Thank you Twitter and Facebook!

As most of you reading this know I have been off work for a while now, with anxiety and depression. Today was a hard day for me as most of my friends and colleagues returned to work after Christmas and I didn't, but more of that later. Over the last 6 weeks I have found a great deal of support from my family and friends, also from my online friends at Twitter who have shown great support to someone they have only got to know through short communications of 146 characters or less! In the past when I have been very anxious or depressed I felt a lot more isolated than I do now. I have the Twitter community and the ease of contacting my friends via Facebook to thank for this. So I wanted to say a big thank you to all my friends who have supported me on Twitter and Facebook, I really appreciate it!

Today as I said above has been difficult as most of the UK's working population have returned to work today after the Christmas break. From reading the twitter updates relating to this return to work most people are not happy about being back at work particularly as the weather is freezing. This is the first time in my adult life that I haven't returned to work after the Christmas break; I am still signed off work until later this month.

In one way I'm quite envious of the masses of disheveled, down hearted commuters making their way through London's sub zero streets this morning. I wanted to experience that huge January hangover, back to work, dismalness for myself. I need some normality and routine in my life right now. Over the next few weeks I hope to work out with my boss a plan for returning back to work and the thought of this fills me with both anticipation and doubt.

I still have a lot to work through myself and with those supporting me. (I'm hoping to join a support group run by the local community mental health team in the next couple of weeks.) I will keep you all posted through my blog how that goes and everything else. Over the next couple of weeks I plan to venture out a bit more by myself on public transport (one of the things that was making me most anxious) and visit public places (crowds even small ones, not one of my favourite things when I'm feeling bad.) It sounds really basic but if I can't cope with getting to and from work how am I going get back to work properly. I'm starting tomorrow with a trip to the South Bank, one of my favourite places in London but I have to get there on public transport and it is often crowded. I'll let you know how it goes.