Apology & Status Report

Hello all. I have been ensnared in a deep depression for the better part of a month, combined with nursing my wife, who is recouping from knee surgery. The NaNoWriMo project is stuck at Chapter 5 for the moment. It is now just a BlogNovel, having missed the deadline for completion and completeness by a wide margin. And so it goes.

Depression is an insidious disease. I experience several different kinds of depression. I have a cyclical depression which runs in a seven year cycle, as well as hints of bipolar proclivities which fortunately don't usually run to intolerable extremes. I also have been clawing past the post-surgical depression suffered by most open-heart surgery survivors for the last three years (while the less fortunate ones who fail to survive may suffer depression, I can't prove it, you know) ... then there's seasonal affective disorder. AKA S.A.D. (an acronym I loathe) which occurs every year about this time to me and will be with me until May or June. Add the stress of writing a novel and some other personal crap and voila! -- we have lift off.

So, I sincerely apologize to you for my silence. It is how I cope. I can say the worst has probably passed by and I will begin posting in a more frequent manner, although no where near as often as before. Things just aren't that interesting right now.

Get out there and finish up your holiday preparations. Spend the time with your family, loved ones, coworkers and cohorts. It's all good -- even the nightmare family holiday meals have their own charm if you're half in the bag. Happy Chanukah, a joyous Kwanzaa, a marvelous winter solstice, my Wiccan sisters, and Merry Christmas to the Christians. May the season bring you joy and peace. Forget not the young men and women in Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, Kosovo and wherever else they have been posted by the megalomaniacal hawks of this and the previous administrations. For many, it is their first time away from home. It is very cold and lonely where most of them are serving this year -- they deserve your warmest thoughts and prayers, even if, like me, you believe they have been sent on a fool's errand.