This might be my first post made under a cloak of depression. So far, it’s taken me about two days to finish it. About 3 months ago, the company I was contracting at surprised me by not renewing my contract. It felt atypical to me. This put me in a position that I often avoid: looking for work without already having income. I find that I interview better when I already have a job, kind of like dating. I figured that I go about two months before I really needed stable income, but I started interviewing immediately. It was a rough period.

Self Worth != Accomplishments

I tend to conflate self-worth with work accomplishments. I try not to do this, but this habit is so ingrained that it’s easy to fall back into. After the first month or so, I found that it had become a full time job managing the recruiters, leads, and interviews. I’d heard that looking for a job was, in itself, a full time job, but I’d never experienced it like this before. I’ve always been careful to only look for work while I was employed.

This time around, it was a little different. I found myself doing more interview loops, and interview activities and projects. Meanwhile, my bank account shrank, stress built up, and my depression changed accordingly. I found myself interviewing in all kinds of mental states. Depression doesn’t feel like it’s really a good state to try to sell myself, or to ascertain whether or not I fit given job requirements. It also doesn’t feel like the best state to schedule things, or to do exercises / take tests to benchmark my abilities.

And it’s not something I want to disclose prior to being hired. I don’t think we are at a point, in society, in the United States, where it is safe to disclose such information. But I found myself interviewing, scheduling, and interacting with potential employers, even in downed states. As time went on, I think the depression became harder to manage. This last week I think I experienced a bout of depression that lasted almost the entire week.

And in past two weeks, I had steadily interviewed for a company that sent an offer letter in the darkest of my hours. This is unprecedented for me. It implies that it could be possible it is to just live my life, even in the darkness, as if the darkness were just a part of who I am.

I have resisted this approach, preferring to think of it as something that could be controlled and healed, but as I thought about it this morning, I realized that there really wasn’t solid evidence that I could do anything different, as far as controlling depression went. My perception is influenced by my thoughts. When the organ that has those thoughts goes on the fritz, staying in control of my thoughts seems a distant fantasy.

But this time around, I had even obtained a job, under the weight of depression – something I would not have thought possible. This created space to wonder if it might be possible to function even when my cycles are down. And I can see a reasonable possibility that practicing doing things, even when depressed, might build up a natural momentum and resistance to the state itself. Or maybe it will be like how the body adapts to physical training – the muscles will get more efficient and able to take heavier loads with the same resources.

This time around, also, I stayed active. I recently starting going to ecstatic dance on Tuesday and Sunday, and contact improv on Friday. Through ecstatic dance I got exercise and endorphins to balance out stress. From contact improv, I shared touch, in the form of shared weight. Touch is a big deal to me, possibly owing to multiple counts and types of abuse/trauma at an early age. In both of these settings, I had hoped to meet new people that might like me enough to hang around with me. In this way, I hoped to build a support network.

A Meltdown

This sometimes took a nasty turn, when I found myself feeling some kind of way about how no one was dancing with me. This was the case at ecstatic dance last Tuesday. It was a particularly potent event for me because the facilitator of the dance took some time to specifically address how to engage someone for a dance, so this was on more people’s minds. I hit a wall, finding that I just was unable to ask people I didn’t know for a dance – I felt like I was an imposter, like I lacked something needed to engage with other dancers there, like I couldn’t handle any kind of rejection. Twice, these feelings rushed in, like a giant wave threatening to crash down. Twice, I stood still, balling up my fists. A little voice told me that it would be worth it, if I could hang in for the rest of the dance. Another voice told me that if I couldn’t be present in the moment, then I didn’t belong there.

It was the first time I left an ecstatic dance. And I was so mad at myself for giving in that I wanted to hurt myself. I tried to calm down, but I was so angry that I couldn’t find a way to quell the anger. Right now, my partner’s younger sister and mother are living with us. Because of this, I try to avoid making too much noise associated with mood things. Ultimately, I dismembered a pillow, leaving its poly-fill insides all over the floor on my side of the room. It looked like a layer of clouds on the carpet, and felt somehow soothing.

A New Voice, A New Outlet

When I thought about it, I realized why. It was evidence. Evidence that I was in pain. My usual m.o. for mood things is to calm myself down when something comes up, by rationalizing my situation. This ultimately removes the stigma, but it also erases any trace that something happened that mattered. This silent primal violence that eviscerated a pillow and left its entrails strewn about the floor was the opposite of hiding. It was evidence of a drive that was very likely to be instrumental to breaking me out of my social prison. A thing that would not be silenced. As uncivilized as this appeared to my sensibilities, its power was palpable. In a state where I felt robbed of any will or energy to do anything, it had risen up, seemingly with self-generated energy, and done a thing that left a footprint that would take effort to erase.

On a whim, after listening to Ukulele Anthem, I had also bought a ukulele and starting taking free lessons at the library. I had been meaning to start learning an instrument for some time. I had heard that learning music could impact the brain’s activity, and wondered if such exposure could help with depression.

quit the bitching on your blog
and stop pretending art is hard
just limit yourself to three chords
and do not practice daily
you’ll minimize some stranger’s sadness
with a piece of wood and plastic
holy fuck it’s so fantastic, playing ukulele

It was the next day, as I felt the pain shoot through my fingertips, that I realized that learning the instrument might cause a similar kind of physiological response as bondage, BDSM, or self harm. And it is constructive. The pain builds callouses, which make it possible to play for longer. And in the case of being a musical instrument, there is a possibility to take the mind to a different place, away from the hopelessness of depression.

I even experimented with playing my plastic ukulele while riding my exercise bike. I think there’s potential there. I find exercise tedious. The ukulele takes my mind off of that tedium while my legs move. While I was unable to stream the ukulele app on my phone to the Firestick, I can do it with a Roku. This gives me a wide variety of songs to learn, making a lot of information accessible for those times when every ounce of effort counts.

When I write about it, it seems too complex to be the roots of a new habit. But really, all I need to do is put on exercise shorts, walk into the room, pick up the ukulele, and start playing while I peddle. These are small wins. Once on the other side of small successes, it becomes easier to introduce the complexity of using the app to play new songs.

Speaking of small wins, it’s too much effort to proof-read this post right now, and I want to set it free, so I’ve introduced the ‘unpolished’ tag, for these times when polishing the post is just too much trouble. Instead, I’ll save the energy for merging this post into my blog and getting on the exercise bike for my 15 mins of ukulele.