I now have 81p in my bank account until Wednesday when my DLA comes through, and I have worked out I must spend less than £10 of that on food for the next week.

Then I took my camera for a walk. I live in a quiet village and it suits me very well, but it is towns that excite me visually. I like the way that once I start taking photographs I begin to see the world differently, that patterns and perspectives and details I might not normally notice catch my attention. Except that then, between one photograph and another, I suddenly forgot how to use the camera. I thought it had broken, that some important part had fallen off it, and I started to retrace my steps, scanning the ground. I haven't had a brain stutter as bad as that for a while, and even though I did eventually figure it out again I am still now plagued by the sense that the camera did change, that it worked differently before. It makes me feel suspicious. But then my mind generally seems to be rather busy playing tricks on me at the moment, turning a leaf on the road into a large, bright green, exotic bird. Or the shadows a tree casts into an enormous piece of farm machinery bearing down on me. And creating countless little creatures in my peripheral vision that scurry away when I turn to look at them.

But this is where I am right now. I can't engage with arguments, I can't get involved with the plans I was making for the future, I can't read books, but it will change again eventually, those desires and abilities will come back. For now I sleep and make pictures and I have signed up for a free trial of Lovefilm so I can watch stuff.