Tag Archives: depression

Blog, Gratitude, Opinion

The Gratitude Box

The Gratitude Jar has become an increasingly popular method for recording positive moments in one’s life and reinforcing a mindset of—you guessed it!—gratitude. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s simple. There are several variations, but the basic steps are:

  1. Find a jar.
  2. Whenever something good happens in your life, write a short note about it, fold it up, and drop it into the jar.
  3. At the end of the year, open the jar and review all of these wonderful moments in your life for which you’re grateful.
  4. The following year, repeat steps one through three.

Mine is a clear acrylic box, the kind used to store trading cards. I have plenty of empty jars at home, but I chose a small container  when I started it because at the time, I was spiraling into yet another bout of depression and anxiety, two demons that have plagued me since childhood. Gratitude was the furthest thing from my mind. 

The past ten months have been turbulent for me and I’ve been struggling to adjust to the changes. I won’t bore you with the details and I’m certainly not fishing for sympathy. Suffice it to say that it’s been an enervating experience which exacerbated my chronic depression and sent my writing productivity—not to mention my outlook on life—plummeting. As a result, I felt myself foundering, failing, and generally falling apart.

Given all of that, I couldn’t see too many positive moments in my future, so why bother with a jar?

Gratitude Box

As you can see from the above image, the box is nearly full and we’re only halfway through the year. I also tossed in some uplifting fortunes from the occasional cookie.

Thus, I stand corrected. Clearly, I have much to be grateful for and seeing it manifested in this collection of notes reminds of this even through the darkest times. 

While I’m still working to find the right direction for myself and struggling to surface from what has become the longest bout of depression in my life, perhaps I need to upgrade to a jar after all. 

Blog, Opinion

Of Aftermaths, Depression, and the Will to Keep Pushing…

Aside from book reviews and event announcements, I haven’t posted anything of substance on the blog in nearly three weeks. I wish I could point to my typical prodigious writing output as the reason, but alas 2017 has been abysmal relative to previous years.

It’s August and the most fiction I’ve written since January has been four additional chapters in my SF novel and an outline for a new paranormal short story that I just started writing this week. In previous years, I would have been finished with the first draft of the novel long before before now as well as four or five short stories.

Granted, I spent winter and spring editing about 15 submissions for an upcoming anthology and then began working with the three artists who are providing brilliant interior illustrations. That phase of the project is currently well under way as is the cover art. This is the third volume in this anthology series and the last one I’m editing/project managing.

As mentioned in a previous post, this was followed by a six-week home renovation in June that, while successful, severely limited my writing time. Fortunately, the project ended on June 29, right on schedule. After clean-up and reorganizing our house, I had hoped to return to a normal routine and enjoy the remainder of my summer.

Unfortunately, the partial roof collapse at my workplace on July 1 (my birthday) and the subsequent week of round-the-clock effort to restore our IT systems, burned me out and triggered a severe bout of depression. Now, I’ve been battling this demon since I was six years old and have suffered through more severe bouts than I care to remember, but this was one of the worst and it scared the hell out of me.

I’m sure my manager and team mates were even more exhausted than I. Each weekend in July following the calamity was filled with yet more activity to stabilize and restore our environment. We’re still dealing with the aftermath even now. At the risk of sounding selfish, I hope comp time is on the horizon in the near future.

To make matters worse, our rabbit took ill at the end of July with a bladder problem, which caused him to stop eating. This resulted in multiple vet visits and two weeks of force feeding him Critical Care (a food paste) via syringe. We’re still in the midst of dealing with this and praying that the problem does not become life threatening. He has begun eating again, but nowhere near as voraciously as he’s accustomed to.

I’m also nearly finished building a new website for one of my publishers. That’s actually one of the highlights of my summer along with learning that my paranormal novella, Like Mother, Like Daughters was accepted by Firebringer Press and will be published in a format that has me excited. I hope to see that released in 2018. Stay tuned for more info!

On a disappointing note, my submission to the 2017 Rehoboth Beach short story contest was rejected. From Second Place last year to Nothing this year. Such are the highs and lows of the writing life. On the flip side, I look forward to the online publication of another short story later this fall. It’s a paranormal tale set in New Mexico. I’ll post the link here when it’s published.

All told, I’m probably doing better than I think I am, and I know I should not beat myself up over what I perceive as failing in my normal quantity of writing. Life sometimes delivers setbacks and we do the best we can to work through them. I’m excited about the new paranormal short story I just started writing this week. It should be finished in a few days.

