I've been doing a lot of thinking about what has picked me up. I present my thoughts here as a seed for others to consider and apply to their own lives or ignore as they wish.

The incidents that sparked the latest round of depression were the breakup, my last daughter going off to college, and winter. The daughter and the breakup were close together and were followed by what we can all agree was a tough winter.

I have been a full time father for 22 years. Last August my daughter left for college and I was left with an empty nest. It hit me harder than I thought it would and I am sure my reaction must have contributed to the breakup. Essentially with the departure of my daughter my future was thrown into question. What would I do if I wasn't a father all the time?

Then my fiancee jumped out of the relationship and that tipped me farther into the black cloud. I may have invested too much of my future into that relationship. Whatever the cause and whatever I did, the two incidents left me with no idea of what lay ahead of me.

And this last winter didn't help me at all. I was in a little apartment with crushing debt and cold weather outside and no decent idea of what to do with the rest of my life. For a while I devoted my life to working, putting in lots of unpaid overtime, coming in on the weekends and doing almost nothing else.

In December I realized that I had no attachments and could go overseas. I didn't even have to keep working for the same branch of the service. So I started to apply for whatever jobs I could find as long as they were in Europe. Then as the winter wore on I expanded my search to include tropical climates. And I started to see that I no longer carried an obligation to or for anyone but myself. That was a liberating thought.

Then I went to California. It was a taste of my future life and that blew my depression out of the water. I only needed to commit one act of social surgery and I was clear and happy again. I quit Roll & Go with whom I'd been singing for 10 years. I won't go into details but the group was part and parcel of my relationship that had gone bad.

Now I am waiting for word on going to Guam. I have rediscovered that I can dream and there is no one who can crush my dreams and take them away from me. If the job on Guam doesn't come through then I will be interviewing for a job in Italy. If that one doesn't work out then I will try for one of the other two jobs coming up in Italy or the one in Spain.

And I am singing again. I enjoy playing my guitar and I like singing. I have made a serious turn around and I don't want to go back to the depths from which I have risen. I can now work to realize a long standing dream and nothing will stop me.