It’s not often that a single day provides a snapshot of the kind of life I have, but this Monday sort of did just that:

1. Monday morning, I took the last pills in my existing bottles of psych meds. I had placed a refill order last week, and knew that both my prescriptions were ready for pickup, and I knew I needed to collect them on my way home from work. Unfortunately, my pharmacy is in no way, shape, or form on the way home: in fact, I have to pass home to get there, and go twice as far in the opposite direction. I spent the entire day at work trying to talk myself into going. Finally, as I walked the half mile to the bus (which would take me to the train, which would get me within a block of the pharmacy), I realized the solution: I would allow myself a silly indulgence if I otherwise behaved like a responsible adult and picked up my meds (more on that in #2). Long story short, for the first time in many, many months, I picked up my prescriptions on time and didn’t miss a single dose of anything.
2. The silly indulgence? While I was out running my post-work errands, I swung up to Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of the newest Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook. I had been kicking around the idea anyway, because starting the end of this month I’ll be joining a D&D game run by someone my partner met in college (who happens to be a minister and is doing this game as part of an independent study for a class he’s taking at Loyola), and we were planning to meet Monday night to work on creating a character for me to play. The more I researched the newest edition of the game online over the weekend, the more excited I got, and so I went for it. It was very helpful to have a copy of the book for each of us to look at while we rolled up my character (a dwarf sorcerer – this would probably prove to my family that I am a godless heathen) that evening, and now I’m all set for the future games I’m sure I’ll be playing. Nerdery abounds!
3. And then Monday night happened, and I laid down to go to sleep…and waited…and waited…and waited…and my brain just wouldn’t shut down. I wasn’t even perseverating over anything in particular; the gears just wouldn’t stop turning. Thanks to the insomnia and the fact that I needed to go in to work early, I ended up running through my Tuesday on approximately 3.5 hours of sleep and two shots of espresso and crashing by 8pm.

This is my life: learning to be a (sort of) responsible adult, discovering new and exciting depths to my capacity for nerdiness (and probably disappointing my relatives in the process), and never knowing exactly what to expect from my brain. It’s an adventure, and not always grand…but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.