still struggling

parkbenchzine recently posed the question,
Where the hell is PHILOS?!?!? no IM, no LJ... wake up dude... unless there is some serious scoring going on... then, have at it man!
It seems he had missed my latest concert review, posted last Saturday. But still, looking back at my recent posts, there's some fairness to the question - all I've posted since mid-October are concert reviews or photos, with just hints of personal notes tucked in there.

Mainly this is because I'm still in the same slump that I wrote about in September and October. Work has continued to be sparse, and I've continued to fail to do anything about finding new sources of work. My sleep schedule has continued to be very late, pushing more and more toward noon, and that's continued to make me gloomy - along with the weather and the very limited daylight hours such a schedule means at this time of year. Despite the flurry of shows I attended at the end of October and beginning of November, I haven't been getting out as much as I'd like, and the boost in spirits I got particularly from the Freezepop and Annuals shows hasn't been enough to pick me up out of the rut I've been in. Heck, it took me two weeks to get around to writing the Annuals review just because I wasn't feeling like it at home and I didn't make myself get out to a coffeehouse to do it until Saturday.

However, this is still The Year of Change, and I haven't given up the struggle yet. In my last mopey post in October, I wrote about taking up tai chi training again at Embrace the Moon. Because I was ill at the end of October and beginning of November, I did not look into the school and classes as soon as I wanted to, but eventually I made it there and signed up for the two-week "try anything" introductory program. I tried each of four different classes twice over the last two weeks, and settled on taking the luohan gong and Yang style taijiquan, once a week each, for the rest of the session.

Getting back into martial arts immediately made me feel much better mentally - and much more sore physically, but hopefully that'll improve. It also gave me the impetus to try yet again to shift my sleep schedule back to more normal hours. During the two week trial period I went to the evening classes, but I found that the combination of getting up so late in the day and then spending about three hours total on each class due to taking the bus there and back made me feel unable to get other things done. The day was too broken up. So this week when I started my regular classes, I decided I would go to the midmorning or noon classes instead, and set my alarm regularly again. This should help me with my schedule at least through December, and hopefully will also improve my spirits.

Meanwhile, I went to my fourth HurryDate event at the end of October. That one was a complete bust, I did not get any responses from it. I'm sure it didn't help that my voice was very hoarse from the cold I was in the midst of, although fortunately my actual congestion was minimal that evening. However, I also wasn't keen on any of the women there myself this time, so I didn't actually mind that I had no responses. Yet again, three women did not show up - I think it's been three every time, is it the same women? - but HurryDate hasn't sent out the promised free pass code this time. This also isn't so bad in a way, as I've been feeling more and more dissatisfied with their events, and faced with having to pay again to attend one gives me more reason to check out a different service. Annoyingly though my subscription to their website renewed shortly after the event, so it feels like a waste of that money if I don't attend any more of their events. I'll probably skip the December event that's next week, but maybe I'll sign up for January. Besides all that, something's come up through one of the online personals and I may have a date soon. So maybe I won't need to sign up for another speed dating event or service... Wish me luck.