Over the years, I’ve noticed that my passion provokes my depression. They have come from my inability to obtain a goal or accomplish what my heart has set out to do. It has also come from that fact that others have discouraged me on my journey to fulfillment. I felt hopeless and helpless after failures, no matter how small or unimportant. Just the mere fact that I failed hit me hard. Some may say that I should develop a thicker and tougher skin, but that comes with time. In my research, I found that creative professionals are more prone to depression than any other professionals, with writers being the highest affected. It’s almost a guarantee that a writer will experience depression. Could this profession be cursed? How could what I love send me in a downward spiral so frequently?
Perhaps the reason my passion provokes me into a cave of depression is because I’m a perfectionist. Although others may think my work is great, I have a tendency to nitpick it. I carefully go through each part and make sure it is the best it could be. Sometimes this prevents me from publishing articles and stories until I feel it is just right. When it isn’t right or I don’t get that feeling of satisfaction, I know it is incomplete. I can’t tell you how awful it feels to have a semi-finished product. It’s even more depressing because I can never seem to find the road to finishing it. Either I have to settle and my masterpiece becomes dull and lifeless to me. Now you see how my passion provokes my depression! I know that I can do better, yet here I am struggling to make my thoughts come to life. How can I truly call myself an artist if I’m producing mediocre things (although they really are great according to family and friends)?
Another reason my passion provokes my depression is due to my inability to successfully express all that I feel on the inside about a specific task. Even now, I’m struggling to convey what I truly mean by this. Every writer has a very particular way of releasing their thoughts to an audience. Some use vocabulary that is strong academically, satirically, or just humorous. Others use allegories or symbols and stories that resemble what they’re trying to say. I believe that’s why we have metaphors and similes and other literary devices. However, when none of these things work for me, how else can I find a way to get my point across to my audience? This frustration provokes my depression because I begin to feel like there’s no way to accomplish all that I had my mind set on. It’s incredibly depressing to see the end in my head and not being able to get to the finish line in real life.
I guess the only true way to lessen the blow of depression is to lighten up on myself. Nobody’s perfect and although I know that, I just feel that my next piece could be my big break. I don’t want my big break to be an incomplete thought or have messy details that I could have cleaned up. I also don’t want to live a life in a dark, depressing cave because of my passion for writing. Somehow I have to find a happy medium and balance out the two. Anything that provokes my depression and steals happy moments will have to be well thought out. I refuse to allow myself to slip into depression that way. I have much more to fight on days that writing doesn’t provoke me, why should I allow something I enjoy to harm me?