So January ends, not with a bang, but with a sneeze...

January, named for Ianus, the Roman god of entrances and exits, one of the most common of the lares et penates seen in the entry to every Roman dwelling, with two faces, one looking forward, the other back. Also the etymological source for Janitor... hence looking more like Groundskeeper Willie, in the modern iconography.

So, looking backward, not to last year, but to this month. It's been intense, tiring, emotionally demanding, occasionally pretty gruesome from a health standpoint, but it's nearly over. It's been my worst month for a very long time. Bizarrely enough, it's also been one of my most successful, from a professional standpoint. I'm very ambivalent about having a higher professional profile though, because I believe it will adversely effect my work-life balance, which is something I have to take seriously from a health standpoint.

It's been nearly thirteen years since my last big breakdown, and nine years since I managed to finally say goodbye to antidepressants. yet the fear persists. I still lost my late twenties and early thirties. The time when people are getting together, settling down and deciding whether they want to make babies or not.

My priorities were different at that age. I was never suicidal, but I spent many days and nights wrestling with my demons, frequently on the edge of, or sometimes right down in, the pit. At the time, I was still functioning professionally, and my managers looked at me and occasionally gave me bonuses for jobs completed because they knew I would do it, come hell or high water. The extra money wasn't worth the grief, and occasionally felt like an insult. To be fair, though, when I came out of it, some of my managers gave me an enormous amount of slack when it was needed.

So now, I'm standing on the threshold, with one face pointing in each direction. I have a choice. Do I throw myself into work as intensely as I did in my twenties, knowing that I have the opportunity to make a big name for myself in all the right places, or do I sit on my professional laurels and try to recherche some of my temps perdu? I have a vague feeling that it's all too late for me, either way. All Madeleines gratefully accepted, btw.

In the meantime, I seem to be looking at the end of the cold that's given me some uncomfortable mornings. I have a new wide-angle lens for my camera, and yet another friend has asked me to do their wedding photographs. The forward-looking face of Ianus sees some intriguing possibilities, yet in my heart, I know my past will continue to haunt me.

Seasonal afflictions

So, as semi-predicted, my depressive mood eased with the recovery from jetlag. However, it didn't help my immune system to shrug off the bug that was working its way up and down the office over Christmas and the New Year. It's a cold. Not Man Flu (or Bloke Flu, for that matter). Given that it happened when I couldn't afford the time, it's made me angry enough to work through it.

The downside is that it's taking a while to get shut of, my colleagues are wondering which of them I'll pass it on to and I'm gradually losing patience with my own body. I dare say I can still compel it by sheer force of will, but it doesn't always want to respond. In the meantime, the blog remains a useful outlet when I'm stuck in the house with only my computer and a box of cold remedies for company.

When this is out of my system, I'm going to need a proper blowout.

An encounter with the pit

I thought this was all over a long time ago. A long, hard week away, followed by eight time zones change seems to have made me vulnerable. Last week's intense adrenalin surge is now being followed by a crash. After a (short) weekend of disturbed sleep patterns punctuated by moments of activity at peculiar hours, I had my first day back in the office today. More information overload and obligations to my team. My diary full of new commitments made for me by others in advance, on top of those I have already made on my own.

When I pick up my necessary groceries and head back to my house, it takes me only a few minutes to check my emails and then crash onto my bed without eating an evening meal, picking up the newspaper, or turning on the television. It's a peculiar state, not awake, not asleep, paralysed in inactivity without the self-motivation even to roll over. I've been here before, but not for a long time, and I'm scared of what it means. The pit beckons at the edge of my imagination. Please, God, not again.

No calls, no messages, alone on a dark winter's evening. I know I'm vulnerable. I've been here before. As usual, I'm trying to live up to everyone's expectations of me. I'm not superhuman, but I am, at this moment, very, very, alone. I thought depression was something I had beaten a long time ago. Now I'm not so sure and I'm writing this frantically like a message in a bottle, having stirred myself into action.

Maybe, in a couple of days, when the fatigue of jetlag has passed, I'll be more positive. I'm in great demand, professionally at least, and my friends will rally round if and when they know about my mental state. In the meantime, the abyss is having another look at me.

Intense

Back home, after a very intensive week of networking, learning, making plans and enlarging my large, cloven , carbon hoofprints. I'm dehydrated, jetlagged and reeling from mental overload. I have too many thoughts running through my mind, and not enough time to process them all. I've unpacked, but now it's time to shower and crash.

My lasting impression of Los Angeles: The thick brown-tinted layer of haze that sits over the city from the mountains all the way down to the seashore. I've never seen anything quite like it, and descending through it from above seemed like jumping into a muddy pool.

A New Year, just like the Old Year

I came back from my folk's yesterday afternoon, after not quite two weeks of unwinding and getting to relax. The only significant mental effort required was that needed to take on board advice on my golf swing (better control of the position and grip of the handle) and make sure the beer stocks were consumed before their marked sell-by date. Aside from that, it is always great to be back in the bosom of the family, mother's cooking and all. It's a wrench to come back to an empty house and the certainty of ongoing frenetic workload.

It could be worse. On Monday, my cousin was very quiet. He's now somewhere on his way back to Afghanistan. His mother was quite vociferous about her worries. He's had a new tour of duty hanging over him throughout the break. He's been in the service for a long time now, and spent time in all kinds of potentially dangerous places over the last decade or more. He's not that much younger than me, and I find myself thinking that he's done enough for a man his age. I'm not sure how much time he has left, or whether he might be tempted to extend. I think his wife, stepdaughter and sisters might look him long and hard in the eye before he does.

This morning, I made the mistake of popping into the office, my last day of leave, to check my emails and post before catching a flight to the US tomorrow. Emails aplenty, more mail than I could reasonably digest in a morning, and a cluster of managerial issues and temporary mini-crises seeking help and guidance, besides which, there were any number of people off sick with a variety of seasonal afflictions.

Amidst all the confusion of a day in the office, I pleaded invisibility (I'm not really here y'know) and got on with trying to sort out those things which were necessary and urgent before travelling from those which could wait and those which were still going to be just as much a pain when I had more time to deal with them. So I'm trying to keep focussed on the next week, which should be fairly time-consuming and intensive, aside from trying to keep my circulation going on long-haul to the west coast, and staying awake at LAX long enough to ensure that I get through the usual chaos of customs and immigration with enough time to get to my onward flight.

The annual AIAA bash at Reno (or Aerospace Sciences Meeting) is very much of a goldfish bowl. There's precious little to do except absorb enormous amounts of information and work the policy and funding bazaars until you drop. Many people never see the outside of the conference venue. The mountains are nice, but Reno is there primarily for gambling and the more dubious recreations that take place on the edge of town. This is the last year there; they have twigged that engineers and scientists have a more realistic appraisal of the probability of winning in a casino than the usual crowd.

The usual crop of familiar long-serving greybeards from industry are there, and we buy our friends beers and keep close tabs on our rivals. Information is the currency in which we trade, and codes of honour are maintained by submitting ourselves for scrutiny and evaluation by our peers.

The egos and reputations of senior academics are boosted by getting hard work out of their younger postdocs. The PhD students and postdoctoral researchers are the bright-eyed newbies in this environment. These are the people who are trying to find their own place as individuals, rather than as someone's sidekick or bag carrier. It's very competitive, and the price of failure is obscurity. They have to publish or perish, and if the quality is not good enough, for whatever reason, their credibility suffers. It's emotionally and psychologically brutal. Too frequently, the quality can be poor, and career-limiting for the junior staff involved. Reputations are there to be made, and broken.