You may have noticed that I haven’t made a blog post these last couple days. Probably you didn’t notice.That’s okay too.
Were have I been? I’ve been battling my way through the absolute worst bout of depression I have seen in years. And it was bad. It got so bad, I seriously considered quitting. I thought, if writing is going to bring me this much grief then what’s the point? Why go on with something that hurts me so badly?
Fortunately I have a loving wife who gave me as much encouragement as she could, and put up with my black moods for nearly a week, and that helped me get over my desire to quit writing. Also, Ellie Soderstrom said she’d kill me if I stopped.
However, some things are going to change. Specifically, I’m shifting my attitude about blogging. Trying to get something new posted every day is part of the reason I think I burned out so badly. I had an expectation of what I could do with this blog that fell far short of reality, and it hit me all at once and took me down hard.
So for the time being at least, I’m backing off on that. It’s not that I’m going to quit blogging entirely, but I’m no longer going to strive to put something up for every weekday. After all, it’s not as if I have anything to say writing-wise that you can’t hear somewhere else, from someone better qualified and probably far more interesting.
So, I’m going to give myself permission not to blog when I don’t feel like it. I’m also going to stop trying to hit any kind of arbitrary word count.
Because somewhere in the middle of the terror that was last week, I realized that I wasn’t having any fun anymore. Blogging had become a dull and tedious ritual. I know that there are some things we should do regardless of how we feel. But it isn’t exactly as if blogging is bringing in the big bucks for me. It’s not even bringing in the little does. (Hunting humor: a sure sign you’ve been working in Sporting Goods for way too long.)
Put differently, this is not my job. And since I already get depressed often enough about the job I have, why should I let blogging add to that pile?
It’s possible I’m way off base with all of this. Maybe I should keep pushing through, regardless of how I feel. It wouldn’t be the first time I wrote something that I ended up disagreeing with later. But for now, I’m gonna take it easy. Hopefully it will help me improve my outlook and avoid falling into another nasty week-long funk.
If not at least I can promise you one thing: whatever happens, you can read about it on my blog.
The Unsanity Files 