New Beginnings

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.  Today marks my return to the blogosphere after a four-year hiatus.  While I have continued to write in some form or fashion since the bulk of my blogging occurred in 2008, be it personal prose or as part of my slowly budding career as a hack journalist, I haven't truly considered returning to this public, and personal, medium until the last few months.  That is mainly due to the fact that, besides my frankly pointless lamentations as a long-time sufferer of depression which only benefited me through a need to talk to someone (anonymous readers though they may be), I haven't really felt that I have had anything interesting to write about, aside from occasional commentary on the goings-on in the world at large.

This, I believe, has changed.  As of Monday, I have begun a new, 6-week treatment for my struggles with mental illness, one that is relatively new and untested.  Transcranial magnetic stimulation, also known as TMS, is that treatment and is one that I, along with the rest of my family and support group, am making a huge emotional and financial investment in.  I'll be getting into some of those investments more in detail in my upcoming posts, which will begin properly tomorrow morning.  Something I had noticed when I was conducting my research of the procedure while still in the decision making phase was how little true, end-user based results and experiences were available through the Internet. Certainly, there was a comparative plethora of information from the manufacturer and from my own physician, but I was looking more for information coming from the patients themselves.

It is primarily because of this I have decided to start writing a blog again.  I intend, over the next six weeks, to write about my trials and tribulations, the harms and benefits that I will and have encountered from my treatment.  As I mentioned, I'm a little bit behind as I have already started the treatment, but I intend to start from my recollections of the week leading up to Monday, most of which I spent in Ocean City; oddly enough, I did have a brief depressive dip while there.

Now, I am intending to write about other topics besides TMS as I see fit to discuss and am interested in writing about, and I hope to continue the blog for some time after the treatment is over with, but for the next month and a half the bulk of my posts will be regarding that topic.  Also, while for some the topic of depression and mental illness is one that is very grim and serious (and it is), I hope to write with a lighter tone.  That's not to say I will not be aiming for complete candor, but the only way I've been able to deal with this for the past nine years is to, when I have been able, laugh: hard and irreverently.  Hopefully that doesn't turn anyone off from reading.

I want you to know something: optimism has seized my very soul.  Only, it is that type of blind idealism that comes from an arduous journey who's nearing end produces the light at the end of the long tunnel and the promise of a bright new day.  Like a sailor who sees land after months at sea, the only question remains: is it a new world, or just another mirage?

“In a spirit of hope and new beginnings, we linked arms like a couple of kids. Pushing aside sad thoughts, we strode off into our future.”  - A.B. Shepherd 

-Benjamin

(Note: I have taken down the bulk of my old blog posts as, after rereading them, I would be embarrassed to have them still be available.  I think my writing has improved with time and practice, and I humbly submit my future posts for your consumption.)