So far so good...I guess

So far my depression and anxiety blog is doing well, I guess. I have gotten some comments about my posts and it seems like people are interested in my story. I have written about the abuse I went through as a child and those are the posts that seem to have gotten the most comments. This whole blogging thing is a great idea and I am definitely going to be keeping it up. I think I might be able to turn my depression and anxiety blog into a pretty good book eventually. I sure hope I can, because I really would love to be able to write a book and get it published. I have discovered things that I felt during my childhood and afterward that I didn't even realize I felt. I have realized that I remember more things about that time than I thought I did, and more things than I really wanted to remember. It is helping me to get things out that I have bottled up for a long time. This is definitely something I should be doing and I will definitely keep it up. This blog is also helpful because I can just get things out and be random. This blog is where I come to vent and talk about what comes up in writing my other blog. It is where I come to let off steam when I am angry or to try to come up with ideas when I am stuck. It is where I can let my mind wander and so come up with a good idea or new way of looking at things. This blog is more like a journal than the other one, it is a place where I can just write what comes to mind and let my thoughts just flow. It really is quite random and that's just the way it's going to stay.

A new blogging schedule

I have decided to try a new blogging schedule. I have decided to post to my blogs 2-3 times per week instead of just once each week. I need the writing practice, and I want to try to attract more readers to my blogs. If I blog more often, I should be able to attract more readers. I have a lot to say and want to be able to get it all out. I want to be able to share all these things with people in the blogosphere who are like me so maybe I can help them and just to let them know they are not alone just as there are blogs I read that let me know that I am not alone. I am very serious about this writing and blogging thing and I want to do everything I can to make sure it works out. I have been reading up on blogging and have found lots of information to help me have good blogs and keep them up. Some books I have read are:

• The Rough Guide to Blogging by Jonathan Yang
• The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging by the editors of the Huffington Post with an Introduction by Arianna Huffington
• Clear Blogging: How People Blogging are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Web Page & Blog Sixth Edition by Paul McFredries

• Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog: The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood

There is a lot of good information in these books about building and maintaining blogs, increasing traffic, commenting, and more. There are also a lot of good websites and blogs that are discussed in these books. I am finding them very helpful in developing both this blog and my anxiety and depression blog. I will be adding some of the websites and blogs to the blogrolls on both of my blogs, for future reference and for visitors to link to those websites if they want.

Intrusive thoughts

I wish I knew why I had intrusive thoughts of scary, horrible, bad, uncomfortable things that nobody would want to think about all the time. Out of nowhere I will think of things in my life that were scary, painful, humiliating, and awful and just be unable to get these negative and intrusive thoughts out of my head. Why!?!?!? I just dredge up every thought that I would rather forget and ruminate on them without being able to stop myself from doing it! I hate it! I just wish I could stop doing it!!! I just don't know how to deal with these negative thoughts and images. It is part of having anxiety and depression, my brain does these things because those conditions alter the way it works. I don't want to have anxiety and depression anymore, they make life so difficult and I can't handle it anymore. I hope this dialectical behavioral therapy I am starting soon can help me get past these conditions. I know I have to be willing to do the work in this therapy, it will be more intense than my individual therapy and it will be a group therapy as well, which will give me people to talk to and more support during this difficult time in my life. I know my individual therapist has given me things to do outside of therapy but I haven't always done them. I should really try these things, they might help. I just wish I could supplement the therapy with medication, but I can't take my medication right now, I have too much anxiety about it to be able to do it. I hope this new therapy will help, because I am so tired of my anxiety and depression and the way they cause me to react to things. I am over being sad, scared, lonely, and stuck in this horrible dark place that depression and anxiety keeps me in. I guess I just have to be open to the therapy and willing to try to get better. I just have to be willing to work on the homework and the things we work on in the therapy sessions, and really give the therapy a chance. Because I can't keep living the way I am now, constantly afraid to actually have a life, because something bad might happen, and just hiding from life itself because I am depressed, afraid, and unable to cope with my emotions and my responses to everyday life. Writing is extremely helpful in coping with depression and anxiety, it is quite therapeutic and it just helps me get my thoughts together and express them in a way that makes sense. It allows me to figure out the things behind my feelings and reactions so I can make more sense of them. It is also just a good release for my feelings, it is good to just get things out of my system. Now most therapists I have had have suggested that I do relaxation tapes or CDs, or just practice relaxation techniques to help me deal with my feelings. I have done relaxaton tapes or CDs and they are helpful, but I don't do them regularly. If I practiced relaxation everyday, how much more helpful would it be than doing it every once in a while. If I did half of the things therapists have suggested to me to help cope with my feelings, how much better would I be doing? Well I am going to start doing relaxation everyday and see how much it helps. Once that becomes a habit, I am going to start journaling, and once that is a habit, then I will start reading affirmations everyday, and so on, until I have adopted some of the suggestions my therapists have given me over the years. My current individual therapist has asked me to keep track of my anxiety and depression in a notebook, making a note of the date, time of day, intensity, whether it was anxiety, depression, or both, what strategy I used to get through it, and the intensity after I used the strategy, so we can see if there are any patterns to my anxiety. I will continue to do that as long as she wants me to. She also wants me to do relaxation after I have used whichever strategy to get through the anxiety/depression at that time to see if I can calm down further. I will be trying that also. I have just decided that I have to give things a chance to actually help me before pushing them aside and saying that they don't help. I have to do whatever I can to get through this depression and anxiety and get to a healthier place again. I have to stop letting the anxiety and depresson win. I can't keep letting the anxiety and depression run my life, I have to take back control of my life again. And of course I have to keep on writing, it is one of the most therapeutic, helpful things I can do for myself.

Trying something new

I am trying something new. I was going to try to write a book about my experiences with depression and anxiety and what I have done to try to cope with them and get through them. I then decided I would start it off as a blog to see if there's actually any interest in the topic before I take on the larger task of writing the book. I am doing the depression and anxiety writing in a blog separate from this one. It is hard to know what to write in my blog, how to arrange it and where to start in my dealings with depression and anxiety. I want to end up writing a book that is both my life story as well as a book that can help others with depression and anxiety to deal with them. It is very hard to do this but I am determined to do it. That is why I decided to start off with a blog before attempting a book, because I can just get the information written down and then later pull it into a book form. I can decide how I want to organize the book by seeing how the information comes together in the blog. I can also see what comments I get and see what people think about my topic. I plan on posting to that blog once a week and then to this one once a week on a different day. This will continue to be a more random blog about whatever kind of comes to mind, and I also might post about things that come up during the writing of that other blog. I hope I can do this.

Testing mobile blogging. Hope this works.

I was just trying to test out my mail to Blogger address. Let's see how this turns out.

If it ain't one thing it's another

I was trying to move and then I couldn't get the place without a cosigner and no one could cosign for me. I can't move without a cosigner and I don't know who I can get to cosign for me. Maybe if I get my credit fixed up then I would be able to get an apartment without a cosigner, but there's nothing I can do about my short rental history if no landlord will rent to me because my rental history is short. I can only repair my credit and get a job so I have enough income for a landlord to rent an apartment to me without a cosigner. I was so excited because I was getting an apartment, but now it's not going to happen for a long time. I hope I can get another apartment like the one I was going to get. It was so nice and it was a one bedroom loft, which I really liked. I hope I can find a way to move out relatively soon, because I am completely fed up with the place I live in now. I am so ready to move and so over living where I live now. Oh well. I'll think of something and hopefully I won't have to wait a whole year to move.