Only the third post of the year. Gods and powers, but that's pathetic.

Recovered lately from a week-long sickness of mysterious origin, which laid me up for many days and filled my head with unpleasantness. Had one of those visits to the doctor where the medical professional says "I don't really know what's wrong with you, have some antibiotics" and sends you back home to drink fluids. I'm much better now. Also more or less recovered from my recent bout with depression, which got a lot worse before it got better, but resulted in my decision to look into some good honest medication for this, something I think I've put off for as long as I can. I'm fighting the weird nagging feeling that doing so means I've failed somehow to beat this by my own devices, even though I know that's just dumb; I've spent the last three years really, really not wanting to, I don't know, "resort" to that. I think, though, that I'm beginning to resign myself to it being a bigger enemy than I can face down naked, as it were. And it's very possible that three years ago I hadn't learned enough of the things that I got out of a year and a half of therapy, and drugs would have been a bad idea anyway. I don't know. I'm going to talk to the professionals about this and see what happens. But the idea that something might give me an edge over the ... irrational, crushing despair that looms over me gives me a lot of hope for the future.

Last night I had a semi-unexpected treat of going to see Jim's Big Ego at the Jammin' Java in Vienna (and it's a measure of how airheaded I am that, after four and a half years of living here, I had no idea Vienna is as close as it is), which is a great venue and has an open mic I'm now determined to go to; it was an excellent show, and JBE got some new local fans, I think, as is right and good. And I also became an instant fan of the opening band, The Dreamscapes Project, who are quite awesomely good and a bunch of nice guys to boot.

Currently reading The Man Who Was Thursday, one of those books I can't help but feel I ought to have read by now, and it's as good as its publicity - one of the few "classics" that I'm not finding to be a fight to get through. It's odd - I can do Shakespeare, and Marlowe, easily enough, and I do alright with a decent translation of Chaucer or Dante, but works in English from about 1800 to 1920 are frequently like fighting taffy for me. But Chesterton's very nearly as good as Neil Gaiman says he is, even if you have to get past his respectable Edwardian Christianity at times. Also nearly done with Mieville's The Scar, started the night before my birthday and even better than Perdido Street Station. Mieville, despite being occasionally as big an opinionated pain in the ass in his own way as Chesterton, is a brilliant and visionary writer, and fantasy is lucky to have him. Were I James Lipton, I'd say he was "delightful," but I'm not and I won't.

And finally, after the long silence of all Muse-ish energies, I'm getting the urge to write again myself, possibly tooling around with something new for a while before taking up old projects. About time, too.

Okay, off to clean now. Matt's coming up to visit from the District tonight, and it's always useful to have a clean slate on which to write the evening's inevitable debauchery - a word I'll use in the absence of one which more accurately reflects the kind of classy reveling one gets up to with upwardly-mobile gay professionals. Hard to really feel comfortable describing a bottle of wine and a plate of crackers and feta as "debauchery," but it messes up the coffee table just as bad as hot wings and beer, so I'll let it stand.

And now I'm just rambling. More later.