Category: Musings

A New Low

I am no stranger to mental health. I have long considered myself to be a mental health advocate, always encouraging coworkers, friends, and family to take care of their mental health. Find a therapist, take meds, meditate, read: get your spoons back.

I have also been open with friends and family about my past struggles with anxiety. This was mostly in college as I dealt with coming to terms with being gay, graduating, and moving into the “real world.” I haven’t minded sharing about anxiety attacks or taking SSRIs. For the last several years it’s been easy to talk from a place of peace and safety.

It’s more difficult now to write about my depression and dark night of the soul from the midst of such a terrible moment. I have never had such a crisis in faith as I reevaluate who I am and what I believe. I have never felt more terror as I contemplate death. The unceasing rumination in my head trying to fathom nothing. Trouble falling asleep, waking up to unwelcome thoughts, constant feelings of impending doom. Fatigue, heart palpitations, short breaths, hopelessness.

Honestly I’m not sure if there is nothing or something in death. I haven’t come to any particular conclusion as I sort through things. But I want to write, journal, and catalog more of my thoughts from the eye of the storm rather than in retrospect.

Thoughts, prayers, and good vibes are all welcome.

I have recently restarted my SSRI, am in intensive outpatient therapy, taking a leave from work, and am fortunate to have a decent support system. If you’re going through something, you’re not alone. We’re in this together.

A blog? In 2022?

The blog craze of the early 2000s has come and gone, and yet here I am in 2022 starting a blog. With platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more all still in large use, it might seem odd to start a blog now. Why not publish my thoughts elsewhere?

However, I have my issues with these platforms. Facebook’s algorithm and marketing strategy continuously change my timeline and every fourth post is an ad. Instagram was created and continues to be a platform mostly for images. Twitter has its roots in quick, SMS-style bits of information even after they’ve increased the amount of text per tweet and the ability to create long(er) form threads. And all of them are jumbled mixtures of media: posts, ads, stories, reels (RIP fleets), retweets, collaborations, a share of a share of a share from a page that used to be a like… the list goes on.

I’d like to post with more intention. Recently, I read a book titled How to Do Nothing which was a very thought-provoking read. In it, the author, Jenny Odell, discusses social media and its impact on the world. I appreciated that her solution to social media as it exists was not to tear it down, renounce it, and never look back, but rather to change it. Could we use a decentralized system? Might it be geographically based using larger mesh networks and platforms such as Mastodon?

A WordPress blog isn’t necessarily decentralized, but I do have more control over what people see when they visit, and that’s a step in the right direction. Posts can be long form and I’ll have a chance to edit, delete, elaborate, and review before posting. But the goal with choosing this platform is intentional. And simple. These are just my musings and posts: maybe I’ll post a new cocktail recipe or which book I’ve picked up. The beauty of it though is that it stops there. I don’t have any goals of making money from these pages and posts, no affiliate links or ads.

So feel free to join me and follow along! Add a comment, send me a message, suggest a new recipe. I’m all ears.