Monthy Archive: February 2007
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February 22, 2007

Life : Happy Again

It appears that for much of the past year, I have been depressed. That statement alone is not worth commenting on – I have previously established in this blog that I have dealt with periodic bouts of depression since I was a teen. What is worth noting is that I didn't realize I was depressed, and in fact when my wife asked if I was, I told her (with great confidence) that I was not. None of my usual warning indicators had been triggered, I was still motivated to do everything I usually do (well, I wasn't writing blog entries; but there were other explanations for that). The only symptom was that I was unusually tired – I'd come home from work and need to take a nap, even though the day had not been particularly strenuous. Given that I am overweight, I was willing to chalk that up to poor health.

What changed my mind that this was depression was that my exhaustion disappeared quickly once one factor in my life changed. I normally don't talk about work on this blog; but think I can say this without disclosing any material information. There was a project that I was very interested in that I was supposed to have started leading in January of 2006. However company priorities meant that the start of the project kept getting delayed again and again. There was a false start mid-year, which quickly fizzled as resources where needed elsewhere (while annoying to me, these may have been correct decisions for the company). In hindsight I realize that my needing naps started around the time that I gave up on the project actually starting anytime soon.

Well, the project finally started a few weeks ago, and I realized that the week before the project started (after the process passed the point of no return) that I wasn't needing naps anymore. In fact, in the week the project actually started, I was getting by with less than my usual amount of sleep – I was energized.

So I have to concede now that I was in fact mildly depressed for much of last year (my mood being driven down by not being able to start the project I so wanted to work on). The depression was so mild that none of my warning signs were evident; but it was depression nonetheless.

Ah well, lesson learned. I may have been living with the specter of depression for most of my life; but that doesn't mean I know everything about how it affects me.

BTW – this post is also a kind of test to see how much my mild depression affected my blogging. If I keep posting over the next few weeks, then I will have to also concede that I had a warning sign and didn't realize it.

Posted by Steven at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)