From a PR perspective, having upload schedules is a great thing. Even from a self-management point of view, working toward a deadline ensures a constant flow of production, no matter how arbitrary the deadlines may be.
That said, this series is the hardest for me to keep to a schedule. Some days, I find myself in the middle of a depressive episode having to write about how I cope with it, at a moment when I feel like I’m failing entirely to cope. On some occasions, forcing myself to write about the subject anyway would be the answer. Today, that is not the answer.
Instead, I want to share my construct of the Happy Place.
Sometimes, in the middle of a depressive episode, I take refuge in something. The identity of this something is arbitrary. In the past, it’s been anything from my family to a TV show to random cat pictures.
One thing I have found is that it’s safest to keep my refuge something that is not alive, thereby giving it less power over me. It’s all well and good to take refuge in someone you can love and trust enough to know that they will not kick you deeper into the hole even as you’re trying desperately to hang on—and this has happened to me all too often, though the person always meant well. So cynical though it may seem, I prefer to take refuge in the inanimate. It doesn’t help me recover, but it does give me something to hang on to while I gather the strength to pull myself back out.
These days, that something for me is hedgehogs. When I feel overwhelmed by the world, I think of hedgehogs, or I find a cute picture or video or gif. And that image of a hedgehog makes me sublimely happy. It doesn’t last after I leave the hedgehog image behind, but it keeps me going.
Besides, hedgehogs are adorable. No Happy Place ever lasts for me, which I consider to be a positive, since it means I’m still in motion, even if I feel like I’m stuck. But I enjoyed watching hedgehogs long before they became my Happy Place, and I sense that I will continue to find them worth watching after I’ve moved on to a new one.
Such is the power of cute animals, sometimes.