Alright, on with it.

So I was exiled to my parents' house. Things gradually got better. I was still scared all the time but at least I was able to read now. I still hated TV though - all those people pretending that things mattered, the artificial drama, that endless enjoyment of futile struggles, the pretence of caring about things, all prettily presented for mass consumption. Lies, lies, lies. But then the Soccer World Cup started. Now that was different altogether. It was a game. Everybody agreed that it was. It wasn't real life. I enjoyed watching the matches together with my dad who had been a referee when he was younger.

After two months or so, I took a walk for the first time. At night. Alone. Just around the block, away from the sleeping villagers' eyes. Then a drive to Vienna with my parents, to see how Nora (the Slovak bargirl and fiercely loyal friend) was doing. Another month, and I was ready to move back to Vienna. I couldn't have done it alone. It was good to be able to share, to talk to somebody - she'd return around 6:30 p.m., tell me about problems with customers or the other girls at the club while I listened, made coffee before she went to bed. I had lost almost all of my customers so there wasn't much work. It was Nora who talked me into joining a gym - she wanted to lose weight (peer pressure from the other girls - they spent all their shifts dressed only in lingerie, after all), my own strength was gone. So we did aerobics and shaping classes together until I was finally able to go back to the dojo again.

Sadly, Nora was deported in the following year after a police raid at the club; prostituion is legal here but you need a permit (with weekly medical examinations) - as a foreigner, she would have never been able to obtain one, so they kicked her out. I met her in Bratislava to bring her her things; we had a last talk, then said good bye. She planned on continuing working as a bargirl, this time in Germany; she later wrote me a card from there, saying she was doing fine. That was the last time I ever heard from her.

So it was back to my hermit crab days again. I found some part time work as a night courier but then they fired me when I crashed their car - twice. It was nothing demanding, just a fixed long-distance run, but my lithium dose was just too high; I had problems with spatial perception, depth-of-field, also with reaction time. It was probably for the best. More part-time work while trying to find translation agencies who'd give me assignments.

I'm doing ok now, after some major glitches. Money was tight for a long time. Once my parents had to intervene when I got too deep into debt;it wasn't because I spent too much - I simply wasn't earning too much. It's been comparatively smooth running since the end of the last financial crisis two years. 

I still don't like working. Oh, I do love translating but only when I'm in the mood. Customers don't care about moods. They care about deadlines & quality. I guess they're satisfied with the quality (I really try hard, no matter how small, big, or difficult the assignment) but deadlines still scare me. Procrastination is the order of the day, or lethargy, or simple indifference. I know I'm privileged - I can work from home without a boss breathing down my neck, I can work any time of the day or night I choose, I can refuse assignments when I'm too stressed out (not a wise thing to do, from a financial perspective, but sometimes necessary).

Depression is the enemy most of the time. Yesterday's racing thoughts already seem like an exotic episode from bygone days. If it wasn't for the need to earn money, karate, and my dojo buddies, I'd probably spend all my days surfing or lying in bed, drinking beer, eating too much starchy food, watching DVDs and reading sci-fi novels. Ok, I'd get bored soon but then again, it seems like blessed nirvana for me whenever there's an assignment deadline looming. Sure I miss mania, but viewed from the lazy-ass equilibrium I have achieved now, it seems just like another stressor I don't need. I can't see myself diving headlong into a three month sexual frenzy like last time, not from my present medicated near-neuter existence (which is a relief, in some ways).

It would be nice to do something more constructive with this affliction, which is why I've signed up here. Even if it's only giving goodie-two shoes advice to others less stable than me. Or discovering a healthier equivalent of mania to rouse me from my usual stupor.