So, I promised an update to this and this. I emailed the woman from the YWCA and heard back. Unfortunately, I may have misread her a bit; the YWCA doesn't have the budget to hire anyone for social justice work right now. She would like me to volunteer there, though. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to respond. On the one hand, it's something I think I'd enjoy, and more volunteer experience doesn't exactly hurt my résumé. On the other, I am still looking for paid work and I don't know that I could handle a job, even a part time one, and two volunteer positions.

Psychologically, I'm doing better. My meds are working again, and I got in to see my therapist. We decided it would be a good idea to pay attention to the thought patterns that appear before the thoughts that drive me to depression. So I'm starting a mood journal, but it hasn't been terribly revealing since I haven't had a crash or near crash.

I haven't yet sent a message to my advisor, though I'm composing it. It's hard, trying to explain what happened with my health and life circumstances without making excuses. I also have to strike the balance between being apologetic and not making him more hesitant about supporting my research etc. than he already will be. Slow going, but going.

I've also been writing more, like you suggested, Monkey. Since I never finished the creative writing class I took in college (should have failed, prof was merciful and gave me a D-), I'm working on a couple works of fiction. The first is a bit of biological sci-fi, though that's slow going. The second is arising from a PBP character background that I wasn't intending to be more than maybe 1000 words but is already nearly three times that, and I've only finished the prologue and part of chapter 1! I'm also working on a couple non-fiction pieces, revising one I wrote for a class my senior year about being a science student with a disability, and another on wolf reintroduction/culling. They're both a little political, so even once they're done I won't link them, but I hope I'll be able to publish them somewhere. If anyone has suggestions, I'd love it if you'd PM me.

Anyway, thanks all for the good wishes and advice.