Gnomograms Transmissions from the server garden

I have to tell you about my new favorite place on the Interwebs: reddit.com. People post links, interesting stories, questions, etc., and you can comment on all of the above. You accrue “karma” based on links and comments you post. It sounds silly, but it keeps me amused when my workload is light. Anyway, I posted a picture of the robot bag, and someone contacted me asking me to make bags for her. I’m very excited. The Internet is a cool place.

I’ve started on my next quilt, too. It’s for Liam, Josh’s little brother (the 2 year old), made at the request of Josh’s mom. I’m also very excited about it. I found the most perfect precut batch of batiks in the perfect colors (greens, browns, tans, and a few blues). Since it’s precut in strips of 2.5″, it saves me a lot of time–I have to cut about 300 2.5″x4.5″ rectangles. It’s going to be the biggest quilt I’ve made so far (a queen). Anyway, I think it’s going to turn out very nice.

Now for an abrupt change in subject.

I’m embarking on a bit of a mental health journey, you might say. I’ve mentioned on here numerous times that I have issues with my moods, anxiety, and depression. I don’t need to rehash it all again. By society’s way of thinking, these issues are not something you talk about in public, but you know what? Screw that. I’m going to talk about it. You can stop reading now if you don’t want to hear (read) about it.

I’ve been off and on anti-depressants for the past 5 years or so. For the past year, I’ve been on a combination of a mood stabilizer and an anti-depressant. Medication has always worked really well for me, even with the wonky side effects that come with these types of drugs. They never changed my personality or anything like that. They just leveled out my moods so that I wouldn’t overreact in the extreme to certain triggers. They helped me get back to where I could function on a daily basis. I’m not exaggerating here–you can ask Josh sometime if you don’t believe how bad it got from time to time.

Anyway, I made the decision recently be weaned off the medication.

The decision was twofold. One, Josh and I would like to start a family (!) in the next year or so (pick your jaws up off the floor, please). I want to be med-free when I’m pregnant. Two, I read somewhere that therapy can rewire your brain just as well as medication can. That intrigued me. I wish I could find the article about it. I’m also scared of how my body will react when I stop taking the meds, and I want to have some sort of support mechanism in place in case things get bad again. So I decided I wanted to try therapy in place of medication. Ok, I guess that was a threefold decision, but whatever.

I had my first meeting with my therapist yesterday. It was a little weird, considering I’m going through a “good” phase at the moment where I don’t feel crazy or in need of help. So I pretty much had to talk about how I used to feel when things were bad. The therapist just basically asked me a lot of questions about myself. I guess that’s standard for a first visit. I brought up the things I want to work on (moods, anxiety), and she tried to get an idea of how to help me.

I go back in two weeks, and we’ll see how things go from there. I hope it helps. It would be nice if I never have to go back on meds again. I hope things don’t go downhill after I stop taking them–I’m really worried about this. But the possibility of permanently feeling good is outweighing that worry. I want to work really hard on making myself a better me.

So here goes…