At the risk of getting existential as hell... What exactly am I now? Going back home from seven odd months of travelling around Australia, New Zealand, and Vietnam was weird enough knowing I would soon be returning to the Antipodes, but at least in the gaps between working in Christchurch I could convince myself I was still some kind of traveller. Now though? I'm going to be pretty well based in one place (although I still intend to explore as much as money allows), even if it's not a place I feel sort of... at home in. Yet. And what exactly is this place to me? Do I say I live in New Zealand now? Or just that I'm staying here? Should I change this website to "The Occasionally Travelling But Currently Largely Stationary Miserablist"? It doesn't have the same pop. Or do I stop writing it? Without the travelling aspect I feel as though it'd just be a blog about depression, and there are plenty of those already. I suppose once the travelling ended in the original plan I'd have been faced with this same sort of decision, but it seems far less clear cut since I'm still geographically displaced. Honestly I think the biggest reason for all this introspection is a potent cocktail of moving somewhere where most of my friends aren't, the potential onset of Seasonal Affective Disorder (going back to Winter was smart hey?) and my other half being nearly twelve thousand miles away for the time being.
In those insufferable lists you see of "Things you should never say to people with depression" quite often appears some sort of prohibition on asking people why they're depressed; and although I appreciate making people aware of the (very likely) possibility that their current bout is utterly without cause, that's not to say that certain "triggers" can't set things off, much the same as for anyone that might experience stress or bereavement. So there's a take home from this rambling mess: if you know someone with depression by all means ask them if anything has caused it, but be totally prepared for the answer "nothing". I'll find a party blower or something to celebrate my good deed.
3 Comments
Birk Lautner
9/5/2017 12:07:29 am
As I don't get most of the stuff you're telling about in this post, I get a thing about "vulnerability-stress-hypothesis" (if it's the same in the english discourse): Your "potent cocktail" is indeed potent and, as I feel it wouldn't mean too much if a stranger from holidays commiserates (i googled that one), I gotta tell I will be very interested to see how you will manage this one. Hope you know what helps you make it (whatever "it" is for you), and you have the someones to make it. And for my not so purely intellectual interest: There may be plenty of blogs about depression but I'd rather read the well written one of the guy I met and liked.
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Birk Lautner
9/5/2017 12:20:18 am
Ah, Update: As 5 minutes have passed, i feel the need to straighten out everything I said. I will leave it with this remark: Write whatever you want, but you're good at it. I will probably go to bed now as I'm not making things better.
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3/7/2023 12:37:21 am
En iyi bilecik ilan sitesi burada. https://bilecik.escorthun.com/
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Author28 year old computer scientist/physicist with major depressive disorder, a need to write, and a deep-rooted mistrust of beetroot. Categories
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