Yes, I'm still alive. I just left blogging for a while because 1) I felt like I had nothing meaningful to write, and I couldn't even think of decent comments to make, and 2) I was growing obsessive about reading other peoples' stuff and was spending way too much time on it. I may not have much of a life, but even I have other things that I need to spend time on.

A lot of my mental energy over the past few weeks has been spent wrestling with my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, my old "friend" that has dominated my mental outlook for most of my life. If anyone reading this has an anxiety-type psychological disorder, or even another kind of psychological disorder, there's a good chance you'll know what I'm talking about when I mention how exhausting it can be to wrestle with my OCD. Obsessive hopes and fears swirling around in my brain, the same things over and over again but not losing their emotional force and power, me sometimes trying to fight it but often just giving in because I don't have the mental energy to constantly fight. They are a constant distraction through all my waking hours from thoughts and activities that might actually be useful to me. I would go into more detail, but I don't have the time or energy.

One upshot of my OCD is that driving has become a very anxiety-inducing activity for me (long story), so I have been looking for ways to reduce the amount of time I spend behind the wheel. One such way is taking the train into the town where I work, even though it isn't that far away. Taking the train actually takes twice as long as driving, but it does cut down on the anxiety. It also gives me exercise walking about 1.5 miles to and from my workplace from the train station.

The garden's looking a little ratty - I haven't been doing enough weeding. Of course, the lower than average rainfall and higher than average temperatures for the last month and a half or so haven't been helping its appearance either.