What do you do when you're stricken by a bout of depression out of nowhere right when you need to be on the top of your game? Midterms or finals are approaching which means your workload is doubled, schedules shift, and if you're one of the unlucky teachers to have a government test at the end of your subject, your job just may be on the line too. But the tentacles of depression are schlucking their way into your brain and it all seems like just too much. So what do you do?
First of all, know that you're not alone. Seasonal Affective Disorder, once an illness on its own, and now a seasonal modifier of recurrent major depressive disorder, is a very real thing though the psychologists of the land seem to disagree on what it actually is. For teacher's, I'm going to describe this as the mid year blues. And for myself as a writer, it's also the mid draft blues. But no matter what you call it, it's depression right in the heart of winter and it sucks. Like a slush ball down the inside of your shirt sucks. Admitting that it sucks isn't the problem though. Dealing with it is. I can't speak for anyone else now, but I'm going to give my own run down of dealing with this midyear depression and hopefully you'll get some solace in knowing that it's conquerable and that you're not alone in what you may be dealing with. This year, my mid year blues started right after the Christmas break. Like a lot of teachers from my area, I am not a native, so the Christmas season involves traveling back home to reunite with family and friends and for two glorious weeks there is no grading, no testing, no planning, just sitting back and waiting for presents and New Years. This year I got some major work done on my draft for the Brittania project (yes it's a stupid name but that's why it's a project, not a title) and everything was looking great. Right around Thursday before the 1st week of school I had the first teaching related nightmare. Those always lovely experiences where you're trapped in your own head and everything is going wrong. It made it pretty hard to sleep, since half way through the night I was waking up dreading going back to my job. And you've probably experienced this yourself. Not just the normal, grumpy, "Oh, woe is me, I have to work" dread, but literal pit of my stomach, I don't know if I can do this dread. I thought my first year of teaching was rough, but this second year, phew. And of course, dread or no dread, Monday came and work began. Slipping back into the groove of teaching is not something I accomplished gracefully this year. 2015 began with last minute preparation for lessons, jammed copiers, malfunctioning computers, and backlogged grading (is there ever a time there isn't backlogged grading?) I don't mean to throw myself a pity party because I struggled as a teacher when there are so many teachers struggling these days, but all of that weight began piling up. Ah, if only teaching involved that, it would be easy. See, on top of all of that, this was the first time I was really hit with the whole "your students' failures are your fault" mentality. And I don't mean to blame our administration who is wonderful, but you definitely get that sense from the current teaching climate. It doesn't matter what background your students come from, you should be adapting to fit every one of their very unique needs and if you can't, you're a failure. So on top of all of my work stress, now I was beginning to feel like a failure because I don't put in twenty hour days and devote my whole life to teaching. Or more to the point, I was feeling like a failure because I have students who are failing. Just to be clear at this point, I completely understand that too many of my students come from broken families and have lived lives that I cannot even imagine surviving. This does not ease the stress of teaching them though. But not just that (yeah, the sob story continues) since returning from break I had stopped writing. And that may have been the straw that broke my back this year. The other stress (I hate to say it) I'm getting used to at this point. Yeah, it feels crappy to be behind but at least I had those positives like making major head way in the first draft of a novel I actually feel I can get published when it's all finished. Which may just be a dream and my brain decided to remind me that it just may be. Sorry to go into extreme dream detail here, but I'm telling a story and the devil is in the details. A few days into the first week back from school I had a dream that I was signing a contract for a book deal. Somewhere around 10,000 dollars and my book would be released to the masses. It was so calming, which is odd for an event which should be insanely stressful. People were talking at me, throwing numbers out, things were constantly happening, but in the dream I knew, this meant I could stop teaching. And then I woke up. Now I don't think I need to be a Freudian dream analyst to understand the meaning behind this dream. But hitting that wall killed me a little inside. To admit that I hated my job, and how little I would take to get out of it. And also, to realize that I had to go to work that day. It was too much. I let down my guard and an old friend came rushing in to say hello. At this point things may seem pretty depressing, but there's a silver lining. I'm not going to go into how my depression hits me because it hits us all in different ways. And I'm not going to go into how long I've had it because the length of time doesn't matter when we're dealing with a common foe. What I'm going to tell you is the uplifting part of this story. After a string of cancelled appearances (you don't call meeting up with friends scheduled appearances?) I realized that I was stressing myself out even more by cancelling events to deal with my stress. So I did what I had never done before. I talked to people about what was going on, with that hesitation that we can sometimes get that if we talk about a problem so many other people have people are just going to say suck it up and stop whining. Which was a very real fear I have. To be a teacher and complain that teaching is stressing you out is like being an open heart surgeon and complaining that surgery is a draining experience. But thankfully my fears were not realize. My co-workers (those I told, it's not like I broadcast a school wide message) gave nothing but support. Honestly a little too much (that's a whole different post though). And I reached out to a friend for some advice on how to write despite the crappy way I felt and she had some great advice that I've been employing (thus the blog) and you should totally check out some of her other posts (if you're of the writing persuasion). http://katherinelockebooks.com/blog/ Thanks to her advice I started writing again both on my draft and one life in general. And thanks to my co-workers I don't feel as stressed about being stressed. Still stressed, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel again. Which I can't appreciate enough. Phew, that was a lot to get out. So what's the moral of the story here? Well first of all, if you're hitting your mid year blues, I'm not going to tell you not to stress about it, but I am going to let you know that there is a world of people out here who understand that stress and what it's like to be so happy most of the time but lose it at a certain time of year. And I'm not going to tell you that everyone is going to understand what you're going through, but I can say that the people in your life do care and will understand if you explain what you're going through enough. And I'm not going to tell you that you have to go up to every person you know and say "Hey, I'm depressed so I don't want to do anything right now" but I can tell you if you are depressed and don't want to do anything, that's all right too, and it's better just to tell people that you don't want to hang than to cancel on them. Because they should hopefully understand that too. And if you're a writer like me, what I can tell you is the same advice I was told (and which I'm stealing and telling you all now.) Don't beat yourself up over the fact that you stopped writing. Worrying about the fact that you're not writing isn't going to help you write it's only going to make you not write more. So take a deep breath and write something silly. Write something absurd. Write a blog post about why you can't write or about how frustrating grading is, or about how sometimes hopping onto a computerized board game and swearing with some close friends can relieve stress like you never believed. Those are obviously some specific examples but if you're stressed that you're not writing the simplest solution I can tell you is to look away from your manuscript for a moment and just have fun again. And once you've done that, you just have to do it again the next day. Or in two days. Or whatever your writing schedule is, just get back into a rhythm. Don't set goals, don't plan to change the world, don't promise to finish by the end of the month, just get into your habit and write. Unless your habit is those goals and they're the only thing that keeps you going in which case...just make sure they're manageable. But my ultimate point here is that we can do it. Managing everything even when the mid year blues creep up on you and take you by surprise. So don't feel bad for feeling the way you do. Look forward to how great you'll feel when you're back to being better than ever.
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