Living With Depression

“Every Morning Anna Feeds Ignatius B. Fish First Thing…”

I woke up early again this morning. The dogs and I were up and going before 8. I was okay when I got up, and as I sat here with my coffee I seemed to be fine but something was creeping in, like starting out on a beautiful clear day and then fog starts blanketing the land and you have to inch along because you can’t see further than a foot ahead of you in any direction. I didn’t know what to do. I got out my sketchbook and started to draw.

It’s been a very slow process, moving through the hours. I drew, I painted, I did the detailing with my black pen, and by the time I was done I felt better but very tired. At 3 I took a nap with the pugs. As I was easing into a wakeful state I came to a few realizations. I have been getting a little bipolary. I have been trying to do too much. I needed to be very still and very quiet and sort things out. What am I doing, I wondered, that is okay to continue on with and what have I been trying to do that is causing increasing anxiety? It became clear pretty quickly.

Daily blogging and moving ahead into the next 365 day project are okay. I’ve done this for almost a year now and what I have found is that it steadies me. Where one might look upon a 365 day commitment as a chore, something many people are afraid to take on, for me it provides a backbone for my day, something that keeps me moving forward, and something which, when I have completed my daily task, makes me feel so much better about myself that it has, as I have now written many times, had innumerable positive outcomes. I am grateful to have found this daily practice and I will continue on.

The next thing, asking people to join me with their own 365 day project. That is fine too because it does not require me to do anything but provide the space meaning that I have encouraged people to do this because it has been so beneficial to me, I will toss out a few, only a few, pointers to help people begin or thoughts about what it has meant for people to do this but truly, other than encourage people to do it because it can transform lives, people really must find their own way as I did. I have said that people can leave links here in the comments to their own 365 day project when they comment on my posts and this is perfect and provides a kind of accountability. Beyond that I am not offering anything else. One day this may be a paid course that I will offer in much more detail. I am not doing that now.

And The Sunday Night Writing Group has proven to be a very good thing, something that I have come to dearly love, and something I will definitely continue, but here’s where things started getting glitchy. Not the Sunday night classes themselves, no, I love them them, but they are a tremendous lot of work, and then, in the excitement of doing it, and it feeling so good to teach again, many other related projects came to mind and that’s where I started getting into trouble. I have, in the past, feared making money that would put the services I need to survive at risk because it wouldn’t take much if I created ongoing income for me to lose the services, and then I have said that when I get medicare I will lose most of the services anyway so I could afford to make money. Well, that is true, technically, but the thing is there’s a reason I have these services. I have them because I am a person that lives with mental illness. The things I struggle with are well managed and I am vigilant about doing all the things I need to do to take care of myself but the pressure I have put on myself to ALL OF A SUDDEN WRITE BOOKS AND CREATE ECOURSES AND MAKE INCOME SO I AM NOT TERRIFIED ALL THE TIME ABOUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME ONE DAY has all of a sudden made me feel so afraid and pressured waves of anxiety are coming in increasingly and this has to stop.

I hope that I can produce good work that will help me make an income one day but currently just writing the material for these Sunday night classes is all I am able to do in addition to blogging and working on Anna’s book. Anna’s book is the most joy-producing thing that I do. I look so forward to going on a journey with her over the next 365 day project I just cannot tell you. And I am absolutely not going to put any pressure on myself as I do it. I will make art, I will see what Anna wants to say in terms of text that might go with it to make a little book, and the blogging journey around it is mainly going to be what it is like for me to do the work at all. The joyful things, the hard days, the doubts that creep in, discovering who I am as an artist and illustrator writing this kind of book, it will be a journey that I will be recording, that is all.

What will happen as a result of teaching my Sunday night group and writing the material for it is something that I cannot yet see and won’t be able to for awhile. I love these women, I love this process, I love teaching but I am finding that I need to be very gentle with myself and not try to push beyond what I can comfortably do. Book projects and ecourses have been tabled for now. I write a tremendous amount of material for each class and one day I will look at what I have done and see what it might be. Further than that I need to stop pushing. I have been pushing myself a lot harder than I realized and my bipolary bits and parts have started to flare up. It is taking a toll, and I can’t let it. I will blog, I will make art, I will teach, gently, and with tremendous compassion for myself along the way.

I am also coming up against something very hard. I am an intelligent, creative woman, I have gifts and talents as we all do and I am using them to the best of my abilities, but I have not been able to hold down a job outside of my home in my adult life. I have tried and maintained, at the longest a job for as much as 3 months. During those times I went into the bathroom and threw up and cried throughout the day. I just can’t manage it. What will happen to me if I can’t create an ongoing business to make an income? I don’t know. And it makes me cry to think about it. When people see that you are capable of producing good work they think that surely, then, you can do more, you can make it a full-time, ongoing concern. Historically I have tried many times, many things, in many ways, and always come back to the same thing, I simply cannot sustain the pressure of ongoing work either inside or outside the home. What I am doing now with the blog and my classes is simply remarkable given my circumstances. For now I will leave it at that.

I cannot predict what might happen in the future. I have gotten so much healthier over the last year that I may find, a year from now, that I am able to do more than I could possibly have imagined, but I don’t know that, and I can’t know that yet. And this makes me afraid, and it makes me sad, and it is what it is.

Today I made art. I am writing this blog post. I have made it through the day. I got a load of laundry going, I am taking care of myself and the pugs, that is what I can do today. I am doing my best. It’s all I can do. It has to be enough.