Residency is easier when I'm feeling better

It's only just now really occurring to me how depressed I was. How much better I feel now is throwing into sharp relief just how bad it's been for the last several years. It's not like everything is suddenly good and easy, but I have so much more wherewithal to deal when things are a struggle. So it doesn't feel so insurmountable and doesn't knock me down as hard.

This week is my fifth and final residency for my graduate program. The residency process has never been ideally suited to me-- mostly due to the fact that they want you to get into the whole "family" feeling quickly even as you may be dealing with painful emotional struggles over your work, which my introvert instincts make me want to deal with by withdrawing rather than pushing myself to make connections that may be work for me to make already.

But this time around its been a little easier. Part of that is that, as a graduating student, there's less stressful stuff for me to do, I don't even have to workshop any work. Part of that is that I've gotten to know the people around me a bit better and it's no longer as taxing to my introvert self to put myself out there with them. They're all nice, cool people, but I struggle when I don't know necessarily know what to say to a given somebody. But I think the biggest thing is that since my wherewithal to deal with challenging things isn't been sapped by feeling generally bad.

It's a nice change. I wish it could have happened years ago. Turns out that would have been totally doable, if I'd made certain choices a long time ago. But I'm trying not to dwell on the bad past, and just keep moving forward. Forward feels good these days. :-)