Thanks to a bit of foresight at the outset of my current surge of depression, I switched up my therapy schedule so that I’m seeing my therapist every week for the time being. I had no way of knowing during that first week that it would last this long, but I already knew that this surge felt different than most and managed to push myself through the lethargic, unfeeling haze to ask for something I felt I needed. Which, you know, is impressive on its own, considering how difficult I find it to ask people for something I want or to assert my right to take up space when I’m at my best, let alone when I’m doing this poorly (even if, in this case, I’m not really asking for a favor from my therapist so much as offering to exchange money for a service more frequently that I usually do). Still, I was able to anticipate a need before it came up and take the steps required to get that need met, all despite the overburdening press of this current bout of depression. While these sessions haven’t exactly helped me get through this extended wave of depression (there’s a reason I used to compare my experience of depression to being caught in a storm at sea with only a raft and that’s because it rose and fell in waves without me ever being able to get away from it), they have helped me figure out what combinations of influences, events, and various life factors probably contributed to it. Unfortunately, knowing why I’m currently incredibly depressed isn’t super helpful when there’s nothing I can do about it.

To put it plainly, this long-lasting wave of depression is probably a result of the current combination of stress, burnout, loneliness, lack of fulfillment, sleep deprivation, and lack of sunlight that has dominated my life since the start of 2024. Work’s been incredibly hectic and demanding, heaping a bunch of stress and burnout on my lap. The surge in the on-going pandemic has added to my isolation on top of adding another brick of stress to the growing pile in my lap. The stress and burnout I’ve got also make it incredibly difficult for me to push myself to leave my apartment when I don’t absolutely need to, adding to the loneliness and lack of sunlight that are a natural part of the late-January-to-early-February period of winter in my part of the midwest. Because I’m so stressed and burned out, I have a difficult time falling asleep unless I’m incredibly exhausted and, even then, I sometimes fight it so I can get more than an hour of relaxation in during my post-work evening collapse on my couch. All of which makes it difficult to focus on work, let alone personal projects like my blog or writing chapters for my Infrared Isolation series that don’t NEED to be done by a specific time (or at all, for that matter), so getting any kind of personal or creative fulfillment takes more energy than usual and I’m usually getting less out of it as a result. All of these problems are intertwined in a way that makes it difficult to solve any one of them since the extra effort required won’t produce results quickly and might not even produce results at all until I’ve managed to spread that effort across a few of the problems rather than whichever one will hold my attention the best.

Further, almost all of this would be solved if I stopped working fifty-plus hour weeks at work and went back down to forty-hour weeks. Those two to three extra hours a day make a huge difference, but they’re pretty out of reach right now because, even if I wasn’t super busy at work, I’m trying to pay down my student loan debt so I can finally be free of that particular millstone that’s been hanging around my neck for over a decade now. Plus, I don’t think I can even afford to work only forty hours a week without some incredibly stringent budgeting and the removal of all non-essential costs, like all the patreon artists I support (and gain a lot of enjoyment from), the streaming services I’m subscribed to, and my occasional new book and video game purchases. I’d also probably need to stop saving up for a new PC, too, and at that point I’m going to be just as stressed out and miserable as I am now, just with a couple more hours a day to be miserable on my own time with. At least with this particular arrangement, I’m miserable on the clock for those extra hours.

I’ve talked it through pretty extensively with my therapist, on top of considering it way more extensively on my own, and I don’t think that any other choices would actually improve my life right now. I’d always be trading something for another thing. Honestly, the current state of affairs is probably the best one because at least this one has an end somewhere. I don’t know when it will be and I hesitate to guess since there’s no telling what changes might occur in my life over the next year (like my rent going up another fifty bucks at this year’s lease renewal according to the notice I got from my landlord), but at least I’m heading towards a goal and actively trying to improve things. Sure, I’ve been telling myself that for almost a year now and I feel like I’ve been standing still this entire time (which makes it all worse since feeling trapped is the number-one sensation that will make everything else going on in my life seem worse than it is), but I am making progress. Slow progress, but progress on such long-term goals often is. And if I manage to get a decent bonus in March, another decent one in April (the bonus from the fourth quarter at my employer always comes after tax season since its a profit sharing bonus and its difficult to calculate profits before all the taxes are filed), and a decent tax return, I might FINALLY be at the snowball point again. Which is, admittedly, difficult to be excited about becaues the last two times I hit that point, it immediately moved out from underneath me as a pandemic happened and then my rent went up by over two hundred bucks. Who knows what will happen this time. If nothing else, it will be nice to be able to tell myself that I paid off one of my student loans in its entirety and that is almost certainly within reach by the end of April at the latest (the first of three sets of loans from different loan servicers, now that my debt’s been sold around a few times). That’s worth something, though, dismal state of affairs aside.

So, unfortunately, I’m stuck with slow progress. Slowly changing my habits and addressing my day-to-day issues to get myself out of this ongoing stormy sea of depression and slowly digging myself out of debt as life under capitalism endeavors to bury me alive. Slowly trying to get anything done so that I can avoid a complete and total breakdown. Slowly getting work done since I can’t afford to rest enough to work quickly again, nor can I afford to take time away to do nothing since that will just cause work to pile up for me when I return or otherwise get back to work. Maintain the course. Keep going. Just one foot in front of the other and all that. It’s trite and it genuinely does not feel good to write, but it’s the best option I’ve got since my depression doesn’t seem to be going away on its own and my debt and workload certainly aren’t going anywhere without a huge amount of effort on my part.