So apparently Tuesday’s post touched a nerve with some of my friends. The post got some great comments, and got me thinking. About the importance of getting it out. About the importance of not suffering alone. About the importance of friends.

Too often we keep our problems to ourselves, leaving us to suffer in quiet. We don’t talk about our problems, maybe because we don’t want to appear needy, maybe because we don’t want to hijack whatever social interaction we may be a part of. But all this does is leave us to suffer alone. For me, this leads to brooding, which leads to more suffering, which can snowball into a Funk (more on those later).

Tuesday’s comments reminded me that I do not suffer alone. It reminded me that I am not the only one who dances on the edge of The Pit; that others may be hiding it just as well as I am, if not better. It reminded me that if I’m weird or broken (words from The Pit), then I’m in good company.

It also reminded me how much I have in common with my friends. They say like attracts like, but it’s hard to tell if no one talks about these things! But here we are: talking, sharing, and growing closer as we do so. While our differences are what keeps things interesting, it is our similarities that bring us together.

So thank you to all of my friends, commenters, readers, and lurkers (I’m secretly one of you, too) alike. Thanks for listening to my venting. Thanks for sharing some of your own experiences. If you ever need to vent, I’ll be there. If nothing else, it is comforting to know that we are all in this handbasket together, wherever it may lead.

P.S.: Queen reference!

My brain has a skill. When I am tired, stressed, or otherwise in a bad mood, it decides that I need to review a “Greatest Hits” style overview of all the embarrassing things I’ve ever done or said. One of the advantages of being an introvert prone do depression, I guess.

I call it “being in a funk,” and it’s not nearly as funky or fresh as the name would imply. In addition to killing my motivation, my brain tends to go deep into the Pit of Shame, dredging up the slimiest, most abhorrent things it can. Now I’m a relatively nice guy, so admittedly the horrors it summons are more along the lines of Hello Cthulhu than a gibbering shoggoth from beyond the stars. But remember: this is depression we’re talking about here. The last thing it is is logical.

I’ll think about all the times I said something to one of my friends that offended them, usually things they have long forgotten about. I’ll think about the mistakes I made as a kid, like (not so) subtly adding time to my video game timer, or filling a water bottle up so full you couldn’t hear anything sloshing, then saying it was empty. I’ll think about YouTube videos I’ve shone people, and worry if I offended them. I’ll think about all that I could be doing, all the potential that I’m wasting on computer games and internet surfing. I’ll think about all the effort I could have put in to school projects, how I could have done better, how I could be using my degree(s), how I could be looking for a better job…

You probably get the idea.

The funk is when all the darkest voices come out, seeking to paralyze you with self-loathing. Luckily, it’s happened often enough that, while I may not be able to stop the shame, I am able to better identify some of the triggers. One of the biggest, unsurprisingly, is lack of sleep.

Sleep seems to strengthen the mind’s defenses against funk, but at the same time the funk can swell in strength as I relax to fall asleep. Couple that with a tendency to over-think and brood on things, as well as an inability to turn off my brain, and you can see how the spiral can begin to get out of control.

I’m not writing this as a plea for pity, or even help. I guess I’m writing it in an attempt to get it out of my brain, and into a safer place where it can bother me less. I’m writing to remind myself that It Gets Better. And maybe I’m writing to try and let my friends and family know some of what goes on behind what is often a calm (or at least unfazed) exterior. I will apologize, however unnecessary it may be, if I have ever said or done anything that was less than perfect offensive or bothersome. Know that it bothers me much more that it likely bothers you. You may not even remember. But I do.

And so does the Pit.

Have I written about writer’s block yet? I don’t think I have. I could procrastinate for another hour or so checking my archives to make sure, but I feel that would only exacerbate the problem. That is to say, it would be another way for me to avoid writing. I could spend as much time as I wanted preparing, getting distracted, feeling guilty about being unproductive, and being unproductive, but that wouldn’t get me much further than where I am now. And I’ve got stuff I need to do.

Intellectually, I know that the best way to combat writer’s block is by writing something (anything!), even if it’s crap. Well, that’s all well and good, but try getting your subconscious to listen to reason; it’s problematic at the best of times, and only seems to be all logical when it serves its own ends.

So here I am, writing about writer’s block. Don’t let the irony overwhelm you. Here’s a protip: writer’s block sucks. Try to avoid it.

I think that the proverbial honeymoon is over when it comes to this blog. It’s starting to feel like an obligation, posting every day. But I worry that if I stop posting, I won’t recover. My inadvertently missed day last week already shook my confidence, and it doesn’t help matters that I have a lot to do and not many spoons to do it.

This isn’t a cry for pity. Nor is it an attempt to get people to help me and tell me how awesome I am (I was there, and it was pretty sweet, but that’s not the point). It’s more of an attempt to get the juices flowing, and getting to a point where writing is just a habit and it feels weirder to skip it than it does to sit down and do it. So here I am, throwing words onto a page to see what sticks.

And don’t get me wrong, it is working. As I write, I it getting easier and my motivation growing. If I didn’t have other stuff to do, I might try and get several posts written. I think part of the problem is also tied to fatigue, as when I get tired I tend to lose interest in things. But I’m trying my best to soldier through, because I know that things do get better when I get off my butt and actually do something.

Metaphorically of course. Right now I’m writing this slouched on the couch in the basement. It doesn’t help the staying awake thing, but I seem to have just taken an impromptu micro-nap, and that seems to be helping.

So yeah. Writer’s block plus fatigue divided by the number of spoons left equals filler post. Whee.