It’s been about three years since I wrote anything around here, or since I did any kind of work on my personal projects. A lot has happened since, and honestly it wasn’t the best of times.
Two years ago I started experiencing some depressive episodes, some worse than I ever had, and slowly everything started going downhill. It affected my personal life, professional work, academia (not that I was too involved in that anyways), I was losing my grip pretty fast. This resulted in a severe burnout at work but thanks to my coworkers I was able to go easy and do everything step by step; however the impostor syndrome combined with thoughts that I wasn’t doing enough took a toll on my mental health. My personal life also took a 180˚ turn, but I’m not going to dive in that too deep.
After everything went through, besides my mental health declining at rates that I haven’t experienced before, even my physical health was affected in some ways. That made me realise that a break was desperately needed. That’s when I realised I needed some professional help, and after visiting some doctors I got the answer that stress was the common denominator for all my ailments.
Not very long afterwards I went for a visit to a great psychiatrist which promptly stated that what I was experiencing was a depressive episode and that I need to address some of my issues otherwise it could get worse. As the saying goes, once you hit rock bottom the only way is up, and I was definitely feeling like I hit that spot. I started my first round of antidepressants, moved to another city, started a new job. Everything was alright at first, until it wasn’t. I started having anxiety attacks pretty often, panic attacks once every couple days. That’s when I also started taking anxiety medication as well. Everything was alright for a couple months, I was “ok”, however I still ached for my long lost passion and drive for doing anything for me; I had lost my hobbies and passions to these mental issues. Since I felt better and pretty much all of the depressive symptoms disappeared, I stopped the treatment after 6 months.
The Good™: I bought a car! Well, that’s one of my biggest achievements that I’m really proud of, that I was able to save enough to get a car all by myself. And more than that, I was very lucky to get a great one. I also started making burgers; incredibly tasty and good looking ones. I upgraded my coffee making gear and as a result now I can only enjoy coffees from coffee shops, everything else tastes like muddy water.
The Bad™: four months. That’s all it took for my depression and anxiety to kick back in after I stopped taking the antidepressants and anxiety medication.
I realised everything was starting to spiral down again so I made a quick phone call and I got scheduled for a visit to my psychiatrist back in my home town. So here I am, on my second round of (different) pills. These act different than the previous ones and they’re doing a pretty good job, all things considered. I’ve been able to get back on doing things that bring me pleasure, I started reading, I had multiple short but pretty vacations, but I still have to work on myself a bit.
So that about sums up the last three years. Take care of yourself.