A day of work today as the sun came and went over the Berkshires. I spent the morning in a coffee shop and the afternoon in a hotel room. If I could have, I would have done all the work in the coffee shop, but giving demos and being on conference calls doesn’t lend itself well to public places.
So I work in my room and flirt with depression. This is a necessary but frustrating part about being in Tanglewood; one is removed from one’s normal routines, for better and worse, and dropped into a new world. Sometimes it feels like being plucked from a stream and heaved vainly gasping onto a dock. Today, I need to see it more as a falling leaf, one of billions that will fall without the world ending.
Successfully evading depression, for me, relies on my ability to recognize the warning signs and turn aside the behaviors. When my normal routines–which function as a daily defense mechanism against the Black Dog–are disrupted, I need to acknowledge the disruption and do whatever I can to fill the void. It’s something that’s done one day at a time.