A Depressed Writer: I've Been Dropping the Ball

I've been meaning to write this post for ages — since the end of September, at least. Or that's when I first had it scheduled. I probably could have penciled it in even before then, though.

It just seems like I've been floundering everywhere lately. No matter how great my intentions and my desire to be healthy, whole, balanced, productive, happy, I seem to keep shirking at least one if not most of my promised duties.

There's just so much that I wish I could take on and commit to:

• Work full-time so I can pay my bills, have a fulfilling career, make friends with a totally new set of people I never would have crossed paths with otherwise but whom I adore. 
• Write all the time, jotting down ~1,500 words a day on whatever novel I'm drafting and still have time to pen the occasional essay, plus my weekly blog post here, as well as on my personal blog...and don't forget the poems!
• Read allllll the books! The new ones that come out every week in YA, my preferred age category, as well as the occasional foray into Adult. But I also have so many friends who are writers, and I want to read their manuscripts! Oh, and don't even get me started on all the biographies, memoirs, history books, and celebrity humor books I want to devour...
• Socialize literally every day of the week, either before or after work and for at least four hours a day on my "weekends." I'm an extrovert, so being around others energizes me, and it's the best way for me to process my life, but it's also one of the ways in which my mental health stays regulated. For some reason I need human contact to stay mentally healthy.
• Sleep, like, eight or nine hours a night and wake up fully refreshed.
• Watch TV and have other "down-time" to do fun stuff that's hobby-like...including, you know, finding a hobby for the first time in my 25 years. Guys, I don't have any quirky talents other than writing and being snarky. Which means the way I pass the time in my off hours is to keep working, and bite the heads off my friends. Not that I don't enjoy it, I just think maybe they don't, you know? 😂
• Self-care! The basics plus whatever fun advanced stuff there is, like go for a manicure, get a haircut, go shopping...whatever!

That's my list. For the past few months I've consistently succeeded at not shirking one and only one of those bullet points: the job one.

Granted, it's a ridiculously important one! I'm never gonna be one to tell you not to prioritize your career, not just because it's a responsibility you've agreed to but also because of the aforementioned it's how you pay your bills and keep a roof over your head, clothes on your body, food in your belly. But there are seven items on that list! I'm doing one? Something's wrong here.

Again, I've been trying to write this post for almost two months. And somehow, two months later, I still don't know what I'm trying to say with it. 

Except I guess, here I am, confessing: I'm failing this. I'm overworked, overcommitted, under-energized, stressed out, harried. I haven't written in ages. I decided I would do NaNoWriMo this year, and here it is the 19th day of the month and not only have I not so much as announced my novel, I don't even have a freaking title for it!

Self-care? What's that! I shower sometimes. I drop my clothes off at the laundromat. That's about it.  

A manicure, a salon, shopping? Ha! When my clothes get worn through I order new ones online and hope they fit. 

I do watch too much TV, but that's just because I can't work and sleep all the time, and I'm too tired to read or write in the other hours. 

What I'm saying is: I've dropped the ball, hard. In fact, I've dropped it so hard, I honestly don't even know where it rolled off to. It's entirely possible I dropped it out of the subway on the bridge during a thunderstorm like a month and a half ago and it was swept away to the depths of the East River.

At the same time, I also managed to stay alive. And that's a shockingly big deal. During the same two months I've been thinking of writing this post about how I've failed, I missed an appointment with my doctor and started becoming truly depressed. Eventually I ran out of medication, which exacerbated the depression.

TRIGGER WARNING: discussion of mental illness and suicidal ideation/attempt to follow for the next two (2) paragraphs. Please skip to the *** if you will be triggered by that discussion!!

I reached the lowest point, of wishing I were dead. Of wandering around wondering how to become so. And then a few hours later...I saw someone try to die. In a manner I had often fantasized about acting upon, three years ago 

It horrified me, it sent my body into shock, but once I recovered from that (thanks in part to knowledge that the person was somehow physically safe), I was jolted into a renewed desire to take care of myself.

*** So here I am, a few feet above that rock-bottom, feeling lucky to be alive and realizing that, okay yeah, I did drop the ball, but I also survived. 

I believe I'm what's considered highly-functional depressive, which means that no matter how bad things get, I keep on trucking — until suddenly I don't. My depression doesn't disrupt my day-to-day very much, until it does in a big way, with, say, a hospitalization. People at my jobs often haven't even known I'm diagnosed unless I tell them or there's a crisis.

