Fencing Bear at Prayer

OMG, it's been a whole week since I last posted! I have no idea where the time has gone. Okay, so I've made it through, let's see, several more levels in Angry Birds . And, okay, there were those episodes of Castle that we just had to watch (which you will too if you follow the link because it will open the trailers--oooh, Nathan Fillion!). And there have been a number of long phone calls with my family, thanks to the ongoing crisis we're in. But surely there should have been time to post something, anything, in the seven days since I last wrote. But, no. I spent Sunday morning commenting on my students' blog posts about animals and Sunday afternoon (after church and grocery shopping) marking papers for my course in EuroCiv. Monday morning, there was the EuroCiv staff meeting to prepare for, Monday afternoon I had to take notes for Tuesday morning's class on the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu before going to a department meeting, by which time it ...

Waking up this morning next to my husband. Inventing a new ball game to play with the Dragon Baby. The sermon our rector Peter preached this morning about the necessity for hermeneutics in reading scripture. Pumpkin pie. Michael Card's cover of " Let All Things Now Living ." My friend Phil's modern rapier , which he brought to the tournament at our club this afternoon and let me hold. Wearing my new " Brown" lame for the competition. Winning 4 out of 5 of my pool bouts. (Phil beat me.) Having so many friends rooting for me in my D-E. Talking ankle boots and shoes with my best girlfriends. Finding the clothes folded when I got home. (Thanks, love!) Watching Castle: Vampire Weekend with my husband and son.

Argh! I knew it, it was too good to be true. Optimists may have it better in terms of how they feel about life, the universe and their place in relation to everything, but pessimists are actually more accurate about how things stand. Sigh. No wonder I thought that I was doing so well on that " how optimistic are you? " quiz: pessimists, according to Seligman, tend to have a more realistic picture of their ability to control things, likewise to have a better memory about their failures and successes. So, am I right about all of the things that I've been feeling so down about--my prospects for promotion, publishing something people will actually want to read, making a difference in my field/profession--or am I just telling myself the wrong story? Perhaps more important: does it matter?

I have no idea what happened other than that I've been continuing to read Martin Seligman's book on learned optimism , but I haven't felt depressed in days. It's like a miracle, truly. Maybe it is just a mood. But maybe, just maybe it's actually a real change. For days now, I've been willing to believe that maybe all those stories that I used to tell myself about how everything that went wrong was my fault were, well, stories and that I don't need to believe them anymore, and it is like a cloud has lifted off of my life that I wasn't even aware was there. I'm not saying this well, but maybe that is to be expected when a whole new world opens out in front of one. I feel so happy. So light. So able to get things done. I even wrote the first of those letters of reference today. And I had a great conversation with one of my students about how to answer that video . And I have learned that, indeed, reading my blog has been of help to one of my f...

Maybe it's the sunshine. Maybe it's being more or less on schedule with my reading for class this upcoming week. Maybe it's having my keyboard clean and my laptop's operating system reinstalled so that I don't get the Spinning Beachball of Death every time I start trying to type.* Maybe it's sitting here on the porch with my husband watching the Dragon Baby frolicking in the leaves. Or maybe it's reading more in Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (New York, 1998), but I really am feeling better. More optimistic, even. Not so much yesterday when I started reading Seligman's book. I took his "are you depressed?" quiz and nearly maxed out (40 points out of 60, with over 24 points being in the danger zone for "severely depressed"). Apparently, I should be seeking professional help now. Like right now. As in yesterday. It's amazing I haven't killed myself. Or maybe I jus...