Trying to summon up my spirit to get things done. Clean my room, get my short stories organized and make that grid I have been thinking about (ten markets, ten stories, every story gets to every market until someone buys the damned thing), maybe take another look at my books with an eye to getting better at editing them as a whole. That kind of thing.

So far… not so much luck. But I will keep trying.

Took my first 300 mg dose of Wellbutrin (or as it’s called at home, buproprion) on Thursday night, after Thursday’s therapy session.

I told my therapist that I did not feel demonstrably different on the 150 mg dose, and he agreed that it was time to go for the 300 mg which, as far as I can tell, is the standard dose.

And that first 300 mg dose was kind rough, actually. Afterward I felt quite flushed, I was sweating a fair bit, and I had this vague tingling sensation all over, but most pronounced in my fingertips.

That was worrying, to say the least. But that seems to have been a one off thing. I took my second 300 mg dose last night at Denny’s with the usual gang, and I did not have any of the same symptoms.

I felt kind of weird after taking it, but in much the same way that taking Paxil made me feel kind of weird and disconnected when I first started taking it.

After all, this soggy mass of bad wiring I call a brain is integrating a new drug into my consciousness. This one is supposed to boost my norepinephrine levels, and I have no idea what that is going to be like. I don’t even really understand what the heck norepinephrine does, really, so I can’t quite wrap my brain around what, exactly, higher levels of it will do for (or to) me.

My therapist tells me it is intimately involved with motivation, and I sure as hell need help with that. It would be a great comfort to know that the lack of motivation that has basically kept me from doing anything with my entire adult life was not a profound lack of character or courage, but a lack of chemicals in my brain.

It would let me off the hook, more or less, and potentially do a great deal to help with the problem of getting over just how little life I have lived and how far behind my age peers I am and how I have never had a job or supported myself or been in a relationship and that whole downward spiral of shame.

I would be able to say to myself “It’s not all my fault. Medical science had to advance far enough so that there was a cure for my genuine illness of not having the right levels of the fundamental chemical that gives people motivation. ”

And here is the big one : “NOBODY would have done any better in my situation, and some would have done a hell of a lot worse. ”

It all sounds very good, and feels good to type, and I think that if I keep at it, I can even push this message through the intense, dense fog of negativity and get myself to actually believe it.

It won’t be easy. Depression is easy. It is the easiest thing in the world for someone who has been depressed as long as I have to fall back into self-loathing and self-defeat.

It’s familiar. Comforting. Normal. It takes no energy. It is, at this point, my default state.

But from time to time, I have whatever it takes inside me to fight it and when that happens, I go for broke and fight it as hard and as well as I can, and while it might end up being ten steps forward and nine steps back, I will keep that one net step forward forever and never, ever let it go.

And it is by such a dance that progress is made. It might be crazy complicated, nonlinear, convoluted, and hard to see the end of the path from any point on the path, but it is what I am stuck with now.

Who knows, maybe after I have been at this dosage for a while and it has had enough time to work all of its powerful psychoactive magic on me, I will be all straightened out and be able to just go straight at my goals and pursue them with all the intelligence and creativity I know damned well I have.

I know that I have powerful tools at my disposal. I know there are a million and one ways to apply them to the world which might result in money. I know that I could really kick some ass out there. I know I could be a real mover and shaker in the creative fields.

But something has always held me back. Fear has always kept me in a perpetual state of stalemate with myself. The forward force has always been stopped by equal pressure on the brakes.

But maybe this new drug will increase that forward power and ease off that brake. I have the Paxil working to somewhat subdue my penchant for anxiety, and the Wellbutrin trying to start up my engine and get this rusty old bucket of mine moving forward for a change, instead of just forever idling and grinding my gears but getting absolutely nowhere.

I have so much potential right at my fingertips. I always have. But I have never been able to tap into that potential before. I guess I have always sort of taken it for granted or even seen it as a burden or a sad and bitter joke.

But I want to be different. I want to be open and ready for the world and able to stride forth strong and pure and solid and leave this cloak of fear and inertia.

And with Wellbutrin by my side, I just might.