In the middle of the journey of our days
   I found that I was in a darksome wood--
   The right road lost and vanished in the maze.

7/26 – 8:00 AM Report

The day started out okay. I changed the sponges in my CES device – you are supposed to change them every 2-4 weeks. It seems that two is the preferred time period, so I did.

The sponges pull out easily and the new sponges look like little communion wafers but bloom when they touch water – just like those toy capsule that would turn into dinosaurs or insects as a child.

Ah me! how hard to make it understood
   How rough that wood was, wild, and terrible:
   By the mere thought my terror is renewed.
More bitter scarce were death.

7/26 – 11:30 AM Report

I went to see my psychologist, it had been two or three weeks since we had last met. I try to see him weekly, but both he and I have items that “come up” in our schedules, so sometimes that doesn’t happen. Still, it is a pleasure to talk with him. He is an older gentleman – probably in his seventies – and it is somewhat like speaking to a grandfather – of which I know little in reality, they being distant and dying while I was yet relatively young.

We don’t usually solve any of my problems, but we do process them – and this in itself is cathartic.

After this I stopped at St. Mary’s and SBRM’s thrift stores and picked up some books. I haven’t been buying books for a while, I have no room to store them. But most of these were books I give away – and those I keep in boxes, so they are okay (and they cost too much to buy outright as often as I give them away, so I have to take advantage when I see them). I also picked up a few interesting volumes, the exact titles of which I cannot recall – but fairly few compared to my usual haul.

Scarce know I how I entered on that ground,
  So deeply, at the moment when I passed
  From the right way, was I in slumber drowned.

7/26 – 4:00 PM Report

I’m thankful for the many individuals who carry the church upon their shoulders – especially when I am fainthearted. I worked with Cassandra on office administration – something which she has been taking under wing and relieving me of some of the more mundane yet important responsibilities.

I returned home and utilized the CES again. I could feel myself declining and for the rest of the night would struggle with listlessness/depression.

I try to remain productive – so I read…my mind flits from book to book – first the Gospel of Luke, then to the Psalms, over to Origen’s De Principiis, to Dante’s Divine Comedy.

And as the man, who breathing short in pain,
   Hath 'scaped the sea and struggled to the shore,
   Turns back to gaze upon the perilous main;
Even so my soul which fear still forward bore
  Turned to review the pass when I egressed,
  And which none, living, ever left before.

7/26 – 10:30 PM Report

I am exhausted. Did you know that your brain uses like 30% of your energy throughout the day? I think I’ve said this before, but I’m pretty sure my brain uses a lot more…not b/c of some prideful thoughts about my intelligence – but b/c it is always stuck in high gear…Unfortunately, high gear does not mean productive gears – the wheels spin and spin.

I utilize the CES and go to sleep.

  A nimble leopard, light upon her feet,
  And in a skin all spotted o'er arrayed:
Nor ceased she e'er me full in the face to meet,
  And to me in my path such hindrance threw
  That many a time I wheeled me to retreat.

7/27 – 3:00 AM Report

I knew it was  a bad idea trying to fall asleep before midnight. I wake up at midnight and cannot return to sleep. I take clonazepam and around 3 am finally am able to rest my eyes.

   A lion came, I was disturbed with fear.
Towards me he seemed advancing in his might,
   Rabid with hunger and with head high thrown:
  The very air was tremulous with fright.
A she-wolf, too, beheld I further on;
  All kinds of lust seemed in her leanness pent:
  Through her, ere now, much folk have misery known.
By her oppressed, and altogether spent
  By the terror breathing from her aspect fell,
  I lost all hope of making the ascent.

(Poetry is from Dante’s Inferno, Canto I, extractions from Lines 1-60)