I learned something in the military (actually, I learned a LOT of things in the military but I don't think this is the proper place to discuss them <g>) and it's that while you are going thru any life event where you'd rather be somewhere else, you tend to have dreams and make plans about what you will do when the whatever is over and you are free.

Then you become free, you wind up for one reason or another not following thru on your plan and feel like you've failed -- The true failure here is that you failed to recognize that dreaming and making a bunch of detailed plans are NOT committments, just mental devices to keep you focused away from the unpleasant stuf.

And even if they WERE committments, they are committments to yourownself, and you have the power to release yourself from those committments -- Use that power!

Kinda like sticking a thumbtack in your finger to keep your attention off whatever -- You have no obligation to keep sticking the thumbtack in your finger for the rest of your life.

Once the problem is past, any effort spent thinking about thumbtacks or plans not accomplished or places not seen is wasted effort -- You have the choice of wallowing in past committments made to yourself under duress or doing the stuf you want to do and can do.

Time spent thinking about things you have control over is not wasted, it's research towards a decision (but once the decision is made, don't look back and secondguess yourself, just get on with it), however, time spent thinking about things over which you have no control is indeed a waste!

In re: anti-depressents, each of us may have different reactions, but I personally found that altho I am the kind of person who seems to have several "thought channels" running at any one time, ranging from right up on top down to almost subconcious (I'd guess the subconcious ones are there also, but by definition I can't tell <g>)

Once I started taking antidepressants and they finally started working (took many weeks for me), I found that most of the lower channels went away -- In other words, while I was doing something, I wasn't worrying about whether I'd make it to retirement or what the weather would be like next week or who would win the next election; those things didn't matter in the sense that there wasn't anything I could do about them beyond what I had already made plans to do. And the big point is, they were no longer squandering my time nor depressing me by my helplessness.

And wondering whether that evil thing is going to come back out of the shadows again is one of those things over which we have little control -- We can follow the current guidelines about diet and hydration, we can quit using the more obvious stuf like smoke and booze, we can keep a watchful eye on likely recurrent spots (but not to the point of Every Five Minutes Paranoia!) and we can keep current with the literature and visits to the Docs, but any worry after that is likely to be a waste.

It would be a real shame to fail to enjoy our grandkids or RV travel or even the current series of our favorite soap opera in favor of wondering if and when the evil thing was going to return only to be walking outside and be killed by a buzzard with a heart attack falling out of the sky on our head!

There're just too many variables in life to be wasting time on intricate plans for only a few of them.

Pete

PS If falling buzzards are already one of your worries, I highly recommend a good brand of DOT-approved helmet, the kind that are prewired for stuf like IPod -- Darker colors are easier to clean up after a buzzard-strike -- I gave this a lot of thought before starting my anti-depressants <big grinz>.

Pete