The Highs and the Lows

My week was mostly highs this week, but something happened that made me grateful I'm not in a low period of my life. I have depression, which is something I've known for a long time, but officially diagnosed by my therapist back in TX. Also, I saw a therapist in TX for a good while which I guess I should've started off with. I call my emotional status my roller coaster, because I know when I start going up (and I'm in for a few good weeks of sunshine) and I know when I start going down (and I'm in for a few bad weeks of rain). However, and this makes me lucky, no matter how bad my low weeks are, I've never considered suicide as an option - and this week made me grateful for this. This will make sense in a few paragraphs.

Last Sunday started out pretty well - after I got over my anger at my upstairs WOO HOO-ers, we met our bar friends around 10 am to start an early birthday celebration for one of them. The 5 of us walked about a mile down Riverside Park to Chelsea Piers and spent another hour whacking golf balls from the driving range out over the Hudson. It was actually a great time - because all of us sucked at one point, and all of us had some awesome drives at one point. After Chelsea Piers, it was a cab ride over to Katz Deli for massive sandwiches (Katz's Deli is where the orgasm scene in "When Harry Met Sally" was filmed). We stuffed ourselves, had some beers, and relaxed before grabbing some gelato down the street.

Then it was a mile walk back to West Village, where we stopped at a random bar for some drinks - and it turned out to be awesome. One of my bar friends is English and the bar we stopped at was called GMT. Perfect. We had many mixed drinks there, so tasty. All of us were so full from lunch that fruity punchy drinks were in order. Around 3 pm, we headed to me and Blondie's favorite bar in the area - which also had a full list of beers from England (not planned, not thought about - just totes worked out). And we spent the next 4 hours imbibing there before taking a cab back home. All in all, a great day.

Monday I took a car service out to the NJ/PA border where I spent the next 3 days. I got there before any of my coworkers, and spent an hour with the networking guy, touring the site, and running various tests. Afterwards, I met back up with one of my coworkers (who had arrived while I was running around), and we got to work on what we were really there to do. We got done early, but I had to join a 2 hour conference call, so we had to sit at the site while I took that. Then finally, it was back to the hotel to check-in and collapse for an hour.

Dinner that night was a German restaurant - it was really tasty, and it was good getting to see my coworker (who lives in DC) and just chat with her. While at the restaurant, my coworker from FL texted and he had just landed and was on his way. So I met up with him when he got in town, and we went to the bar for a bit. It was an early night though as we had 2 days ahead of us to be geared up for.

Now for why I wrote my first paragraph. I got texted very late on Monday night from one of my building friends, and I didn't receive the text until Tues morning. Someone jumped from the 29th fl of our building on Monday, off his balcony, directly above me and Blondie's apartment. He landed on the 2nd fl sundeck, 8 stories directly below our unit. Obviously, he is dead. Blondie saw part of his body - he didn't know anything had happened on Monday, and stepped out to enjoy the view early Monday evening, and thought some jackass kids in our building had tossed a mannequin as a prank (the body was covered with a sheet, but the wind had blown part of the sheet off the arm). The 2nd fl is now closed, and completely ripped up in the area where he landed. It turns out 2 women were hanging out on the sundeck when he landed - they had to go to the hospital because they saw it happen and couldn't cope.

Why I wrote my first paragraph - I can't even imagine what that kind of pain is like, when suicide becomes an option. As someone who has the (HIGH) highs and the (low) lows, I thought I could kind of empathize with what people go through when suicide starts to seem like a way out. But I can't - I got back to our apartment on Wed night, and leaned over our balcony to see the damage to the sundeck, and there is just no way I could bring myself to leap (in any situation). My heart goes out to the person who did jump and his family and friends - I don't see this as selfish (and again, I've not had a family member of friend commit suicide, so I don't know if my mind would be changed if that happened), but as a way to end pain that nobody can endure. And my heart goes out to the 2 women on the sundeck, and to Blondie and everyone else who happened to be looking down that day, and to anyone that saw it happen.

The rest of my week was excellent though - my project went off without a hitch. Tues and Wed were spent just marveling at how well everything worked. The team that met me there were amazing, and I'm just relieved that things went as well as they did. The team headed out to dinner on Tues - we went to this excellent beer house in the middle of nowhere NJ, and enjoyed some beverages to celebrate as well as tasty grub. And on Wed, I caught a ride back to the city with 2 coworkers who had come out for the day to NJ/PA to work with various members of the project site we were out. I couldn't have asked for a better project, both in terms of staff at the project site as well as staff from my office

Thursday I went into the office and saw some great emails - the project team from NJ/PA site had sent an email to me and my 2 coworkers telling us how happy they were with the project and with us, and asking us to forward onto our mgmt staff. My coworker had sent to his boss, and she forwarded it to my boss, who forwarded it up the chain. Everyone is so happy with how things went - I even have an email from the president thanking the team on everything. We just need to keep it up now - as a startup, we have to make things work well from the get go. So now the pressure is on.

Thursday night I went out with a few coworkers - it was a completely last minute idea. We started with some drinks in the Times Sq area, but then split up around 8. However, one of my coworkers wasn't quite ready to go head home, so we spent another few hours in my neighborhood - we got to talk personal life, etc, and I feel like I got to know this person really well. So a good night in all!

Saturday was a lazy day - it was completely overcast and gross, so I went to the gym and then laid in bed watching eps of House of Cards and reading. All day. We had some wine delivered on Saturday night (too lazy to walk 2 blocks to my wine store) and then watched silly movies all night (Napoleon Dynamite, Real Genius, etc). Today it was gorgeous, so we headed out for some food and then took it to the park and had a picnic. Then I came back home and collapsed for a few hours for a nap.

My week this week involves a flight to DFW on Tues, coming back on Wed night, and a trip to Harlem on Thurs. It's going to be fast and furious.

Workouts! Sucked! I was not motivated in NJ, and then was exhausted (it was draining worrying about my project) when I got back.
Monday-Friday: None. I'm sad but I'm not sad.
Saturday: 3.1 miles in 38:09; 5 min cooldown; weights
Sunday: 10 miles on bike in 36:09 (2 mins level 8, 4 mins level 13); 5 min cooldown

--K