Two mornings ago, after a month of punishing work schedules and a sudden dramatic shift into winter, I woke up with the most vicious black-dog depression I’ve experienced in years.
I occasionally have days of mild depression, usually tied in to the available light levels. In winter, or after three days of heavy overcast, it will sneak in at times; but I’ve been managing Seasonal Affective Disorder for so long that my symptoms are usually mild. To me it feels like the emotional and mental (and sometimes physical) equivalent of the first day when you’re coming down with the flu. Everything is tiring and leaden and effort is oh-so-hard, with a strong need to sit somewhere comfortable and watch season 1 Angel boxsets. I can usually push through it, distract myself, or slowly and grudgingly perform the work that will help. They’re not fun days, and most emotions feel like their coming through cotton wool, but you could talk to me for five minutes and notice nothing, other than “Catherine’s a bit low-energy today.”
Two mornings ago was not like that.
Every emotion had vanished but one: in an interesting inversion of Pandora, the only feeling left in the box was despair. Otherwise I was aware that I cared for people, logically, but I couldn’t feel it at all.
Of course, this was the worst timing ever. I’m less than two weeks away from my first big launch and accordingly I’d made a dozen commitments, with three important ones due at the end of the day. And there was NO WAY I was going to get them done.
I tried, knowing that any work I managed to complete would help. The completed cover art had arrived, drawn by the oh-so-kind-and-generous Willie Hewes and while the uncoloured draft had made me giggle with glee, the finished version just seemed… wrong. I spent an hour in Photoshop trying to combine it with the name. Every combination of positioning, font, sizing, effects… it all sucked. (And incidentally my skin didn’t fit right, either.)
I abandoned it and just sat. Eventually, The Dude came in and helped me. He started trimming and equalising the interview files, he made sure I was warm and that I ate food and was very, very patient while I spoke mostly gibberish and tried not to cry. I watched a movie, read three books, loaded up a computer game and watched him play it. And I sent a couple of emails factually advising why my work would be later than anticipated. I Got Through The Day. It was all I could do.
In which Catherine made an understandable but possibly unwise decision
One of the reasons I have been pushing so hard with this resource is that I’ve been dreading this. Kevin and I decided to start this website a year ago, but we didn’t go live until November. Do you know why? I knew that starting something as big as a website in the middle of winter would kill me. My depression has been mild for the last few years, because I have been smart enough to go very gently in winter. I cut back my hours at work, I get at least an hour of sun every day, I play a lot of World of Warcraft. Because trying to do more breaks me.
But here I am, two weeks away from the start of official winter (a time, before I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder, when I lost three jobs due to exhaustion and depression), working 16 hour days. Am I totally insane?
Yes and no. It’s silly, so silly, to put all my eggs in one basket… but I know that if this resource sells enough copies I can quit my Day Job. And then I don’t have to try doing both. Without the Day Job I can sleep in as I need to, get sun as I need to, and still spend six or more hours a day on the website. If I have to try to do both? Well, daily posting will be impossible. A lot of other things would have to go. At the time when I’m really starting to develop momentum, I’d have to slow down. Maybe that would kill the business, or maybe that would just condemn me to one incredibly sucktacular winter.
So, in order to avoid crippling depression and delays, I gave myself a dose of crippling depression and delay that is still affecting me on the third day. Irony!
I’m very concerned that it will happen again before the 28th… I still have a LOT of work to do, and almost all of it needs to be very high quality to help me achieve my goal: selling enough copies of the resource that this is the last ever winter where I have to do this. Working only for myself gives me the freedom to work from home, or in the northern hemisphere (And oh yes, I want to do that. Avoid winter entirely for the rest of my life? Yes, please.) or to have the occasional black-dog day without bringing everything undone.
And that would be the best birthday present I could ever think to give myself.
Why I’m writing this
Not to gain sympathy, dearests, I don’t need any. And definitely not for kind advice, which I really don’t need. Why then?
Because I doubt I’m the only one who struggles with this. Because I want you to understand why I want this product to succeed so much. And because it feels good to have it said.
Thanks for listening to it. Come talk in the comments and talk to me, okay?