Recently, my husband and I have been talking about motivation. I have struggled with depression in the past and my husband, although never officially diagnosed, believes he probably has as well. If you have never suffered from depression, you can’t fully understand it. You may try, but you will never truly know why a depressed loved one simply can’t get out of bed. Why the motivation just isn’t there. You think, “snap yourself out of it. Just get up!” If only it were that simple. But the funny thing about depression is that it has a permanent affect on your life. I don’t mean that you constantly struggle with it (although some poor souls do). What I mean is that your life – your motivation – is constantly in question. You constantly ask yourself why you aren’t motivated to do something. Is it just a lazy day or is it more? The line gets fuzzier and fuzzier until you start blaming everything on depression, “It can’t be me. I must be slipping back into that darkness”, you tell yourself. But now I’m questioning that mindset.
Just last weekend, we hosted my dad and step-mom as they visited California. One morning over breakfast, my step-mom began speaking of her mother. How her health has gone downhill lately. How she believes her mom has lost her purpose. She told me, “once you lose your purpose, there’s not much to stick around for.” This really hit me. What is my purpose? So often, I find myself stuck in a routine and even more often, I find myself wishing for time to pass faster so that I can obtain some goal that’s just out of reach. Some of this is because, up through April, I’ve been on a paycheck-to-paycheck mentality. (I have a new full time job coming up. Yup, something else to want that’s just up ahead.) But I truly believe there’s more to it than that. I allow myself to get overwhelmed with the day-to-day and I don’t spend time doing what makes me happy – really happy. Not that I’m-home-from-work-and-want-to-veg-don’t-bother-me kind of happy. The stuff that makes me feel like a better person – like I’m living the way I hoped adult me would live when I was a kid. So that is my goal. I can’t tell you exactly how this will manifest itself, but my plan is to do at least one thing every day that makes me happy. And you know what? Blogging – simply writing down my thoughts – is one of those things. This means there hopefully won’t be any more weeks or months of emptiness on my site. I also hope to be able to share more about my experiment with you as I pursue it, so please check back and feel free to ask questions. One of the many benefits to yapping about life is that some people need to hear what you have to say. I would be honored if any word that I write (past, present or future) helps any person with just one thing. Perhaps this will be it.
Until next time, here is me checking off my first happy thing! And you know what? It feels pretty good.
