Exercise seratonin and grand plans

I am going to miss playing soccer this winter. I doubt my body is up to much still, but soccer requires only brief spurts of running, not enough to make my heart beat funny, but enough to set back my mood cycling. I may get to prolong this hypomanic state another week after all. I was starting to transition out of this one this weekend, and this morning was in an odd state in which I had the mental restlessness and fidgity manner of hypomania, but with an underlying exhaustion growing that would allow the mania to burn itself out. Now, after another game with just enough running, I am back to the phase I was in last week.

I may need this phase, since I am working out my plans for the next 3 years now. I don't think it really affects the papers I am working on this term, so if I am not exactly sure of my focus just yet I have some leeway, but registration for next term is coming up very soon. My department is structured around 5 emphases, and a MA student is expected to choose 2. I was originally thinking when I started this program that I wanted to have an international focus, but the problem of making sustainability and environmentalism reconciled in some fashion with Objectivism has become a major issue in my current sustainability studies. So, I am back to the issues I was stuck on in high school. I am going with environmental policy and political theory as my two emphases, I think.

It may take more than a soccer game though to keep my energy up. I can see how anxiety disorder is linked to depression disorders. It is hard to put into words, but the more my depression symptoms return, the harder it is to do certain sorts of new things, especially things like trying out the recreation center on campus. I am sure I will eventually, but right now the thought that I might benefit from exercising there is pitted against an unreasoned reluctance to be in that sort of new public place alone. I really didn't do much at the CU recreation center until I started hanging out with my first two boyfriends, and Joe wanted to work out there with me. My reluctance to enter gym facilities is the same feeling as my reluctance to enter new bars or restaurants without company. However, I have no anxiety about contacting or visiting the office hours of professors I have never met. Are there extrovert and introvert varieties of mood disorder presentations? I am naturally a decided introvert, and am most at ease in the company of one or two people. This trait seems to become amplified when my mood cycles.

Certainly autobiographical case studies are of very limited utility in devising effective treatment for anything, and I have no way of really assessing my own mental state to be sure I am not compromised as I am writing, but at the very least I can record questions and observations for later testing. I will probably go back on depo provera eventually, at which time my mood will stabilize again, so this is a fairly temporary project, but I hate the idea of getting too used to relying on a drug.