Vignette: Bang! Slump

I was doing great today.

My blog post on "The Petrie Multiplier" has been receiving thousands of hits and been tweeted and retweeted like crazy.   This is great because it's important, and people like it.

I was very happy.

I forgot to take my daughter to her piano lesson.  The piano teacher was not very gracious when I rang up to apologise.

Bang!

Since then I've been in a slump and miserable.

That's all.

Vignette: I must be doing ok

Today I surfed over to Google Scholar and discovered my h-index had increased by one.

If you don't know what h-index is, all that matters is that it's a measure of citations of an academic, and like logarithms, it increases slowly.  So a single increment in your h-index is fairly rare.  But if you know me, you know I can obsess over citations - both mine and other people's.

I was really happy it clicked up by one.  Which is normal.  But the last couple of times it has I felt nothing, just as I did when I had a major paper accepted.

So the fact that I was happy about my h-index going up suggests I must be doing ok.

These ring true to me [link]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/comics-that-capture-the-frustrations-of-depression

A collection of comics that capture the sense of depression from the inside. For me, they ring very true — I am worried of how many of these I recognize in myself.

Hello Again

I've been a long time gone from Depressed Academics.

First I went on holiday.  Then when I came back I was starting to work full time again, and for a couple of weeks that was not too busymaking, but with term about to start again I am starting to get busier.

Also we've been having a lot of work done on remodelling our house - which is of course a good thing (and yes, we are very lucky to have a nice house and be able to remodel it.)   But it is surprisingly stressful even though so far everything has gone more smoothly than we could reasonably have expected.

So those are some of the reasons I've been away.

So hello again.

The last few days I've been feeling low.

It feels like a combination of a few things.

I travelled the last couple of days to give a talk, which in itself was a good thing, but as I get older I enjoy travelling less.  I used to hate flying and be really scared of it.  Now I am not so much, but I miss the family dreadfully and don't want to be away from them.   I'm going away again on Sunday for a week, so the two together has made me feel bad - or at least it has let me feel miserable, since I guess it's myself making me feel bad.

I also have been feeling that I have not been doing as good a job as I should on my big project (recomputation.org).  In fact I think this is objectively true, but that does not mean it should make me feel miserable.

And being so busy - partly because I now work full time - makes it harder to catch up and/or focus on one thing I need to focus on.

All of this means the last few days, maybe a week, I've been feeling miserable and my default state is negative.  If I get in the flow - meaning maybe being in the middle of giving a talk, or concentrating on something - then I am fine.  When I stop I go back to feeling bad.

I've been telling myself I want to kill myself over and over again, and I've forgotten how to do my SMBC trick.  I'm too lazy even to put the links in to my earlier posts on those topics.  (But summary: no, I don't want to kill myself.)

Hello again.

Academia with anxiety disorder

The amazing «The Professor Is In» just linked this:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/07/living_with_anxiety_and_panic_attacks_academia_needs_to_accommodate_mental.html
A Slate article on living and working with anxiety disorder in academia.

Vignette: frozen grin anxiety

Last weekend I had an anxiety attack. It came out of the blue and struck like a hammer blow.

We'd already gone to bed, when suddenly I start imagining that S doesn't want to as much as touch me. This happens a lot when I crash out. So I nudge away, and then my emotions just go into free fall. Horrified with myself and the audacity of daring to stay in the same bed as S, I sneak out. I sit down on the floor, trying to collect myself. I eat a banana because I realize, intellectually, that this might all just be blood sugar. And I take care of putting more clothes in our hampers, so it's all ready for the laundry early next morning.

Through all of this, I feel a fuzzy, ill-defined utter terror. I feel a deep and consuming despair. It gets strong enough that I can feel my face contracting into a grinning rictus of horror. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so bad.

I sit there for quite some time. 10 minutes maybe. Maybe 15. Then suddenly, as if a light switch was flipped, my face relaxes, my whole body relaxes, and I am able to move again. I go back to bed, sit on the edge. S stirs, asks me how I am.

And I explode into hulking sobs. It takes me several minutes to even get any words out.

This one was scary.

On my facebook today

Nothing is appealing.
Nothing is appetizing.
Nothing is attractive.
Nothing I do works.
Nothing I do is a good idea.
Interacting with colleagues is terrifying.
Interacting with cashiers is terrifying.
Other people are terrifying.