Fireside Chat: How Depression Can Kill You
The last Fireside Chat that I wrote was on the 10th of November, 2019. I hadn’t
written a single thing since then. I finished a draft of the latest book in the
“Ezekiel March” saga that week, but that was it. I went back to school, came
home, ate, studied, and went to bed. This was my life. The only thing about
this is…I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember what happened that
Christmas. I don’t remember much of anything that happened last quarter in
college. Hell, to be honest, I can barely tell you what happened before I sat
down to write this post. Most of my day-to-day interactions with the world are
lost to me if I don’t write them down, and I have no recollection of people who
I have known for years. All that I had to keep me grounded in my normal
activity was my strict, almost unnecessarily disciplined, daily schedule. It
would look like this:
0300 to 0700 – Rise, prayer, gym,
write, read, shower and shave
0700 to 1200 – Classes
1200 to 1250 – Mass
1300 to 1600 – Study
1600 to 1900 – Family time,
housework
1900 to 2100 – Study,
entertainment, rest
This was pretty much my schedule,
Monday to Friday. It never changed, never moved, never altered. On weekends,
though the scheduling was a tad bit less disciplined, there would still be
requirements to be adhered to:
• Study – 3 hours
• Write – 1 hour
• Read – 2 hours
I was doing quite well and was
feeling fine. I could keep myself grounded in my schedule, finding peace in the
thought that, if I didn’t remember what happened yesterday, at least I knew
that I followed my daily schedule and adhered to my daily requirements. Then,
for reasons that escape me, I stopped, and I felt miserable.
It started off being a reprieve! I could sleep in; I felt a bit more relaxed and I
felt like I was a tad bit liberated from my rigor. It was only after wasting
time on YouTube and watching television, I began to realize more and more that
I was wasting what little I could remember. I wasn’t nearly as productive. I
failed a class. I began to feel like everything was falling apart, and I began
to think those dark thoughts which most people who live in constant pain and
have brain damage begin to have when they feel this pathetic. After months of
feeling idle, feeling hopeless and feeling like I was never going to amount to
anything more than what I had achieved at this point, I tried to better
understand what was going on with me.
That was when I was reminded of what made me so productive in the first place:
taking action!
It was the act of actually doing something, even when I didn’t feel like it that
made me feel better. No matter what was going on, I could at least say that I
had adhered to the schedule and had accomplished something that day. No matter
what was going on in my life, I could say that I had written my requirements
for that day, read a book that day, spent time cleaning the house, kept up with
the requirements I had for myself for that day. This is what kept me from going
to a completely dark and dismal place, one where too many people in my
situation find themselves and make a permanent solution to their temporary
situation.
Keeping a consistent schedule is the most effective way
to be successful in life. When we are persistent, we are striving towards a
goal every day, always growing and always adhering to a goal. When adhering to
these goals, one will always find success in their physical, mental, social,
and spiritual disciplines. When we will ourselves to strive
towards adhering to this premise, we ensure that there is always a portion of
our day, every day, which is always in our control. What creates unhappiness
and confusion in most of our lives is the feeling of a lack of control. This
comes from adhering to another’s schedule, placing their priorities above our
own, and building towards objectives that we do not deem essential. It is our
responsibility to be the captain of our soul, and our responsibility to ensure
that we are steering the ship ourselves. One does this by striving towards this
by conquering the day, every day, at a time that we can control. Set a time,
set the priority, and work towards them every day.