Mid-July Mental Health Check
And feeding the 'good wolf'
Trigger warning: This post mentions suicide and depression. If you are feeling depressed or feel like you’re in danger of self-harm, please know people care about you and are eager to help you. The Trevor Project provides crisis intervention for LGBTQ+ young people, and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) is available 24/7.
Since returning from vacation last week, I’ve been finding it challenging to maintain the focus and optimism I had at the start of the month about writing and moving forward. Despite writing continually, I haven’t been getting anywhere. My thoughts have spilled out on the page, but I have failed to organize them into anything cohesive. It’s frustrating.
Someone wrote to me about MindFog: A Fallout 4 Diary a few months ago and asked me if I had writer’s block, since I’ve had issues with keeping a consistent release schedule. I replied that I never get writer’s block about MindFog, since it’s a story that’s already written. Generally, all I have to do with the podcast in written form is establish a theme for the episode and then try to add some original observations to whatever section I’m playing. The block is usually just ‘doing it.’
For other writing projects, such as this Substack, it seems like I get an idea but then don’t know where to go with it. At first, it seemed like just getting the writing done was helping my mind state. It didn’t matter if it ended up going nowhere. The writing itself was invigorating, and I felt good knowing I was finally doing the work - getting in the chair as it were.
But the more I wrote with nothing that felt worth posting, the more my mindset seemed to shift toward more resistance to writing, and more anxiety about any value in my writing.
Which led to yesterday morning, when I read a story about the co-founder of Fandango, 64-year-old J. Michael Cline, who reportedly leapt from the 20th floor of a New York City hotel after leaving a note stating, “So sorry. I can’t explain the pain of fucking up this much. I love you all.”
Cline was a multi-millionaire “serial entrepreneur,” a father of six, and had been married to his wife, Pamela, since 1995.
We might never know to what the note referred. Disinformation outlet The Daily Mail UK said it was because he was distraught over Fandango, since COVID had decimated the movie business. A simple search might have informed that writer that he had left Fandango in 2007 when it was sold to Comcast.
But it doesn’t really matter.
Anyone who has suffered from depression knows that depression is an insidious liar - one that can convince you that even if you’ve hit the ‘family and friends’ lottery, let alone the ‘life success’ one, that you’re still an imposter and failure.
I’m not going to link to the next two stories because I don’t want anyone going down the same rabbit hole I went down, but the very next story that appeared in my feed after reading a couple of articles on Cline was one where a mother attending her daughter’s graduation at Ohio State decided to take her life at the stadium where the commencement ceremony was being held. Following this was an essay from The Nation (to which I subscribe) on Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old active-duty airman who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy to protest the war in Gaza.
All three of these articles were released yesterday.
Although I suppose people decide to end their lives every day, the algorithm just fed me more of what I was focusing on. It’s easy to see how quickly today the mind can go down the most negative of rabbit holes, and quickly.
These stories likely hit me hard because I know I’ve been ‘feeding the bad wolf’ a little too much lately. I’ve been doomscrolling about our current political environment, my country’s disgusting treatment of our elders, the unfairness of the media and the megadonor class who think nothing of disenfranchising tens of millions of primary voters, and the general uncertainty of what is to come over the coming months.
The oppressive heat that millions of us have been dealing with across the country (and the world), as well as tornados in an area we visited last week - an area that was never subject to them when I was growing up - is a constant reminder of how things have changed and the ongoing threat to the entire planet from those who claim this is all “normal.”
But also, it has just been hot. It’s hot, and I detest the heat.
Today, though, the humidity is down, and we’re getting a brief reprieve. I have the window open in my home office, and the AC is off. I got my paid work done for the day, and I’m working on my screenplay for a course I’m taking, and perhaps later I will get cracking on the latest episode of MindFog: A Fallout 4 Diary.
I’m trying to be mindful and focus on gratitude, and remind myself how fortunate I am in so many ways. That almost always breaks the spell, even if it doesn’t always convince the depression that any positives in my life are legitimate. It’s the act of the exercise that seems to halt the slide.
And I’m also reminding myself that this space is my journal. That’s all it is. I’m not trying to make money from it, I’m not trying to ‘speak’ to anyone or to preach to anyone.
If anything, it’s another place where I have the potential to connect with good people, and maybe even with my future self when I look back and view this post and hopefully realize that I’ve actually made progress in my writing goals.
It doesn’t have to be brilliant, it doesn’t have to even be good.
It just has to be.
For another day.