The State of Things

It's been a while since I last wrote anything. Anxiety and depression are still a major part of my life, but now there's something new helping me to battle through the darkness. That something is love.  I'd really like to tell you that I've had some grand revelation about how I've learned to love myself, but that remains a work in progress. Instead, the love I've found is shared with a beautiful girlfriend, who seems to be the perfect partner for me.  A strong point of relatability for the two of us became apparent very early on, when we were discussing our struggles with mental health. My girlfriend is borderline bipolar. I'm eternally thankful that we were both very open about our mental health before our relationship began, as it would have been an unpleasant surprise for both of us when things get difficult. It has set a blissful precedent for open communication with each other and I am deeply thankful for that.  As you might imagine, both partners h

Have you ever experienced an interest in everything? Childlike wonder for absolutely every aspect of life? Maybe as a kid, you went through a few different stages - "I want to be an astronaut, a pirate, a doctor, a police officer" etc. Imagine, if you can, living a life where that never stops. I question it sometimes. Is it a disorder? Am I autistic or some other such condition that I can't quite quantify? For as long as I can remember, I've always felt this way. I'm interested in everything. I want to do and experience everything. From the banal, the monotonous and mundane, to the extraordinary, spectacular and fantastical. I want to understand what life is like for those in crippling poverty, or at the bottom of the social ladder and I want to be a great athlete, a politician or a superhero. I'm perfectly aware that this isn't possible, of course. That's a deep and often insufferable source of frustration to me. If you always feel like an ou

Undoubtedly, everybody feels the need to just get away from it all. Maybe for an hour, maybe for a year. But we all feel the need to escape sometimes.  How we choose to escape the stresses of reality happens in numerous ways. Sometimes it's a glass of wine or a cold beer after your day at work, other times it's sinking a few hours into a videogame. Even going to the gym or exercising otherwise can be an escape from the struggles of our lives. It tends to be that the greater the stress we are feeling, the bigger the need is to remove oneself from it.  In my case, I'm currently planning what some would consider to be pretty dramatic escapism, by literally taking myself to the other side of the planet. Several friends of mine who are equally upset with our current employer are also seeking this solution. There's more to it than simply "getting away," of course, but ultimately, physically distancing oneself from the struggles of our lives is extremely positive

So this is something that has been happening to me more frequently as I start to get a better handle on my emotional highs and lows: I'm now getting anxiety over feeling happy. As someone who has struggled with anxiety for half of his life, I believe it is absolutely fair for me to qualify feeling happy or enjoying myself as a kind of success. I think the reason I have become anxious over feeling happy is because that particular feeling is often so unfamiliar to me. Ergo unfamiliarity equates to uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to anxiety. I can't properly express how awful this is. Times like these make me hate being me. OK, so I don't even get to have one good day without crashing down? Thanks anxiety, I really appreciate that, you dick. Today, it just crept up on me. From about half past ten this morning, I felt that tightening in my chest, the knots in my stomach. The general sense of dread and discomfort. My brain wasn't racing like it usually does when anxie

Today, I'm going to talk about the positive impact that snowboarding has had on my life. I always hated sports in school. P.E always felt like such a chore, and I hated the inevitable bullying that came with it because I sucked at seemingly everything. Looking back, I think the biggest issue was that schools mostly teach kids team sports, where one guy can ruin for it the entire team. When you're always that guy, that gets really old really fast!  I suspect the emphasis on team sports is to encourage cooperation, but to my mind it always seemed to just encourage more boisterous competition and separation.  I remember liking running, tennis and badminton but that was honestly the only physical activities I enjoyed during my school years.  Then there was a revelation. Towards the end of my teenage years I got a job at an indoor snow slope. Something about the simultaneous badassery and down-to-earth attitudes of the snowboarders really appealed. They were always smiling, who

One of the more difficult challenges with managing anxiety is recognising our triggers. Knowing which conversations, locations, events, people or circumstances flare up anxious thoughts and make us feel uncomfortable can be extremely difficult to recognise. Today, I was talking with friends about how difficult it can be to differentiate between a legitimate and justified emotional reaction, or a more 'out of control' anxiety induced response. I feel confident in saying that the longer one suffers from anxiety, the more challenging it can be to make this distinction. I'm having a really shitty time with work. There's no other way for me to phrase it. I'm unhappy with the direction of the company and the decisions being made there. This has lead to myself and my immediate colleagues all feeling crippling undervalued. It's gotten so bad that just going in to the building, or seeing a particular person there is severely affecting my mental health. This is partic