2025-09-20 from the editor of ~insom
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I feel actual depression starting to creep in. It's weird to
notice it in advance -- a few events in the world and my
reaction to them made me aware. Not even the big events!
Those are obviously bad and I think the background to my
feelings, but a few very small or personal things.
I am basically not looking forward to the future, at both
little and big scales -- like I am not looking forward to
(say) Christmas or (say) meeting up with friends next week,
as well as not looking forward to (say) the next 10 years of
my career, my eventual retirement, etc.
I just have no strong feelings. Anhedonia, maybe? I had a
severe bout of this back in 2022; it's what made me seek out
counselling. I realised that I didn't care if I carried on
living. I didn't want to die or anything, it wasn't
ideation; I just felt like I truly did not care one way or
another at that time.
One of the things that made me notice my mood changing was
picking up a copy of "Here Comes Everybody" (by Clay Shirky)
in a charity shop, flicking through a few pages and feeling
sad about how optimistic _I used to feel_ about the future.
My job, of all things, is helping to keep me grounded
because I make progress day by day on my goals, they make a
difference (if not in the big world, then at least to dozens
of colleagues) and I can feel things getting better there.
It's not healthy to get my fulfilment just from my job,
though.
Time to put what I learned in therapy into practice, I
guess.
