It took me a long time to spit out my last two posts. The reason for this is that I remain overwhelmed with work to the point that I feel worse than the hamster on the spinning wheel. I can not work more than I am, 60+ hours per week, yet I feel that I'm surrounded by people who are perpetually disappointed in me for not doing enough.
I feel myself drifting deeper into depression which greatly influences my posting because part of that first level of depression is always "what is the point." So while I think I've had some of my most creative thoughts while I was depressed (which I've observed among the writer-artist . . . a damned depressed group) there is a phase of it that leaves you with this feely of total futility.
But depression isn't always a bad thing. It is a state of feeling, even though that type of feeling isn't palatable. But it is feeling and I prefer to feel than to be dead, or worse, alive and trained that feeling is bad.
But depression is playing with fire. I've been in the depths of it and I would agree that place is not a healthy place to dwell. The best visual example I can find of that place is in the movie What Dreams May Come and the main character's wife was dwelling in the bowels of hell . . . a dark place in the pit of an upside down church.
The other part of depression that is not healthy is that it always estranges me from the world. First, it makes me irritable and hard to live with. Secondly, people don't like to be around depressed people. I'm not sure why, except that it is contra intuitive to their notion that we suppose to always be smiling and pretending that life is swell.
The last part of depression is that it creates distance between my wife and me and she is my last friend standing. My depression irritates her and makes her frankly mad at me. So, I intentionally pull away from her to not be that irritant. But there is no place left to go but to the inner shell of your own thoughts.
I always share these things here, I think, for different motives than my evangelical friends on Face Book who love to talk about their trials and ask for prayer as an attention-seeking device. I'm not doing that here, I don't think. I share these things not looking for pity or prayer (which wouldn't hurt) but because I think these things are part of the normal human condition and by talking about them honestly, helps others to know that they are not alone. That is my only point . . . unless of course I'm self-deceptive.
I feel myself drifting deeper into depression which greatly influences my posting because part of that first level of depression is always "what is the point." So while I think I've had some of my most creative thoughts while I was depressed (which I've observed among the writer-artist . . . a damned depressed group) there is a phase of it that leaves you with this feely of total futility.
But depression isn't always a bad thing. It is a state of feeling, even though that type of feeling isn't palatable. But it is feeling and I prefer to feel than to be dead, or worse, alive and trained that feeling is bad.
But depression is playing with fire. I've been in the depths of it and I would agree that place is not a healthy place to dwell. The best visual example I can find of that place is in the movie What Dreams May Come and the main character's wife was dwelling in the bowels of hell . . . a dark place in the pit of an upside down church.
The other part of depression that is not healthy is that it always estranges me from the world. First, it makes me irritable and hard to live with. Secondly, people don't like to be around depressed people. I'm not sure why, except that it is contra intuitive to their notion that we suppose to always be smiling and pretending that life is swell.
The last part of depression is that it creates distance between my wife and me and she is my last friend standing. My depression irritates her and makes her frankly mad at me. So, I intentionally pull away from her to not be that irritant. But there is no place left to go but to the inner shell of your own thoughts.
I always share these things here, I think, for different motives than my evangelical friends on Face Book who love to talk about their trials and ask for prayer as an attention-seeking device. I'm not doing that here, I don't think. I share these things not looking for pity or prayer (which wouldn't hurt) but because I think these things are part of the normal human condition and by talking about them honestly, helps others to know that they are not alone. That is my only point . . . unless of course I'm self-deceptive.
4 comments:
I've always appreciated your honesty.
Do you find writing therapeutic? I find that sometimes putting my thoughts down on paper helps me feel more in control of them.
If you still have my email, let me know. I'm still here. Sweating out a prostate biopsy, but I'm still here. And I've been working some creative actions with my other writing partner in PA.
And you are right about depression spurring creativity to a point. Remember how I got my handle? It's often the dark and strong emotions that fuel the most powerful writing and art, not the happy-clappy shiny stuff.
"...some of my most creative thoughts while I was depressed"
David wrote the Psalms, and in today's world he would be a blues singer. You can't sing the blues unless you've lived the blues.
Trick is, letting enough depression to power those creative thoughts, but not so much as to overpower them and become destructive.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
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