Wow, what a week. Where do I begin? From intense depression, to excited relief, not to mention a stark rejection, a nasty car crash, twelve-hour work days and ending with great hope for a new film-making collaboration.

Okay, that was, as they say in screenwriting, "the hook". Usually, that's followed, in a movie script, with a segment that you might call "Eden", which shows our protagonist in his own comfortable world. By showing Eden, you show what the protagonist has to loose. Well, my Eden wasn't so comfortable last weekend, since I was still feeling an intense depression. On Saturday, however, I finally made arrangements for my Summer trip, which included two weeks back home in England, staying with my sister. And I found, later, that once that decision had been made, the depression lifted. It's really served to add confirmation to my hypothesis that some of the roots of my depression come from having somehow learned to deeply supress my emotions. The depression, I'm concluding, was at least partly due to my burying my feelings about my sick mother. And once I'd made firm plans to spend two weeks visiting my family, it wasn't that I was suddenly able to feel again. More, I suppose, that there was a comfort in knowing that I was doing something practical towards supporting my family.

Anyway, enough psychology for one week. On Sunday, feeling fresh and young, I had a date with a very goodlooking guy I'd met through an online classified ad. We spent a nice afternoon, on a gorgeous Spring day, having brunch in a cute French bistro near the Marina, then walking in the sunlight and a cool breeze, along to the Wave Organ, before ending up in my apartment, chatting and flirting with each other. Throughout our date, I'd come to the conclusion that this guy was quite a catch - sexy, intelligent, funny, warm, and, more importantly, very strong and "traditional" values.

But things unraveled frighteningly quickly, and all of a sudden I was alone in my apartment wondering, perplexedly, what had gone wrong. At his initiative, we'd started to make out. But before we'd gotten very far (and right at the point where I was thinking ruefully that I'm simply not capable of keeping to my resolution to not have sex on the first date), he pulled away and said that he had to go, mumbling something about having some emails to write. It was so sudden that I asked him what was wrong. He denied anything was wrong, initially, but, as I pressed him, said that he'd write to me later. Which he did, later on that evening, telling me that he'd decided I was "too old and too tall". Boy. Talk about a let down. It's the first time ever that anybody's told me I'm too old to date.

Coming so soon after getting over a week of severe depression, I expected that this incident would send me straight back downhill again. But it didn't. I was initially upset and unhappy about what had happened, and somewhat chilled about the whole dating scene. But, as I thought about it, I realized a few things. Most importantly, I decided I had to stop lying about my age. Yes, I'd misrepresented my age in my ad by a few years. My reasoning was that everybody lied about their age, and, besides, I didn't look my age. On every date, I'd admitted my real age ... as soon as I felt the other guy was interested. And it had never been a problem. But, as a result of my Sunday afternoon rejection, I decided that I'd rather not be put in that situation again, and that it's not really fair on whomever I'm meeting. So I amended my classified ad to show my real age - sob - thirty-seven. I guess I won't get many responses to my ad, but at least, if I do, I'll know that age will not be an issue.

After screen-writing class on Monday, I was driving home down the big wide streets, South of Market. I was just about to take off, as my light turned green, when a bus came barrelling across the intersection, right-to-left, running their red light. I waited for the bus to clear the intersection before taking off. Out of nowhere, a car flew through the intersection from the right and ploughed into my front passenger-side corner, sending my car flying down the side-street, heading directly for a massive bus-shelter. I managed to steer my mangled car clear of the bus-shelter, and I clanked to a hissing stop underneath it, parked neatly at the bus stop. I'd really been thrown around, and my neck felt slightly wrenched. I was aware of a couple of sharp pains in my left leg, but I seemed essentially fine. On unsteady feet, I got out of my car, to see, thankfully, a sherriff's car pulling up immediately. He summoned the San Francisco Police before I even had the chance to walk round the corner to see what had become of the projectile car that had caused the accident.

In the end, I never really got to talk to the other party. I went over to get the information, but the police decided it was safer if they facilitated the information exchange, and they kept us apart. I wasn't really mad. There was no doubt that they'd ran the light late by several seconds. Moreover, no less than three separate witnesses had come over to me and given their name and telephone number. But my poor car. Until this night, there hadn't been a single scratch on my nice, shiny, solar-yellow machine - now, the front passenger corner was a complete mess. Amazingly, though, if you walked round the car to the driver's side, the car looked unmarked.

As the week progressed, I rented a tinny little Chevrolet Cavalier, and found out that the repair costs to my car would be at least five-thousand dollars, that I had minor whip-lash, and that I should get myself one of those awful creatures, a personal-injury lawyer. Mind, all this busy work took place on a week where I also had to go down to my work-customer's office in Silicon Valley every day. And for long days - getting there at eight in the morning, and leaving, frequently, late afternoon, or even well into the evening.

So it's been a long, exhausting week. Last night, in particular. It's the week of the final installation at the customer's, and this final bit was particularly intricate. And things kept going wrong. I spent most of the day Friday on my cell phone talking to one of my programmers in his office in Southern California, while frantically following his instructions on the computer. And the whole time, I'm sitting next to the manager of the department for which we're doing this project. And he was on the phone all day long too, which made it very hard to concentrate. As the day drew to a close, my cell phone died, and I had to hook up the power adapter, which meant I had to talk at an odd angle, since the only available power outlet was quite a distance away from the computer I was using.

By seven o'clock, though, finally, we figured out all the problems, and the thing was done! It was a great way to finish the week, since it's essentially the culmination of months of extremly hard work. And we've built a complex, powerful, inovative application for our customer.

Ever since I started to take film-making classess, I've had my eyes open for like-minded people with whom to start a collaboration. And I think - I hope - I've found what I'm looking for; two guys in my screenwriting class. We're meeting next week to show each other movies we've made, and scripts we've written. I'm very excited at the prospect of pooling my ideas with these guys. They're both creative, passionate guys who seem to have big hearts, and I'm optimistic that we'll come up with a great first project to shoot for.

So, as the weekend begins this morning, I can reflect on a fascinating week of highs and lows. Fascinating, yes, but I hope the coming week is a little less eventful!