Is it as bad as everyone is saying? I don’t know. i still have a job, but lately I’ve been finding myself overtly worried about what life might be like without a job.
I worry alot. Probably too much. I wasn’t able to enjoy my Christmas vacation because I became preoccupied with worry.
So now I think that the coming depression isn’t as much of a economic depression, but an emotional one. There is potential to worry yourself into a depression…i.e. you *think* you’re going to have a depression, so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
I can remember studying the hieracrchy of needs in sociology class in high school and college. My basic needs, that is physiological needs are taken care of. Food and shelter? I have it. And yet the safety of having a job seems to me as questionable during this supposed poor economic times.
Love and belonging are other needs which could grow for myself an the rest of America. One study states a quarter of Americans have no close friends. The same study found that the average number of close friends one has dropped from 4 to 2.
My friends have moved away. The ones that are still around are involved in their own activities…marriage, children…etc.. Years ago I can remember being invited to do things with friends and simply not feeling like going out and feeling guilty afterwards. Now I wish I would have spent more time with friends. And I wish I could have generated more close friendships.
Now I’m at a time in my life where I’m not sure where to begin to develop new friendships. And yet I know I’ll need to develop it to develop happiness.

My fridge went out 12 days ago. After some very obvious missteps by D.T. McCall and Sons (“Heyyyyy! Carthage, Cookeville and Lafayette), I finally got a temporary replacement to have until I get mine fixed. Note to self, even if you *think* it might only be a day without a fridge, ask for a “loaner.”

This loaner variety looks like its right out of the ’70s. What is especially quaint is the way they wrote “Loaner” on the freezer portion in black sharpie marker. Makes me feel like real life white trash.

As you can see I’m keeping my drinks cold. That’s cola in case you can’t tell.

This weekend I dealt with death. Not so much in a personal way, but on the outside looking in.
Funerals and visitations have always remained very strange to me. At one point you’re with a loved one on the brink of death. Then the next day you’re putting on a suit and greeting visitors with your loved one’s body nearby, all the while, trying not to break down emotionally while you stand for hours. Surreal. And yet it seems like the last thing that I would want to do is to see other people during a time of my grief. Then there’s the church announcement of help needed for food preparation. Yet I don’t think I would be in the mood to eat during a time of grief.
Maybe I’m the exception to the rule. Others would want to surround themselves with loved ones….eat confort food.
I dread funeral and visitations. I don’t go to many. I usually find myself anxious during the visitation because I simply don’t know what to say. I’m not even sure if it is appropriate to hug people, at least for me if I don’t know the family well.

“He lost his mind,” he told me. That’s what happened to him, when I asked about a mutual friend. It was somewhat blunt and to the point. Later I found it was more of less succuming to the debilitating effects of obssesive compulsive disorder. Lost his job as a minister because of it.
So at what point does these rituals become a disorder? Possibly when it starts interferring with everyday life. For example, all of us think about if we locked the door or turned off the stove when we leave our houses. I ponder about whether or not I closed the garage door. Sometimes I merely go back and check if I closed it. Deep down I know I closed it, but just to be sure I go back and check on occasion.
An OCD person would have to check it several times just to be sure. Contamination is another big fear of OCD people. Germs. Washing rituals. Overwhelming thoughts of fear and dread if things aren’t done properly.
A little bit of me says that one has to be slightly OCD in order to work my job, after all it does have to do with detail. And for the most part I’m concerned about the details. And unfortunately I’ve been known to take my work home with me, if not actually doing it, but playing out work scenerioes in my mind. I know it isn’t healthy, after all…all work and no play makes Jack Jeff a dull boy.
The good thing is that OCD can be treated, with meds and counseling. So there is hope for our mutual friend. He didn’t necessarily “loose his mind.” That’s an overused term anyways. I think he just had a temporary mental breakdown. I for one can understand what he might be feeling. And I want to wish him the best. After all, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

I don’t know if it is fate or coincidence, but the book I’m teaching from for the 5th and 6h graders is more for me than it is for them.
We’ve studied depression, forgiveness, negative vs. positive. Tonight’s lesson was on emotional pain. While I know that most of these chapters, the kids really don’t understand yet….somehow I’ve found that by studying it seemingly I’ve seen how I can apply it to my own life.
I think we’ve all been hurt emotionally at some point and by some degree at one time or another. Some of us let others hurt us more than what we should. The problem happens when we want to move on with our life but somehow that hurt always plays a role in where we are at certain places.

