I'm alive

After many, many months of ignoring my blog, I finally opened the email account associated with it and found a message from a long time reader who was checking up on me. It was a nice surprise to have someone inquire as to how I've been doing. 

I have been giving strong consideration to returning to blogging, which is why I even checked my email account to begin with. I'm just not sure if I should start a new blog or just continue to keep this one alive, since The Mass Defective has been my nickname since my daughter was little.

In terms of where I stand with my illnesses, nothing much has changed. Bipolar, anxiety and panic attacks are something I struggle with on a daily basis, particularly the panic attacks, which have gotten increasingly worse. After months of cycling between mania & hypomania, with bouts of depression thrown in for good measure, I'm fighting the deepening depression that always seems to come in the fall. Still haven't been able to pinpoint why my mood bottoms out at this time every year, but I'm doing all I can to avoid another hospital stay.

As far as other things going on in my life, my daughter graduated college with honors earlier this year and has already published her first novel. I'm so incredibly proud of her for chasing her dream. Sales have been slow, but there's interest and with the help of a PR firm she's hired, hopefully there will be even more interest. I'm currently trying to read her book, but it's not of a genre I typically read, so it's slow going for me. She also wants me to proofread it as I go along because she thinks she might have submitted the wrong file to have the paperback published. Luckily there aren't that many copies of it out there yet, since most of the sales have been for e-books, so once I get done and hand her the corrections, she can take a look at it, fix the necessary problems and have more copies printed.

As for me, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Somehow, I'm not sure I'll ever know the answer.