Mood Watch - 37

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been nineteen days since my last Mood Watch. Though actually, come to think of it, nineteen days isn't all that bad.

Hard on the heels of my last trip (to the Chicago area), I took another, this time to Vermont. I went there to be a presenter at a symposium, but I arrived on Friday, March 30, a couple of days before it began. Checked into a lovely bed and breakfast and spent most of the weekend with a friend of mine who showed me around the central part of the state.

Aside from four quick business trips to Boston, I'd never been to New England before, much less Vermont. Everyone I met apologized for the scenery -- it was "stick season": too late for the winter snow and too early for the green of spring and summer and the beauty of the turning leaves in autum. But I thought the state was just lovely: lots of rushing streams, quaint villages and small towns nestled between the shoulders of mountains. All in all, I had a lovely time.

The symposium was fun, too. It has that reputation -- the organizers brings in good speakers, install them at the Northfield Inn, and everyone gets pretty well acquainted, not just over the rich breakfasts but especially in the evenings, when everyone kicks back in the living room/dining room area, cracks open a beer (or six) and talks into the wee hours.

I boarded a flight home on Wednesday afternoon. It figured that after such an enjoyable six days I'd feel a bit of a letdown afterward, but I was surprised -- even shocked -- by how quickly the bottom dropped out of my mood. By the following day I felt so anxious and nearly faint that I had to cancel a class, something I hate to do. Things didn't improve for a full week. Then, as quickly as it hit, the depression lifted. To my mind, that's the very signature of a biochemically based depression.