Tag: depression

Schmesolutions

Matt

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I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions, at least not in the hyped-up, designed-to-fail sense. Any time a segment of the calendar rolls over — new year, new month, new week, new day — is an opportunity to take stock of life and figure out if anything needs to change. That said, I’m not standing with the Internet Smartass contingent that likes to remind us that designating a specific moment in the earth’s revolution of the sun as the starting point is arbitrary and human-made — no shit. I happen to like humans and the way we make cool things like years and seasons and weekends.

What I like about the start of a New Year is that even the name itself says, “Big Picture.” Day-to-day concerns tend to be small-picture, short-term stuff like making grocery lists and figuring out if anyone has a birthday this week. Monthly stuff is longer-term. Something about the New Year makes it easier to look back on the Old Year and reflect.

2015 Rocked

So, what did I like about 2015?

  • I made an EP with two of my favorite musicians.
  • I moved from Michigan to Virginia, and my employer kept me on remotely so I didn’t even have to do the job search thing.
  • My wife and I adopted the sweetest calico cat.
  • I was prescribed Prozac, which does a much better job of managing my anxiety than Celexa was.
  • I took better care of myself overall, with doctor visits, physical therapy, counseling, and so forth.
  • I joined a gym, which I still attend somewhat regularly.
  • I took up drawing again, and this time I worked extremely hard on improving. It was a blast.
  • I learned to enjoy reading and playing video games without feeling like I should be doing something more productive.
  • I ate a lot of good food with a lot of good people.

That’s good stuff. I worked hard on being mindful about how I spent my time. I have a tendency to commit to leisure activity that makes me miserable — if I watch the first episode of a TV show, then I need to watch the whole season; if I’m playing a video game, I am damn well going to play it on Normal or Hard difficulty, even if it means dying frequently and replaying the same sections over and over.

No more of that. I’m good at turning things off and playing on Casual or Easy mode now, and I’m much happier for it.

2015 Sucked

Some stuff didn’t quite go according to plan. There was some chaos in my family that required an extra trip to Michigan shortly after I moved to Virginia. Our adorable new calico needed all of her teeth out right after we got her; later, so did our dog. Pets can be expensive. Good thing they are so cute and cuddly.

I had grand plans for music — continue teaching myself piano, record a new EP or two, maintain my voice. However, something caused a shift in my brain. It may have been the move, or the Prozac, or even just the sheer number of comics I was reading, but suddenly I found myself wanting to draw and write comics. I felt guilty at first, like I was betraying my inner musician, but it wasn’t long before I was able to embrace it.

My wife sprained both of her ankles. I don’t think I need to elaborate on why that sucks.

2016 Will Be Amazing and Terrible

This might be Star Wars talking, but I think I want 2016 to be about finding balance. Most of the time, I’m either all-in on some creative project, or else completely checked out and binge-watching TV shows. I need to learn to pace myself and make time to get out and see friends — or stay in and play online games with friends, depending on who is around.

Part of this process is going to involve figuring out milestones for the creative work, which I hate doing because it feels so corporate, but knowing whether I’m ahead of schedule, on track, or falling behind will help minimize the “I should be working” feeling I get whenever I’m not making stuff (or, you know, amp it way up if necessary).

As much as I hate making phone calls, I need to find a dentist and an optometrist this year. Despite great strides in taking care of myself after the move, I never did get around to replacing those particular medical professionals in my life.

Stuff What Helped Me

I’ll end with some tools I found last year that I’ll be carrying into the new year.

  • Bullet Journal. First off: This is FREE. They have journals you can buy, but Bullet Journal is a system, which is described in detail on the site. I’ve never been good about keeping a planner, but somehow this works pretty well for me. This, by far, has been the most helpful tool in my box. I highly recommend checking it out if you have trouble getting stuff done.
  • Xmarks. I thought I was done using browser bookmarks back in 2009, but I’ve never been able to get the hang of web-based services like Google bookmarks or Delicious — I usually forget about them. I gave Pinterest a go, but that ended up being more of a distraction than an aid. Now, if I stumble upon something useful, I just bookmark it and let it sync to all my browsers. So far, so good, but we’ll see if I’m still using it in six months.
  • Scrivener. I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the things Scrivener can do, and it has helped me immensely as I’ve been developing this comic idea. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically a program that lets you create digital Trapper Keepers for all of your writing projects. I love it.
  • Aeon Timeline. I won’t lie, I haven’t used this yet, but my wife loves it.

