I've been in a real funk for most of the time since reaching New York. As usual, the return of depression comes without any real, definite explanation; and equally normally, I allow things that wouldn't ordinarily bother me to deepen and exacerbate the blue feeling.

My best explanation for how I feel is displacement: having only spent two days at home in the last five weeks, and of having been in three different time zones and four beds in the last week. In other words, I'm horribly home sick. I'm tired of being in unfamiliar places, surrounded by people I barely know.

And I'm also feeling disconnected from work. I'm supposed to be moving on to tech-lead a big, new project. For the past few weeks, I've been receiving a torrent of email and documentation about it, but haven't had the time to even start reviewing it, either because I was on vacation, or because I've been roped back into the New York project. The new project is challenging, employing technology I'm not familiar with, and in a business area of which I'm completely ignorant. So I'm a little bit intimidated by the expectations of the project team that I'll come in soon and take up the reins. I always feel like this at the beginning of a project. I also know that I always succeed in the end; but that knowledge doesn't diminish my trepidation.

I told Ben how I felt when I spoke to him on the drive into the city after I landed at La Guardia on Monday night. The next afternoon, I got an email from him just saying, as usual, how his day had gone, and he made no inquiry into whether I was feeling better. If I hadn't been feeling so low anyway, I'd have likely not even noticed the omission. But I allowed myself to dwell upon it, and to wonder. I remembered when Ben was going through a hard time recently; I was always aware of it, and gave him lots of support and sympathy. The fact that Ben had apparently forgotten I was feeling very down made me wonder about how much he cares, despite the overwhelming evidence of the last few months. I know I'm silly to let a solitary omission like that to override the evidence months of care and love from Ben, but when you're feeling depressed, it's difficult to be objective.

The first day in New York was otherwise successful. Our meetings went well, and I mostly enjoyed engaging with the people. After work, I had a great workout at Golds Gym. After a quick dinner, I made it down to Starbucks on 8th and 23rd (despite torrential rain) to meet up with Phoenix, to catch up.

Wednesday was a little harder. I'd slept badly, with unpleasant dreams. In one of them, I'd been cast as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and kept forgetting my lines. I'd keep latching on to a line from the next scene, and ended up propelling the performance quickly through all three acts while the other actors watched helplessly. No idea what that means, if anything.

We had meetings in the morning; more important meetings than yesterday's, and in these I was largely an observer. I got yanked out of the meetings around noon to deal with a technical issue, which was easily resolved. I didn't return to the meetings, since I wasn't really needed, and spent a bored two hours in our office before deciding to head back to the hotel around two in the afternoon.

I was so tired and blue: I knew I was in danger of just lying down, falling asleep and sinking into a deep, deep funk. So I forced myself to do some objective thinking, and remind myself of how good my life is, and then to go to the gym. Pushing heavy weights always gets me out of my head, and it did make me feel better. Afterwards, I went down to Barnes and Noble on 6th Avenue in Chelsea to do some book shopping. I spent the evening in the hotel, watching a compilation of the first few episodes of the latest "The Real World", which was of interest not only because it was set in my old town of Philadelphia, but also because for the first time they had two gay men in the cast. In the final episode I watched, one of them, a black guy, was harassed by police in a nightclub, because somebody had reported that he had a gun. It was saddening, and moving to see how downhearted he felt, and frustrating to see the complete lack of understanding he received from his white flatmates.

View of New York City from La Guardia

And so today. I tried to get up early enough to go to the gym, but kept hitting the snooze, and got up at 8.30. And I didn't get much done before it was time to be picked up to be taken to La Guardia. It's been a comfortable morning. The car was a beautiful Mercedes with tinted windows, which made me feel special. And I'm finding La Guardia is so much more pleasant than JFK, where I normally fly from: I had sushi for lunch, in a very stylish bar. Yet I'm still in that funk. I can only hope it goes away when I get home.

En route to Dallas/Fort Worth, Thu, Sep 30, 2004, 4:00 PM

At the last minute I got an unexpected upgrade on my flight, which, silly as it seems, gave my spirits a boost. Depression takes on two forms for me: the first and the hardest to bear is a very physical feeling; almost as if I have a metal block descending in my head, hovering above my eyes. It feels quite crushing. The other form is just a complete flatness; a lack of enjoyment of the world around me. I had the first form this morning, but it seems to have lifted to the second form. So things are looking up, I guess.

I realized, early on in the flight, that I wasn't perhaps making the best choice of reading matter, considering my mood. I first finished a long, detailed Vanity Fair account of Florida's electoral mishaps in the last election, and the likelihood of a repetition in November. Then I returned to my Edith Wharton novella, "The Bunner Sisters", which I'd almost finished. It was a horribly sad tale of two poor, elderly sisters, and their wretched lives. After finishing it, I reflected on the books I'd bought at Barnes and Noble last night: an Edith Wharton novel, two collections of her stories and novellas, and a book of short stories by Theodor Dreiser (whose books are almost universally a realistic analysis of the human condition). It didn't sound like I'd get any uplift from any of these. Yet I started in on the Wharton novel, "Twilight Sleeps", and I found it to be one of her more light-hearted works: a captivating satire of the Jazz Age in New York, and more in the vein of J.D. Salinger than most of her more opressive novels such as "Ethan Frome". I can feel my faculties becoming more alive as I read it, and appreciate the intricately constructed characters, and the dark wit.

And I keep telling myself that life is too short for feeling sad and anxious for no reason. Sometimes I can step sideways and suddenly wonder at myself, getting all caught up in angst, when really, my life is a charm.