What the heck?

OK so here's the dealio. As of two weeks from tomorrow I shall be jobless. However, I also feel useless and without purpose or function. Despite the time it took up and the toll it took on my emotions, I really miss doing my family history research.

I am completely conforming to the stereotype of the depressed post-menopausal woman. Here is a checklist:

• unpredictable moods
• emotions close to the surface
• feelings of worthlessness
• an inability to envisage a future
• a loss of interest in things
  

I am sure I have more but I can't be bothered.

What I need is a new interest. In the past few years have found things to inspire and fascinate me to become absorbed in, but none of them are in the running now, so what is it to be?

We have just booked up a Florida vacation for a week in the depths of winter but I cannot raise any enthusiasm for it. I am very fat and very tired. I want to have fun but I am not sure I can do that any more.

What a crabby old bitch I have become.

Back to School

Unbelievably it's been four months since my last entry and apart from the usual ups and downs my mental state is just about the same.

Life has changed a little - I visited my home country for two of the most amazing weeks ever. A lot of people would have found it very dull - all I did was visit friends and relatives, take a few photos in London and troll around the welsh countryside with my sister, photographing gravestones, but for me it was a dream come true.

Finally after that trip, sometime during August, I put away all my family history research and photographs and am ready for a new project to occupy my mind for a while. I have phases of about two years at a time in which the hobby of the moment occupies every free moment I have. I haven't yet found my replacement hobby - perhaps I will go back to painting or writing, or maybe I'll do something more practical.

Emotionally I am still a wreck. I love my family without question but I am such a bad parent that sometimes I feel I do more harm than good. It certainly isn't the fault of the children that the mother can't cope or doesn't know how to deal with problems. I am just not mentally or emotionally capable of being the mother I would like to be.