Fixed and Floating - formed on the First of Feb!

There are quite a few Fs there, and that pretty much sums up how I'm feeling right now. I've been suffering from depression for nine years, off and on, and thought it might be liberating to put my experiences down on paper, so to speak. Who knows, I might even get to meet one or two people like me, which is normally an extremely rare event. Whatever, every man and his dog has a blog, and since I have neither a blog nor a dog, I feel I've been missing out.

I came up with my blog title after overhearing conversations at work (yes I still manage to hold down a job) about mortgage interest rates. Everyone has an opinion about the merits of fixed or floating-rate contracts, to the extent that the whole fixed-or-floating debate is getting close to Blur-versus-Oasis was in the nineties. I've yet to dive into the housing market for all kinds of reasons, but I figure I'm both fixed (nothing ever seems to change) and floating (totally directionless).

I live in Auckland, New Zealand, having moved here from the UK in November 2003, and I'm currently very much in the "on" phase of my depression cycle. Anything involving other people is pretty much off the agenda, and everything else, while still manageable, has slowed down considerably. I walk at half the speed I used to, supermarket shopping seems to take ages, and at work I'm completely unmotivated and functioning at about 30% of capacity. I live alone, have no family here and few if any friends. My parents live in South Canterbury, which for those of you who don't know NZ, is an 80-minute flight and an even longer drive from here. So I'm almost totally isolated.

Last night I went to a party with work people for the first time in a long time. Heaven knows why I went. The whole experience was painful for me and I was home by 11. Watching Jeremy, the new maths whizz-kid, get eaten alive by a bunch of blokes who with a few drinks inside them had turned into pack animals, was horribly reminiscent of school. Sensing Jeremy was enjoying the party even less than me, I dropped him off on the way home.

On Friday night I was up past 3am listening to the commentary of the match between Nadal and Verdasco which was simply amazing. Richard Evans and Chris Bowers are brilliant commentators - shame they couldn't have done all five sets together. I now have mixed feelings about tonight's final. Part of me wants Federer to tie Sampras's record, but wouldn't it be something if Nadal could recover from playing the longest match in Australian Open history to win the final? I have half a mind to find a pub somewhere and watch it, and maybe take tomorrow off work. I've taken very few sick days in my five years at this job, and let's face it, I am sick right now.