I'm in Minneapolis with Steph and two round cats, and the sun is shining.

I flew through Saskatoon this time, for reasons that escape me but probably had to do with it being half the price of a direct flight. The flight to Saskatoon was pretty full; Sask-Mpls had somewhere under forty people (I counted), on a 32x6-seat plane.

Having no one else in your row in economy feels positively luxurious.

I've some homework to do today, and some to do in the next few days. I promised to make banana bread today as well. Mostly I'm enjoying the sunshine and the company.

LUCAS: You know, I think things are gonna be alright now, Joe.
JOE: Oh? And what makes you think that?
LUCAS: Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear.
--Empire Records

Okay well that was extremely not fun and I am gonna vote for not doing it again, as soon as I figure out what it was and how to not do it.

Three weeks? Two and a half. Whatever. I spent another week or so recovering from covid. I honestly don't know if I'm fully recovered even yet: Shortness Of Breath is still a thing. As is Tires Easily, but, well. I spent the entirety of last week and probably a little more in a depressive episode. Bit of chicken and egg there, or vicious cycle maybe. Lots of sitting on the couch not doing anything, including classwork (finished the assignment by yelling at myself a lot, and I'm not particularly happy with it but at least it's done).

Putting Myself Out There is, it turns out, a reliable depression trigger. Dating, brand-new social situations, writing submissions... and jobhunting is perhaps the worst case for this. Against my best efforts I absorbed a lot of "if you don't support yourself then no one will ever love you" messages growning up. So jobhunting is just a desperate quest for external validation with extra steps. Jobhunting while not having a job, and in a brand-new-to-me field while the economy circles the drain, is just depression-fuel icing on the depression-fuel cake.

I try the normal things and mostly they're just more difficult and less fulfilling. Got a little sun, until it started clouding and raining in the middle of the week. Staying on top of ishes / apartment-tidying was more or less a lost cause. I went out to role-playing on Saturday but that didn't shake it either. It lifted, more or less, Saturday night or Sunday, and on Sunday I went over to Noel's for a full day of boardgaming and that was actually quite good.

My depression is very clearly situational and triggered, so I keep thinking I can manage it by managing my situations. That's of course not possible, not fully. And when it hits me it knocks me out -so- hard. Once job etc is sorted I am gonna have to look into pharmaceutical intervention.

Need to take my last midterm tomorrow; been reviewing notes etc today EDIT or I could just knock it out right now, that was not too terrible /EDIT. Need to wrap up the practicum stuff as well but there's no huge rush on that. Maybe this coming week.

Bah.