Build-up Binder--An Exercise in Self-Therapy

So, you'll be getting another post soon.  If you remember Lauren Skidmore's wonderful book--What is Hidden--I get to blog-tour the sequel this Sunday.  Stay tuned!

In the mean time, I'll talk about the power of positive thinking.  This isn't something that comes easily to me.  I'm a Bostonian and someone with clinical depression and PTSD.  This often means that I want to punch people in the face when they try to hug out a problem.  I stayed away from a well-meant church activity where someone lectured on happiness.

Counseling and medication could undoubtedly help with this, but right now, I work 40 hours a week take piano lessons, play for choir, teach Sunday School, have season tickets to the Symphony, am training for a 10K...  I have yet to find time since moving to my new town to actually find a therapist, a psychiatrist or a reliable GP who doesn't tell me that if a migraine lasts more than four hours, it's no longer a migraine but a cry for attention.

So, what do I do instead?  To be honest, I bang on the piano a lot.  I run my butt off at the local gym.  I eat too much Mexican food.

Recently, I got a response to Wingspan that I'll talk about more later.  The person greeted me like a friend, called the writing witty and lovely and at one point called the idea genius.  Yes, I've gotten this sort of thing said about fanfic before, but she went into so much detail that I had a hard time not crying because she went into such detail about the characters and plot and intentions that,,,

Well, let me put it this way.  Kate has been contributing ideas and feedback to Wingspan for so long that I feel like Aislin and Maeve are in on our circle of friends.  We have in jokes with them.  We care about what's going on in their lives.  This person, who recently read this unpublished book, made me feel like she's a genuine friend to my characters as well.

What this has to do with my depression is this:  I went to Wal-Mart and got a green binder.  I'm going to print off things that people have written to me that make me feel good about myself and put them in that binder.  In there will be the e-mail from this friend of the series as well as the page where Kate wrote "THIS IS BRILLIANT!" about the Kafka reference three-quarters of the way through the book.  It will include my favorite reviews on fanfics, from the "OH MY GOD!" variations to the ones from my Irish barrister friend.  It will even include funny tweets I've gotten in response to my own tweets.