Other peoples lives always look better (Or worse) on social media don’t they? I have had a pretty much life long struggle with mental health issues. Sometimes the demons win and sometimes I do. Often its a slightly wary and anxious truce ready to be triggered by some random incident that can’t be dealt with. Lack of control in my life certainly is often the thing that pushes the buttons. I am still here just about. Often I do wonder how I have managed to stick around this long really. Getting the balance right between staying in a safe space and getting on with life is not always easy. Often due to life circumstances I do find social situations difficult as whilst I like people I don’t have the knack of mixing easily, much as I would like to. So I do what I can when I can, usually a long the lines of “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. These days I don’t take any meds for my mental well being. I had spent about 15 years or so on various SSRI’s (Fluoxetine, Citalopram, Prozac, with apologies to a few others I forgot to mention). Yes, they did help in crisis quite a lot. Long term they were and can be a problem for me personally as they tended to cause a little too much disinhibition. Its nice to have adventures but sometimes they can end up being self destructive.

Oddly I find that Facebook’s groups like the depression or anxiety fora are not so helpful though they logically should be. My experience has been that in most places support for depression is often little more than lip service sadly. The truth is that people like myself may well not be able to do productive work for extended periods of time and frankly most employers outside the public sector can’t accommodate that long term. I can do stuff, but even disregarding my age I couldn’t do a full time day job too well. I would turn up but would often be late or simply have brain fog days where I couldn’t do much or get in a sudden panic under pressure or loose my temper….

The notion that we can all do useful work that the government has is fanciful. Remploy and similar organisations did work for some people giving them a bit of purpose and dignity. Also without sounding like an entitled elitist git, there us a difference between experiencing depression between say a person with 136 IQ and some body with just enough mental horse power to function though the suffering is real enough. Someone like myself is able to pursue far more actively therapeutic interventions solo, where as others will need “carers” of some description just to function of course. I can write great opuses and songs an inflict my misery on the world, but some other poor souls may have nothing but banging there head or someone else’s against the wall in despair?

My mood is sort of neutral at present to be honest. I have been doing the usual stuff music and so forth. I brought a new keyboard (from amazon), not that expensive but it will do a few things that the others don’t. Its the first new bit of music kit since 2008, and I am still figuring out how to use it properly. It will be ideal for solo efforts live as well as recordings. Its lightweight and portable. £260 but equivalent or slightly better one that I use live that cost me £800 in 2008. I am ticking over really. it was a nice sunny but cold day at least as I was out briefly. No musical outings scheduled until Friday the 15th (next rehearsal). There is an Irish pub thing on Sunday I could go to if I get desperate for a live music fix in Bedford though.

And in conclusion I hate Christmas, but its nothing personal. Ho, Ho, Ho, go and jingle your bells elsewhere you noisy lot….