In my “What’s Next?” list, I said that one of my targets would be to get off the anti-depressants, and a commenter said that should be first thing on the list.

In some ways I agree, although it’s not strictly realistic. I saw my GP last week, and discussed my dislike (OK, utter loathing) of taking these pills. But at the same time even I have to acknowledge that they’ve done me some good.

Anyway, the GP recommends staying on them for another 3-4 months, which is what I’ll do. It takes me over the hump of the Festering Season, and into 2011. After that, well, see how it goes.

That seems like the best plan for now, anyway.

So, following on from how (badly) I’ve done in 2009/10, what’re the plans for 2010/11 ?

Honestly, I don’t really know.  I guess the main points can be brought down to :

• Write more
• Take more photos
• Do more websites
• Get more business
• Pay stuff off
• Get off the antidepressants

Other than that, more of my activity will be down to altering life, seeing friends, travelling, doing other odds and sods along the way.

I don’t know what the run-up to 40 will bring, but right now the thing that I do want to do is not stress about it over the next year.

We’ll see.

Roughly this time last month, life came to a bit of a crunch point.  I haven’t written much about it so far – and won’t write much more about it after this – but a number of things bubbled up at the same time, and I feel it’s worth adding in some thoughts with a bit of hindsight etc.  I’m not going to be going into the whys and wherefores of any of it.

Basically, I had a bit of a breakdown. Going home on the Thursday night plunged me into a huge dollop of depression, which isn’t exactly great at the best of times. I thought I could get over it, that it was a “bad day” thing, but the next day was actually worse, to the extent that I simply couldn’t face going home for the weekend. It was a real physical reaction, that I just couldn’t do it. So instead I went away for the weekend- went back to the house, sorted things there, got some clothes, and left again. I didn’t even wait for Herself to come home- I sent her a text message to let her know what I was doing.

I’m not proud of myself for that, not even slightly. It was completely unfair, unreasonable, and downright shitty. There are no excuses, no glossing over it – it was an utterly unutterably crappy thing to do to anyone, let alone a partner of five years, a friend of twenty years.

What it was, though, was a way to survive. If I’d stayed there for the weekend, I don’t honestly know what would’ve happened, or where I’d have ended up. Some people have called what I did cowardly – and fair enough, maybe it was. I can’t say I was honestly in my right mind. But at that point, where you physically and mentally can’t face going back somewhere, I don’t think “being in one’s right mind” is ever going to happen.

Again, I’m not proud of what I did. It had to happen, but I should’ve/could’ve done it one hell of a lot better.

So a lot’s changed since then, and I’m working on all the necessary changes. I don’t know how they’ll work out, I don’t know how any of it will work out. But I’m not going to put myself in that situation again if I can possibly help it.

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As well as cutting the number of links in the Blogroll yesterday, I’m also in the process of cutting out a number of the domain names I own. In all cases I’ve had plans or ideas for them, but they’ve not been done, so I’m going to cut down on the outstanding list.

It may be that in time to come I regret this, but for the most part I’ve had those domains long enough that I really should’ve done something with them if I planned to. I’m keeping some – the ones where I’ve really got ideas – but a goodly number are going to fall by the wayside.

In some ways it annoys me that I’m giving up on these. In others, well, it seems like common sense to do so. I think that reducing the number of things on my “want to do/try” list might actually help me get the ones done that remain on the list once this purging process is over and done with.

Of course it might not, too.  We’ll see.

Having been on these bloody anti-depressants for a few months now (since 15th April, it turns out – so five months already) it was time today to go and see the GP for a review.

For me, while they’ve done some good, the Citalopram dosage I’m currently on hasn’t been enough – I still have more bad days than good, and do get locked in to depression for periods of time.

So I’ve now ended up getting the dosage doubled. According to the GP, there “shouldn’t” be any extra side-effects just for upping the dosage – which was worthy of a raised eyebrow, needless to say – but we’ll see what happens.

Yet again it’s that time of the year where I really notice the nights drawing in.

A seemingly short while ago, there was light in the sky ’til 10pm or so, and the chickens didn’t get put away ’til then.

Tonight they were in their coop and all locked up by half eight. Soon it’ll be seven, six, and they’ll be away before I’m even back from work.

Winter’s coming.