My spirit are also lifted by the fact that I have at least two new releases coming next year and of course, the problems that ruined my summer will eventually pass one way or another and allow me to reclaim my writing time.

 

Blog, Events, Uncategorized

Hold On To the Light Inside of You

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This morning, I learned about a brilliant initiative called Hold On To The Light, spearheaded by SFF author Gail Z. Martin. 

Beginning on September 20, hundreds of science fiction and fantasy authors began an online conversation across blogs and socialHold Onto The Light media about mental illness, domestic violence, suicide, depression, PTSD, and related issues that are often extremely upsetting
and difficult to discuss for so many.

Click here to read the first blog post from Hold Onto The Light. 

Over the past five years, I’ve opened up about my nearly 40-year battle with depression both on social media and at personal appearances. I sometimes discuss how depression has affected my writing and I never cease to be surprised at how willing others are to reveal their own struggles. My, times have changed. Society is finally opening up a dialogue about mental illness and that’s wonderful. The old stigmas are rapidly disintegrating.

My first novel, Testing the Prisoner, is a paranormal mystery that deals with the brutality of child abuse and the trauma that stays with the victims for the rest of their livesTesting the Prisoner by Phil Giunta. This was intimately familiar territory, but that made it no less challenging to write. I had to confront my own pain, my own memories, my own struggles with a darkness that pushed me toward a desire to take my own life at least a half dozen times during my younger days and even a few times in recent years.

Still, I knew the story had to be told for a number of reasons. First, I wanted to let others who have been victims of child abuse to know that they are not alone. Secondly, and perhaps more selfishly, I wanted to turn the tables on a demon that has persistently robbed me of happiness and instead, use it as a storytelling tool to launch my writing career.

As for surviving depression, perhaps it was faith, willpower, or a hope for a brighter future that dissuaded me from any “permanent solutions” to my problem. Much of the credit should also be given to SFF fandom and my growing interest in writing. Watching Star Trek and seeing Star Wars at the tender age of six inspired me. Later, the media tie-in novels became a gateway to speculative fiction and hard SF in my teen years. I began reading Asimov, Clarke, Ellison, Bradbury, and many others. Like many SF films and TV shows, books became my anti-depressant and while they were not an instant panacea, they helped pull me through countless dark and terrible times. They still do today.

Most importantly, the friendship and community that I found in SFF fandom has been the most enriching experience I could ask for. The best and most supportive friends in my life came from my three decades attending SF conventions such as Farpoint, Shore Leave, Balticon, and others.

More, I wouldn’t be published today were it not for the mentorship of august writers like Steven H. Wilson, Howard Weinstein, Michael Jan Friedman, Bob Greenberger, and Aaron Rosenberg, all of whom I met at the aforementioned cons. I am honored to call these chaps my friends, and in the case of Steve, Bob, and Aaron, my publishers!

If you are suffering from depression, I encourage you to reach out and find the help you so richly deserve. You are not alone. You have a right to happiness and health. You have a right to achieve your potential without being hagridden by a demon that wants to convince you of the lie that you’re inadequate, unworthy, or that life is not worth living. I beg you to find the light and hold on to it.

About Hold On To The Light

September/October are the months for Depression Awareness, Suicide Prevention, Bullying Prevention, Traumatic Brain Injury Awareness, World Mental Health Day and Domestic Violence Awareness.

What’s our end game? We want to bring the issues, struggle and treatment out of the shadows and make it clear that no one is alone in the journey. We want to demonstrate fandom taking care of its own. And we want fandom to be a safe space for everyone.

The steering group behind #HoldOnTotheLight is made up of John Hartness, Jaym Gates, Jean Marie Ward, Emily Leverett, Mindy Mymudes and Gail Z. Martin.

How can you help? Share, retweet and engage with the blog posts and social media outreach about the campaign and by the participating authors to spread the word. Encourage the conventions you participate in to add or expand panels on mental wellness. Learn more about the issues, so you can be an educated participant in the discussion.

If you want to get even more hands-on, please consider donating to or volunteering for organizations dedicated to treatment and prevention such as: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Hope for the Warriors (PTSD), National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Canadian Mental Health Association, MIND (UK), SANE (UK), BeyondBlue (Australia), To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA) and the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Together, we can #HoldOnToTheLight because #FandomTakesCareOfItsOwn.

You can find updates with links to author blog posts and updates about related news here, and on the HoldOnToTheLight Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/276745236033627/ and on our Facebook page www.facebook.com/WeHoldOnToTheLight (note the ‘we’)

Media: Contact Gail Z. Martin via www.AscendantKingdoms.com