But it's a reality, and because I am high-functioning, anything that isn't strictly necessary for survival gets shunted to the side. As much as writing is part of my lifeblood, it doesn't quite pay my bills yet. So my novels, my essays, my blogs...they go to the back burner.

I hate that. 

At the same time: I refuse to beat myself up for this reality. I did not choose to be depressed. I did not walk into it, I did not do anything to bring this diagnosis upon myself. I'm 25, and I'm imperfect, but I'm doing my best.

Have I been dropping the ball? Yes.

Am I going to strive to pick it back up again, starting now? You bet.

This image is only relevant because it's of me (hiiiiii friends!!) but also it's of me in New York City and honestly? That has always and likely will always mean conquering to me: my fears, the struggles of not getting a job, and freaking high rent. 

Hey. Love you guys. If there are any areas where you feel like you're dropping the ball, I want you to know it's okay to show grace you yourself. Life is hard, and busy, and there's demands on our time. We're in this together. 

What's some advice you wish someone would give you, that you'd love to pass on to someone else? Share in the comments!

Oh, and if you are dealing with depression or another mental illness and wish to speak with someone, I urge you to reach out to a friend, local doctor, therapist, trusted family member, or the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, which is available 24 hours a day in the US at 1-800-273-8255.

A Depressed Writer: Taking Small Steps

When I first decided to write about being a depressed writer on this platform, all the way back in March, I didn't expect that it be more than four months before I wrote another installation in the series.

Yet here we are, the end of July, and I'm just now checking back in. That delay, in part, is of course due to the "creativity coma" that I talked about two weeks ago.

And now that I'm finally feeling better, creatively, in the sense that I want to write again, that I have ideas for writing again, I'm slamming into another wall: my depression.

The symptoms of my mental illness are something that I encounter, in some mutation, on pretty much a daily basis. Whether it's lethargy pushing me to hit the snooze for three hours; anxiety keeping me awake even though my eyes are so tired they burn; or a general sense of malaise, like the end of the world is nigh and my doom is imminent; on any given day, I am fighting off my depression and anxiety.

It's constant. And it's exhausting.

I feel like being, or at least pretending to be, "well" takes up so much of my energy. And the time! Between personal hygiene, and rest, and eating, and being social, and reading, and relaxing, and also spending 45 hours a week at work (plus commute!), what time is left to be creative?

And yet creativity, writing, is such an integral part of my mental wellbeing. It's how I express myself, yes; it's how I communicate with people, yes; it's how I hope to change the world, of course.

But in so many ways, writing is how I learn. About myself, and about others.

So often, when I sit down to write an article or a blog post, it's because I'm trying to explore an idea, an issue, a scenario.

It's the same with novels. They start as an image, or a certain feeling I want to explore.

An image: A girl standing in the midst of a crowd of people singing her praises, making eye contact with the one person who's always had the ability to make her doubt herself.

A feeling: A girl in her mid-20s, trying to achieve her dreams and have it all, wondering why her life doesn't look like the TV shows, wondering where her "Friends" are.

I write because it's how I process, and I write because it's how I survive.

Depression clouds that. It makes me forget that I even want to write, much less be able to do so well.

And so being a depressed writer is a combination of taking breaks and allowing yourself to rest, and then, eventually, just forcing yourself to do it. Because in the end, you know it's what's best. It's what you need to do. To survive. To come out, in any way, ahead.

And sometimes, "just doing it" means taking it slow. It means sitting down to write, scrounging out 500 or 1,000 words, and celebrating that fact with a slice of cake or, if you're me, an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Taking it slow means relieving the pressure, the wildly fake pressure, that there is a timeline by which you need to "make it." And it means rethinking what "making it" looks like at all. It means diving into the fact that I'm 25, three years out of college, have completed four novels and don't have an agent yet. And here I thought I'd be signing my book deal before graduation...

The only way to survive as a depressed writer, I've found, is to acknowledge reality, including my limitations, and eventually embrace overcoming them. 

And sometimes, it means thinking ahead: I began writing this post on Thursday morning, knowing I wanted to publish it on Monday morning. I wrote it in chunks over the weekend. And here it is, ready for you, as scheduled. Because I knew if I waited until the last minute, something would come up — something always does.

