Twelve Months

It occurred to me recently that I hadn’t written much about depression of late – and there’s been a number of reasons for that. Anyway, it seems as good a time as any to do it, what with 2008 being just round the corner and so on.

In a lot of ways, 2007 has been quite a tough year for me – there’s been a lot of work going on, but I’ve found myself prone to occasional deep bouts of blah, where all motivation and interest fall out the window. Some of it has been due to sheer workload throughout the year – in the last year we’ve bought a house, (and all the fun that entailed) done a load of work on it, moved in, continued working on it, worked in/on the garden, and made a whole bundle of alterations. (Of which there’ll be even more in 2008) At the same time, while I’ve stayed working for the same primary place all year (again, something that will change in ’08) I’ve also worked on a whole range of other sites and so on privately. So overall the workload has been pretty high.

But the thing that’s hit me the hardest, oddly enough, has been the weather. While we had a couple of decent months early in the year with lots of warmth and sunlight, the rest of the year really hasn’t lived up to the initial promise, and it seems to have been predominantly grey and grotty – which has a major effect on my levels of depression and so on. May/June in particular were tough, as I don’t think we had one decent day in that time, and it hit me seriously hard. The rest of the year has been a bit better, but not by much.

How can I tell? Because autumn and winter haven’t really had any noticeable effect on my levels of blah – they’re already way down, so the change is nowhere near as significant as it has been in other years.

There’ve been other bits along the way as well, but over all it’s just been a bit of a grind to get through this year. All I can do is hope that 2008 is at least slightly easier to get through, or at least that the weather’s better, and so I can deal with some of it via the power of sunlight.