Adventures in Mental Illness: Indecision

Matt

This scene has played out hundreds, possibly thousands, of times throughout my life. Between 2006 and 2013, however, it was especially frequent.

It’s been a long day, and I’m glad to take off my shoes and flop facedown on the bed for ten or fifteen minutes while I wait for my wife to finish making dinner. Today she took one look at my face and made the executive decision to delay food and let me sleep for an hour.

When I drag myself out of bed, I feel… not better, but less noisy. Instead of flooding my consciousness with detailed memories of all my failures, my brain has settled on two or three to play in a loop. After I eat, if I’m lucky, I’ll be focused on a single failure that will drive me to do something creative.

“Failure” is not entirely accurate because it implies that I tried to do something and wasn’t successful. The things that my brain likes to throw in my face are the times when I wanted to try something, but didn’t. Like when I was researching fiction magazines and found one that seemed like a perfect fit for something I’d written. I read their submission guidelines over and over. I revised my story a few times. Then, I never actually submitted it.

Tonight, I will write something.

Tomorrow night, however, I’ll be dwelling on five things while my food digests. I didn’t move out of state to play music with my friends. I defaulted to an easy degree. I didn’t maintain my friendships. I don’t practice my guitar enough. I never figured out how to work with watercolor pencils.

When that happens, I don’t act. I sit on the couch, marathoning old Power Rangers episodes, wishing someone else will tell me what to do because I can’t do it all. It’s too much. I suck. And now I’ve wasted another perfectly good evening.

Thankfully, this hasn’t happened to the same degree since I’ve been on medication. In fact, the experience is barely comparable. Now, when I find myself struggling to figure out what to do with my free time, it feels like I have a ton of opportunities to do cool new things. Guilt doesn’t enter the equation — I might note that my guitar skills are getting rusty, but I’m really excited about the progress I’m making with my drawing. My poor blog has been neglected, but this story idea is so fun to work on! I’ll get around to the other stuff eventually, sure, but I want to ride this wave as long as I can.

Adventures in Mental Illness: Digital Demons

Matt

This episode takes place when I am 15 years old.

It was sometime in the spring. A family from church came to visit on a sunny weekend afternoon. The patriarch had a vintage Les Paul goldtop. That’s not relevant, just awesome. My family lived on a lake, so we went out for an evening boat ride, after which everyone seemed ready to call it a night. Figuring I was in the clear, I fired up Ocarina of Time.

My next in-game objective was in an area full of Redead. For the uninitiated, Redead are mummified corpses that scream to paralyze you, then wrap all four appendages around you to drain your life.

It can appear a wee bit sexual depending on what direction you’re facing when the attack lands.

Anyway.

For whatever reason, instead of leaving, the visitors ended up in my vicinity, where I was slashing up Redeads and slimy things. One dropped a heart! I picked it up.

The guitarist’s wife gasped. “Are you eating his heart?”

I struggled to find words. “No? It’s a power-up.”

A moment later I was assaulted by a Redead, eliciting another gasp. I glanced at the adults and saw my dad, an uncomfortable grin on his face, mouthing “turn it off.”

*

Things felt rough. I had been out of the public school system for a couple of years, first to homeschool and then to attend a Christian school. I didn’t fit in and I missed my friends. I was in an unhealthy long-distance relationship.

On top of that, of course, was the depression.

*

After a Wednesday evening service, the guitarist’s wife approached me.

“Matt, God told me that you’re feeling depressed and it’s because of the video games you play.”

I started crying.

For the first time, my feelings were validated by an adult I trusted — without any prompting from me, no less! Not only that, she had a solution from the mouth of God.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“I’m a prophet,” she said.

*

The divine message came a few weeks after I had finished Ocarina of Time and started playing Diablo heavily. In a way, it made sense — this game was about venturing into Hell to kill demons. The game was named after the devil! There were pentagrams! Of course it was making me depressed.

Into the trash it went. For one glorious moment, I claimed victory over that inner darkness and felt relief wash over me.

*

My friends didn’t understand. One minute I was all about this game, and the next I threw it out and claimed it made me depressed. Most of them were simply confused; a few got mean.

“See? Your friends really do hate you,” whispered the depression.

Just like that, it was back, and my coping mechanism was in a landfill.