Piece-meal

Wow, I'm still feeling really good.  I think all of my side effects from the lithium are finally gone; the combination of anti-depressants seems to be just right.  The other day was amazing.  In the morning I went to the bank, went to a lab for blood work, went to the post office.  Then I spent about 1.5 hours at car dealership getting work done.  Still, I got a lot of writing done on my dissertation and the crowning point was that I got chicken in the crock pot for dinner!  The next couple of days were a bit more discouraging, but I couldn't have had a day so productive 6 months ago.  It feels remarkable just to do the normal things that make up the dailiness of life.

One of the coolest things was realizing I that I had 3 of my 4 chapters done for my dissertation!  Things really started getting good then.  It was like I'd reached the tipping point in my work.  I had been working at it all in a piece-meal fashion and didn't feel like I was making much progress.  Then one day I went to look at what needed to be done and had 3 chapters done! 

But what have I learned about happiness?  Honestly, I'm not sure what happiness is.  I sure as hell don't know how to find it.  For me it's just been trial and error with medications and a patient therapist.  I also have learned, and relearned, that I can make it through some really dark places; sometimes just by taking it moment by moment.  A piece-meal approach seemed to worked for my dissertation, maybe it's working the same way for happiness.