Looking for distractions (aka: life with infertility)

Living as an involuntarily childless woman means that everything not involving cycling is just a distraction. Noise. Background music. Vicodin. It's nearly impossible to sustain an interest in anything other than achieving the prize, a baby, so I welcome anything that can divert my attention for a moment.

My distractions:

• travel (I get to go places for free because I'm a grad student - yay for me)
• reading
• writing (poetry, memoirs, essays, and more; I also love writing my thesis, which is a memoir)
• watching old TV shows (M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Nanny, Titus, SATC)
• photography
• working out
• cooking (although, oddly, I hate doing it)
• gardening (but I sold my house for the sake of my grad degree, so I'm in an apartment, with no vegetable plot in sight)
• family and friends (but I live 2000 km away from all of them, so that doesn't do me a lot of good...)
• cats (but I'm not allowed to have any)

It's hard to keep up with hobbies/interests (read: distractions) when one is infertile, especially when you're a TTC vet. You know, when you're depressed you basically just want to lie in bed or sit on the couch all day. It doesn't occur to you to listen to music. You don't realize that you've worn the same outfit for 4 days straight. That's what this is like. Chronic unwanted infertility = chronic depression. Alice Domar has done work on the this topic, and has found that depression rates among infertile women are around the same as those of women battling cancer. Crazy.

Today I got distracted, though, and it felt ... well ... almost good. I worked on the intro to my thesis, wrote a book review, got my hair cut and coloured, helped out someone who needed assistance, sat in on a meeting for an upcoming literary festival, and just made my DH's lunch for tomorrow. I was so busy all day; it's been over a year since I've accomplished so much in a 24-hour time span . It didn't help me, per se, but at least my attention was directed elsewhere for a while. How did I work up enough motivation and energy for all of this? I don't know.

Now what to do tomorrow? Nothing is on the agenda, other than my thesis. Perhaps I should make myself busy. But that requires energy. And I don't have any because I want to have a baby, but I can't. How to stop thinking about that? Get busy ...

It's a tautological thing. A dog biting its own tail. A cycle. Just goes on and on.