Today I sat down and made a plan for each remaining day of my leave.

I feel like I've wasted it so far because all I've done is:

• gone to my regular MD, my therapist, and my psychiatrist
• tried to let my body adjust to the meds
• let myself sleep without an alarm going off in an effort to catch up on sleep and get rid of feeling sleep-deprived
• had lunch with a few friends
• otherwise, I've stayed a hermit

I guess that's not really wasting my leave time. I mean, I've needed to see the doctors, adjust to the meds, and my body needed the extra sleep.

It's just that I wanted to get a lot of writing done, and I haven't. I've read a lot, which is great. But I have several projects that I started writing long ago that I wanted to devote some time to.

Today's list breaks down spending some time on each project, and I hope to see some significant progress in these writing projects before my leave is over.

Initially, my goal (which I did not share with my employer or my doctors) was to use this time to get one of the many business that I have in my head started and get some money coming in. And then keep that going so that I don't have to return to the job for very long. Let that income grow and get more projects coming in so it could be my full-time gig.

Now I'm at a weird stage. The hypomania is gone and I'm suspended in this state that I'm not so sure about. It's either stabilization or it's a slower fall back into depression.

We'll see. I've got plenty of doctor's appointments coming up, so I'm sure we will figure it out.

I just worry that the meds might take away my creativity. I really don't want that to happen.

And I wonder what things will be like when I return to work. I'm sure people will try to find out what happened. But what worries me is, after being gone 5 weeks, I'll need to be shown some of the basics of the job again. I mean, after working there 1.5 years, I didn't even have a handle on the basics when my leave began. Now I'll be thrown back into it.

I can probably get by with a few reminders from a couple of co-workers on how to do certain things, but then they will expect me to comprehend and continue on my own.

That's where the trouble began before. I didn't comprehend, I didn't retain info, I couldn't stay focused, etc.

When I go back, will all of that change due to the meds?

Or will I be right back where I was?

Thus, another reason to get the business gonig stronger so that I will have income when the job does not pan out.

My therapist keeps telling me that I need to have structure in my day. She seems to think the job is good for that. But we haven't gone far enough together for her to understand what I do at this job, how I wasn't qualified enough for it in the first place, and how co-workers are left alone to do their work each day. No structure at all. I often went days without doing any real work, only to be asked to completed a report to show what I had done for the week, and then sat there and wondered what I did all week. Oh, yeah. People.com. That was a big part of my week. Had to stay current on the Tom and Katie divorce.