Recently, I wrote my attitude had mysteriously shifted about the circumstances of my life - and who knows why. When I emerged from a particularly bad bout of Depression earlier this year, it was if I awoke with amnesia - my thoughts were cleared and my mind veered to an entirely different rhythm in its sudden focus.

I have become obsessed with my finances.

Flashing back to the fall of 2003 and around the time I began this blog, I was calculating credit card debt alone of over $40,000. (Now, I think it was worse than that: Each time I calculated the debt, the numerals rearrange themselves ever-higher. Now I think it was more in the neighborhood of $55,000.)

So something had to be done. I was close to disaster. I tore myself out of Cincinnati and moved an hour North to take up residence in a cold city where I had no life outside of work, to one side of a breaking-down duplex quite easily the worst building on the block and here is where I have been since. Almost three years!

It was awful. To say I lived paycheck to paycheck was an understatement. There was so much to take care even before I could take on debt reduction: Items screaming for immediate attention and needing money - leaking pipes, rotting foundations, electrical problems. And the setbacks - a chimney that suddenly crumbled, a hit-and-run driver ploughing into Honda, an unpleasant surprise when completing my taxes.

At first, I was unable to do much with the credit card debt except play credit card games: Transfer balances between a series of cards offering teaser rates and then, when I had time, negotiating or shifting balances with the lowest possible permanent rates where I was then able to pay only the minimum.

And even while I had always lived somewhat frugally, more was cut. I stopped shopping even at Goodwill or CD-Exchange stores and for over a year I bought no clothes, books or music. I began to carpool and rarely even went to matinee showings of movies. I paid full-price for only one movie this last year(Brokeback Mountain) and only saw a few more movies in theaters in the last three.

Perhaps this is what people mean when they say needs create new outlets you never previously considered. For me, one was discovering the public library contained more than books. I never realized the huge selection of movies, videos and DVDs they offered -- and free! Forget Netflix!

Other opportunities were the local parks systems. There are some very beautiful natural settings near here, including here, here and here. I have begun regularly hiking them, sometimes with Grace in tow (but she's getting old and is beginning to have trouble). But even there, we instead walk new parks nearby.

And things have slowly changed. Duplex' problems have been fixed and paid for. Honda was paid off one year early. One credit card will be paid off by December 1st; another by January 1st. I intend to continue aggressively reducing the remaining credit cards and the Home Equity loan and so will still live paycheck to paycheck, but it hasn't seemed so dire lately.

There is a truism that I've heard specific to writers: that writers are frequently a depressed lot and that only in their melancholy state are they motivated to spew forth insightful thoughts; that nothing kills the motivation to write (or read) as much as a good mood or a sunny outlook.

I'm not at all a religious person, but I imagine I could refer to writings describing the Devil in attempting to articulate the various and changing guises of Depression that have followed me throughout life. During a 'good' year, Depression would be more like a low-level haze, a melancholy not at all bad - a way of living with its own mysterious 'other', an avator, that quietly observes and comments in my ear. At other times, and particularly earlier this year, the feeling could be so bad that my body, brittler than rusty iron and colder than galvanized pipe, hurt as it moved through air heavier than my skin.

But like with a fog lifting mid-morning, the Depression has burned away, cautiously gone since mid-summer. Cautious because there was no apparent reason for the change. Perhaps only certain, obvious aspects have dissipated. Perhaps other Demons remain.

One significant Devil seemingly expunged has been an acceptance of my surroundings. I could not describe how or why or what factors, if any, that suddenly changed my attitude about Dayton. I did not visit a Shrink and took no mind-altering drugs. There is nothing--and perhaps more importantly, nobody--that swept clear my earlier dour outlook of this place.

Not that there has been a total transformation in feeling: Dayton still has its faults; I'm still planning on moving away. But somewhere this year I came to the conclusion It's Not That Bad and have come to accept Dayton as it Is.

Perhaps the Demon that represented Dayton, Ohio was a false one. The real Demon was learning to accept getting older and being single. And like any avid churchgoer, perhaps it is better to face these Demons in a place like Dayton rather than anywhere else. I hope it has made me stronger.

For the first four years here, I felt more alone than at any time in my adult life. I still do not have a wide circle of friends outside of work. Maybe it has been nothing more than the natural progression of time that I have become first accepting, and then comfortable with, "Table For One".

It would be so nice to have someone in my life. Even in the last few months, the idea of "being single", perhaps for the rest of my life, means waking up with a pang - the Demon back at work. I think of my parents, married for nearly fifty years, riding out the storms life sent them and still being able to laugh together. Did I miss learning an essential skill or block a significant genetic imprint from them that makes coupling impossible?

Perhaps so.

But the Demon put to rest is content to remain single rather than to take a step sideways or backward.