And it's perfectly understandable. We pour our soul into our work, be it writing, painting, music, choreography or other types, we put our heart and ourselves out there for the world to see, to judge, to deem worthy or to reject.
There is a lot of rejection in creative fields. And a lot of depression.
You may not have noticed, but I noticed a significant absence of myself on this blog lately. I've been posting, sure, but they've been about other awesome folk. They have been lacking in me.
And that is because I had what I tend to call, a 'down period'.
I have depression. It's a clinical thing to do with hormone levels that I have to control with medication. And most of the time I am perfectly capable of operating in the real-world and getting shit done.
But sometimes I'm not. And I realised, a week into canceling plans with friends, ignoring important emails, watching a lot of TV and napping that I was in a down period. It suddenly dawned on me that wait a second, this isn't exactly normal for me and though I thought I was okay - I wasn't. I had withdrawn from the world.
The day I realised that I was not okay (yes, it took me awhile. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, this one), I spent the whole day out of the house interacting with people and confiding in close friends and that has helped me come around and get back my passion and determination and hell...get back into this game called life.
In Australia a couple of weeks ago we had national R U OK day. It took me a little while to be brave enough to post this, but I feel it's important to say.
As most of my readers are also creative people, I know that many of you will suffer from bouts of depression, and anxiety and feelings of failure.
So I want to ask you:
Are You Okay?
Take care of yourself,
Love Sairz