You get better with time, at being a depressed writer. The more you get to know yourself and your depression, the more you can deal with it. But if you're overwhelmed — when you're overwhelmed — it's important to go back to the basics: small steps. One thing at a time.

You'll get through it. I believe in you. I believe in me. We've got this.

N is for Never Giving Up #AtoZChallenge

I suddenly have the song "I Want it That Way" stuck in my head. It could be thanks to Brooklyn99. Or it could be because I typed the word "never" and my brain leapt at the chance to torture me for a few hours. Regardless, neither of those things have anything to do with this post, but I had to get them off my chest.

The truth is, I want to talk about giving up because I'm a quitter. I'm the first one to abandon a ship when it starts to sink. I've quit more things in my life than anyone my age should reasonably have begun. I quit music, sports, friendships, schools, cities, churches...you name it, I've quit it.

There's one thing I haven't quit, though: writing.

I was in second grade when I first told someone I was going to be an author when I grew up. That same year, I began writing my first "novel." It was atrocious and I don't think it was longer than five pages, but I never stopped.

At one point, I counted 17 novels-in-progress on my computer. This was in middle school.

By the end of high school, I had more than 300 poems in a folder. I didn't think this was a lot, until one of my peers told me how prolific she was at poetry: she had written 100 of them!

In college, I majored in creative writing and journalism. I wrote at least one article for the newspaper per week, in addition to stories and poems for class, in addition to a 250-page novel and a 100-page partial novel. Which frankly isn't that much.

In grad school, I wrote and edited novels and articles.

Since then, I have drafted and edited two full novels, published dozens of personal essays, and written maybe 100 or so blog posts.

I say all this for two reasons:

1. To brag. And for you to tell me I'm great. I crave approval at all times, from all people, on all fronts.
2. Because it's shocking. That I, who have quit so many things, have not quit writing? That blows my mind.

There's something about writing, the act itself of typing and the emotional relief of sharing, that has sunk its way into my soul and will not release me. 

For the months of October and November, 2016, I didn't write. I was off my medication and I sank into a depressive state so thick, so cloying, that I could not produce a single creative work. I was stagnant, and stifled.

The day I wrote for the first time, toward the end of November, I remember my heart beating faster, my palms clammy, and a smile on my face. It was the first smile that wasn't caused because of a funny joke on Brooklyn99 or a book I was reading or a friend cheering me up. It was real, genuine happiness exhibiting itself through my facial features.

I have always written. I hope I always will write. 

I think when I started writing this post, I was going to talk about how important it is, if you want a career as a writer, to never give up. Through rejections from agents, editors, readers, reviewers, if you want to make it, you have to keep on keepin' on. Just lower your head and charge forward like a freaking bull. 

And that's true. It's 100 percent true and valid. 

But I'm a little moody today. I'm in Manhattan, where there's a flash flood warning, and even though it's almost 10 a.m. we've barely achieved 7 a.m. light outside. I have a window cracked and the sounds of the city are filtering in, the men grumbling outside as they take away the trash, the cars swishing through puddles, the rain falling on the fire escape. I'm feeling introspective and thoughtful.

So if you take anything away from this post, let it be this: find what drives you, what moves you, what makes you smile when nothing is going your way. And cling to it. Never give it up.

If that thing is writing: awesome. 

If writing is your career and the thing that makes you grin like a toddler eating his first cookie is, like, bicycling or synchronized swimming or mushroom-collecting, hold onto that. Cherish it. Never give it up.

There's just so much stress in this life. So much that's hard. So many, many reasons to throw our hands in the air and say, "I can't. I can't do it anymore. I give up."

I was there last week. I was distraught, emotional, depressed. And through this blackest of moods, a tiny ray of sunlight filtered in, telling me: "If you give up on life, you don't get to write anymore."

My dreams are vast and ambitious, but the thing that drives me? It's love of writing. It's passion for the craft. It's desire to tell stories. 

What is the thing that drives you?

Never give it up.

B is for Besting Bipolar Blues #AtoZChallenge

Oy, what a weekend.

Hey, y'all, and welcome to April! It's snowing here in New York. What a world we live in. Because it's April, here at OA we're participating in the #AtoZChallenge, where each day we post on a theme relating to a certain letter of the alphabet!

Now that the intro is out of the way, I'm here to talk about, you guessed it, mental illness and writing. The title is about "besting" the blues of bipolar disorder, which it's a good possibility I have but no doctor has ever fully diagnosed me and stuck with it (long story), but really this post is an exploration of how to do that.

