Posted by sara on January 31, 2000, at 17:22:27
In reply to Re: artists and depression (discussion fodder), posted by Kev on January 31, 2000, at 12:21:00
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> > As my depression deepens, I find myself less able to ACT on my creative impulses. I lie in bed all day and still THINK about the projects I want to do--I've even planned some of them (in my head) down to tiny details. But I have no energy to fulfill them.
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> > But since I no longer express my art, my ideas are becoming fewer and further between. Maybe I should write them down--I wonder if they'll sound as good if/when I stop falling down the black hole?
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> > As for intelligence, my observation has been that genuinely "perky" people usually are not particularly bright.
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> ***If you are having ideas for projects which seem to be good, you should DEFINITELY write them down for future reference when you're feeling good enough to actually try to carry them out. That way, you've already got half the battle accomplished. Don't worry- if the ideas really do suck, the only thing you'll have wasted is paper and ink, but if the ideas WERE good and you end up forgetting what they are, it will prove to be a royal pain to reconstruct them (insofar as this is possible at all). Last summer, I came up with ton of ideas, fragments, and leads towards my Ph.D project, but in my despondency didn't write them down; I am seriously starting to regret it.
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> -KevWhoa. The experiences you've all been gracious enough to share resonate so much with my daily life experience. I come from a family of artists, primarily singers and musicians. Education is highly valued--MAs, MSs, PhDs, MDs. (Did anyone get a degree in how to relate to other people? Nope.) I oved the novella written by someone on his family experience.
ANYWAY, as for me, somewhere in the last ten years, I began keeping count of how many seconds someone knew me before spouting out the word "energy", or one of its derivatives, in connection with me. Or the word "intense". Or "funny". I began keeping count of how many such individuals I came across, how many men, women, and their ages, backgrounds, ethnicities. Only because I couldn't believe it. And then sometimes I could. Believe, that is. Finally I stopped keeping track, because these opinions seemed to be shared universally by people who encountered me(and the sample size was statistically significant).
Last week I decided that I am orange juice concentrate with cloves sealed in a container which moves from freezer to boiling water, back and forth,in some nonlinear connect-the-dot fashion. Most people I've met can't drink me unless they open up the container, put me on room temperature, add water, and mix. Sometimes I get tired of me in all my spicy sour sweetness, but the fear of being bland keeps me on my rollercoaster. After having taken Zoloft for about one year, I just stopped cold turkey so that I could feel my tears again in the way that I used to. The doctor was planning to take me off of it anyway as I am ramping up on Depakote as a mood stabilizer with which antidepressants make things worse. I am hoping this will this help my writing, my singing, my playing? Help me stop sabotaging? I've been told this will help me concentrate, but I still feel so wild in my thoughts and behavior. . .and it is so much easier to just kill the music inside me and play soccer or work or take on some new activity. My pursuit of music is the greatest source of uncertainty in my life, yet it brings me the greatest pleasure. High risk does not guarantee a high reward.
poster:sara
thread:19731
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000128/msgs/20227.html