News

I may be moving the URL of this blog at some point, as GoDaddy has raised their rates.  In order to keep my spam settings at the level I want them, I have to “upgrade”!  Keep checking here and I’ll keep you posted.  If you come here and I’m not here, check at www.juliegreene.name, which I am keeping, and follow the link to my blog!  Don’t worry, the move won’t happen immediately.

I had to delete the entry with the link to the Breath and Shadow article, as it was getting spam comments by the bucketful.  Here’s the link again: <a href=”http://www.abilitymaine.org/breath/index.html.

Have”>www.abilitymaine.org/breath/index.html.

Have a nice day.  I’m trying.

Where I’ve been all this time

In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been….

I’ve been revising my creative thesis.  I’ve been working at a terrific pace.  I get up at 4:45am and go to bed at 8:30pm.  I start writing at 8:20am and don’t stop until around 7:30pm.

I do get the housework done.

I haven’t exactly been remembering to eat.  But I am getting better at it.

Of course I take excellent care of Puzzle.  Or, rather, she takes excellent care of me.  She reminds me to take my meds.  Without her, I would surely forget.

I do keep my appointments.  I get enough sleep.  I am not manic.

For some reason, I seem to be able to keep up this pace.  Why?  Someone pinch me–this couldn’t be real!

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I worry about what will happen after school ends.  I worry that I’ll lose the drive, the motivation, to keep going.  I worry that I won’t have the support I need.  I am really, really scared that I will go downhill.  I worry that my mother will push me into getting a “job,” something for which I am not mentally equipped.  The structure of a “job” is a lot different from sitting and writing all day.  She has already said, “Julie, I hope that after you graduate, you will be accepted into a ‘position,'” meaning, a teaching position.  Horrors!  I can’t do that kind of teaching!  What I am thinking about is possibly getting a scholarship to go to one of those writers’ retreats or artists’ colonies for a couple of weeks at some point.  I have asked my advisor what she thinks about this idea.

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I am so afraid of getting lost in the world. But for now, everything is okay.  I have goals.  I have a project I am working on.  I have started a new book to work on after school ends.  That plus I’ll still be revising my current project.  If all else fails, I have a sweater for Puzzle that I’m making….

Journal entry just after my 15th birthday

Jan. 10, 1973

Someday I’d like to say everything that’s on my mind and be able to explain it and not be afraid.  Someday maybe I will.

Something I was thinking about in the shower today

As I may or may not have mentioned, I discovered the reason I’d been losing so much hair in the shower: Pantene conditioner, specifically Pantene “Always Smooth.”  My hair was reacting to some ingredient in the stuff and falling out as soon as I applied it!  This was quite apparent to me when I tried a different conditioner and noticed a big difference: almost no hair came out when I applied either Paul Mitchell “Detangler” or Nexus “Humectress.”  Apparently these do not have whatever is in the Pantene that I reacted to.

It occurred to me today, as I was washing my hair, that when I found out the cause of the problem, I was able to remedy it easily.  Had I gone to some hair expert, I would have had to spend zillions of dollars, and the expert would probably have come up with some “treatment,” made tons of money off of me, and not gotten to the cause of the problem!

If we look toward the cause of problems, rather than trying to patch them up, we will solve them more efficiently and effectively.  In the past, patients were locked up, and sometimes put in chains because society wanted us put away.  Now, there are medications that correct the imbalances that cause the problem in the first place.  These medications are not perfect.  Many people encounter problems with medications and have to try one after another.  The medications have side effects–some serious.  But meds are the best treatment we have so far–they have helped millions of patients to lead productive lives (me too!).

I am in my last semester of graduate school.  These days, I am able to work up to seven hours a day on my creative thesis and still enjoy myself.  I will graduate on July 12, 2009.