Because I'll be honest with y'all: I haven't done such a great job at besting bipolar blues lately. I've sunk into and embraced them. I have barely written, except to work on two pieces related to THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER, which is a moving book about grief that's tearing me apart.

As for my novel, or poems, or the essays I'm trying to submit for my 100 Rejection Challenge? Nah, brah. Haven't touched them in ages.

It's 100 percent because I've sunk into a terrible depressive episode. So bad, that this weekend I walked around midtown Manhattan in such a funk I didn't even have the energy to pick my feet up. I literally dragged them after me. I won't go into all the gory details of my state, but rest assured, it isn't great.

And I've had a hard time beating it back in order to be productive. Which sucks, because one of the things I was going to write about for OA was how to write with depression. And here I am, abjectly failing at writing through depression.

Except.

Except maybe I need to reevaluate failure. See, all this time I've thought of failure as any inability to produce. I've thought success was being active, productive, and seeing results from my work.

But maybe failure isn't as all-consuming and omnipresent as I've thought all these years. I'm so quick to jump on anything as a "failure," but maybe the only failure is the absence of existence.

Let's put it more bluntly: maybe I'm not failing at being a writer with depression as long as I'm breathing. I may not be writing every day; may not have cracked open my WIP in more than a month; may not have an agent, or an editor, or a book deal; but I am still alive, and therefore I am still dreaming. I am still plotting. I am still aching.

And I'm still writing something. This blog post is a thing. The article I have coming out tomorrow is a written thing. The ones I'm writing about THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER, as depressing and morbid as they may be, are written things.

People always say success looks differently than you expect. But maybe failure does, too.

Maybe the only way to fail is to fully give up. And I haven't done that yet. So, in a way...I am besting my bipolar blues.

A Depressed Writer: Introduction

There are two aspects that have come to define who I am, in my own mind at least: I am a writer. I am depressed.

The way these two identities interact and play with each other in order to create who I am on a daily basis is...honestly, I think I could write an entire thesis or dissertation on it. Not that anyone would necessarily want to read that, but I could still write it.

In lieu of a dissertation, I thought I would use this platform to regularly explore what it looks like to a be a writer who is depressed. I should note that this is my experience only: I'm not trying to claim some sort of universal depressed writer way of living; and the things that work for me may not work for someone else! I do hope, though, that my openness and exploration of this topic will help you as you seek to make sense of your own life, calling, and illness.

I've considered myself a writer since I was a small child. I think I was in second grade the first time I told someone I was going to be an author when I grew up? It's just an aspect of myself that I've accepted and grown comfortable with for a long time now. I write not just because I have something to say, but also because, well, I have to. It's a compulsion, a need, a fierce burning in my chest that only grows hotter if I don't let the words come out.

That said, it took years for me to call myself a "writer," not just "aspiring" or "someone who writes." But once I accepted that this is who I am, not just what I do, it became so much easier to fall into this identity.

The depression was a different story. Not that it took me a long time to accept it, because I think that as soon as the symptoms began and the thought occurred, "maybe this is depression," I allowed it in. More that: I have a significant trove of memories that are un-depressed. I actually lived a life before Depression.

It's been about 10 years since the two have converged. Writer Karis met Depressed Karis and the two became one. It's not a happy marriage.

See, both of these selves want to be the one. The one [self] to rule them all. The king under the [brain]. (Listen, I don't know if these references are working so I'll just come out and clearly state: I am reference The Lord of the Rings. I am doing this for the laughs. Please let me know if you do laugh, as that will be a great boon for my Humor Self.)

There are periods in which I give myself over to one identity. I write and am not depressed. I am depressed and I do not write.

Most of the time, though, I straddle both identities. I write in spite of my depression. I am depressed despite my writing.

It's...a monumental struggle. When things are super bad, depression-wise, it's honestly the hardest thing in the world to do the bare minimum of getting out of bed. Eating, putting on clothes: those are worthy of a medal. Then if I'm actually productive? At that point, I may as well award myself the Nobel Prize for Achievements through Depression.

Through this series, A Depressed Writer, I want to explore the different nuances of writing while depressed; chat about a few things that have helped me cope with depression while remaining productive as a writer; and generally dive into this subject which is so personal to me for so many reasons.

I hope you'll enjoy, learn a lot, and be encouraged!