The penultimate post - NaBloPoMo as therapy

This posting every day business is hard. I hesitated to sign up for NaBloPoMo this year because I haven't been terribly well in the mental health department lately. I'm on anti-depressants and they are helping but I still feel quite fragile and don't have as many spoons as I'd like to spread around. When I'm down I tend not to post as much, my commenting on other people's blogs dries up and eventually my tweet rate slows as well (that's the last to go, 140 characters I can usually manage). I also stop reading books.

Back in August I set myself a goal of posting a decluttering story every day in the hope that it would a) get the house cleaned up and b) bootstrap me out of the depression by forcing me to engage online. A fake it till you make it ploy. The house did get a bit more organised and I did post most days in August, but in September and October with 3 and 6 posts respectively I was right back to hibernating again. The things I had hoped we'd achieve by the end of September are almost all done, a mere 2 months late, but the house doesn't look even a little bit tidy. Moving rooms full of stuff around creates chaos, I'm going to have to start the decluttering and tidying process all over again once we have everything settled in place.

I rather suspect that without the impetus of NaBloPoMo I'd not have been engaging with people online very much at all this last month, it's been a difficult time even without the depression. I'm glad that I was motivated to post about my visiting my Grandma and saying goodbye to her and that I was able to share the story of her life. I've enjoyed looking through old photos and I've even written a few posts that I'm quite proud of: my thoughts on turning 40, the one about swimming and my sentimental tea post.

I love being part of the little corner of the blogging and tweeting community that I've settled in, that there are so many people out there who are full of love and acceptance and caring for others, with whom I can share stupid geeky jokes and from whom I can learn so much and who are so supportive and understanding. It takes a certain amount of effort to reach out and engage and sometimes I don't feel able to do that, but the benefit I get from making that effort is huge. So I'm glad I drove myself to do it this month, even though I didn't feel like it, thank you NaBoPoMo for not letting me give up and an even bigger thank you to everyone who has read my posts, left a comment or chatted with me on Twitter - you're all awesome.

Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to keep myself going through December...

50 Things post No. 45