Newsflash: Men get depression too. If you had asked me that just 3 years ago, I wouldn’t have known what depression was. I never knew that anxiety was just a part of depression. We hear so much about the blues..a case of the Mundays. But sometimes we don’t hear about the anxiety and fatigue that goes along with it.
It’s the anxiety that kills us. The feeling of being trapped, with nothing you can do to get out of a bad situation. From going through depression I know why people choose suicide to alleviate the pain. I understand why some people may seem grumpy, aloof in some aspects. It’s not that they think they’re better than you. It’s that they don’t think they have anything worthwhile to say.
It is good to know that other people are experiencing the same thing that I went through…and in some aspects am still going through. At the point I began to feel depressed I thought it was extreme stress. I never knew there was a word to what I was feeling.
Things are getting better. I am able to carry on normal life, for the most part, and smile. There are things that I fear. Loosing my job is one of the things I fear. Not that there is much chance of that at this point. I’m busier than ever. For the most part, my job is my life. I am told I need to take more vacation, yet I’m not sure what I would do without it, and I dread going back into the office and working twice as hard getting things back to normal.
“Are you planning any big trips this year?” I get asked that question alot. And yet, sometimes I feel a sense that I can’t ever venture too far from my home into an unknown area. This coming from someone who’s been to China twice, Canada and El Salvador once respectively. How does one change from being a fairly happy-go-lucky…for the most part….to a reserved cautious quiet individual? I’ve been there, done that. And I can’t explain it. Part depression and part growing up, I guess.

I’ve got a couple of sites bookmarked…this one and this one…both photolog sites. Somehow I think that the authors of these photologs must commute to work and carry a camera on them at all times. New York City must be an interesting place to take pictures. And somehow I think I could find something in Hermitage to take photos of.
I tried it. For several weeks or months, I took my camera with me on my commute to work. Yet it just ended up buried in a pile of stuff in the backseat of my Beetle. Batteries probably started running low. I guess I never slowed down enough to notice the world around me.
My parents gave me these pictures for Christmas. The picture of myself was old and faded. They got a photo specialist to restore it. It’s neat to look back and notice how small that outfit was and how I used to fit into it. And it’s intersting to see how my nephew has the same characteristics as me.

Maybe I was inspired by Todd’s photo montage on his Facebook. I decided to get a Flickr account. View my photos here. It’s mostly a collection of Fireworks photos, but there are a few other gems there. Flickr is much easier than trying to put together one’s own personal gallery on one’s website. I chose Flickr because it seems to have a much cleaner interface than Webshots or Photobucket. Plus I’m being told that it has unlimited space, although there is a monthly bandwidth limit.
Now I’ll admit that I’m not that much a shutterbug anymore. I guess the novelty has worn off or somehow I found that not everything deserves a picture. I took less pictures at camp this year than any other year since I brought my digital camera. Instead I opted to borrow other people’s digital photos. And somehow I found that even if one has the most exceptional digital camera, it is still the person behind the lense that makes the pic good or not.

March 6th, 2006, was a landmark date in Mt. Juliet history. It was on that particular day that Target officially opened in Providence Place. “Providence” is the type of retail environment that makes community leaders salivate with all the potential tax revenue. Once fully opened, the shopping center will contain a Belk, Best Buy, Petsmart, the state’s largest Kroger, TJ Maxx, among a handful of other tenates. Target was just one of the first to open.
It was just few days ago that I made my expedition to Company Target. I bought 2 items – a 12 Pack of 7up and Sunkist for $2 each. The receipt was the type of thing my sister would take pinking shears to and post in her scrapbook – a retail receipt with a Mt. Juliet address on it. Mt. Julietians had been wanting this for years. Yet Walmart or Kmart even was not interested in the retail business in Mt. Juliet and prefered to have their business just across the county line in Davidson county. It was almost like they were thumbing their noses at Mt. Julietians, thinking the community had no interest, or no ability to support retail establishment. So they built their stores in Lebanon and Hermitage making Mt. Julietians drive 30 minutes or more down the road for their retail shopping experience.
Yet with the addition of Target and others in Providence, suddenly Walmart is interested in Mt. Juliet, in a spot of land across the street from Arby’s and Captain D’s. It’ll be a Super Walmart (or so I’m told).
My first experience with Target was 20 years ago. Target was a hard to reach place 45 minutes away in Rivergate. We would go there for school supplies sales. Somehow at that point Target was just another Big K clone.
Yet Target matured and became what it is today, a fresh alternative to the Walmart circus. I don’t think I’ve seen junk offered for sale at Target, at least not in the droves that Walmart sells it. Target has wide aisles, price checking machines, and competitent employees.
I am impressed and bewildered at the same time at the bohemoth known at Walmart. Why do so many people go in droves to Walmart? Why has Walmart convinced everyone in Mt. Juliet to drive 15 minutes further, past 2 Dollar Generals, in order to buy their health a beauty products? I have no idea. Maybe its because it has everything under one roof. Motor oil, fried chicken, Scotch tape. It is all there.
Yet Target has trumped Walmart in some respects. Walmart is known as a redneck gathering. Walmart is synonymous with cheap stuff. While Target shoppers don’t have to be afraid to mention to their neighbors that they bought their coffee table or kitchen chairs at Target.
I will continue to shop at the Mt. Juliet Target as long as it is easily accessible. It doesn’t matter that they might sell shampoo at 50 cents higher than Walmart. It is the fact that I don’t have to park so far away from the store entrance. It is also the fact that I don’t have to wait longer than 5 minutes in the checkout line.

John Mark Williamson – born 2/1/2006 at 12:23 PM, Baptist Hospital, Nashville.
So he looks like Ellen. Too soon to tell if he will act like Ellen.
I managed to drop by the hospital. Park in the farthest parking spot. Then find my way to the maternity ward. Probably the only happiest place in a hospital.
So it was a good day.