Jake Pickford

Day 18

Today definitely felt harder than yesterday.  I was at work and I felt small moments of stress creeping it.  I was able to catch myself and think calmly though  and that’s really what these anti-depressants are allowing me to do.  They’re calming, soothing my irrational thoughts and helping me deal with them better.  I know they’re not a miracle drug that will make my life perfect, that’s for me to do, but they do seem to be making my life easier.

Tonight I had a gig at a really well established venue so the pressure was on to perform.  The audience were polite but not hugely engaged.  I went on in the second half and got some good laughs in places.  An audience member came up to me afterwards to mention how he’d particularly enjoyed a joke I have about breaking up with my gas and electric supplier.  I learnt a lot from the gig and also felt much happier on stage than I had in a long time – before I started taking my anti-depressants.  They’ve given me my stage mojo back and now I can focus on polishing up the other parts again.

I don’t worry so much about the future now, that was a huge factor in my depression.  I would sit and get trapped in endless thought cycles about everything that could go wrong in my life.  And then I started to believe those thoughts.  I started to convince myself that I wasn’t good enough to achieve anything because I hadn’t achieved enough yet, and I couldn’t imagine a future where I did.  But now I’m starting to believe in myself, I have to and I want to.  It’s such a cliche I know but it’s so true, if you don’t believe in yourself you won’t ever get anywhere.

Right now I’m focusing on the near future and the present, rather than the distant future and the past.  I need to focus on the present to remind myself that everything is ok right now.  I’m alive and I have a roof over my head.  I can feed myself and I’m not in any immediate danger of dying, it’s like a self risk assessment.  And I’m thinking about the near future to put in place plausible plans on how to get from now to then.  There’s no point in getting upset or thinking about what my life will be like in 10 years time, or even 5 years, because I have no idea.  And what I do right now is the deciding in factor in how my future turns out, so I think from now on I’ll focus on that.

Thanks for reading and I’ll speak to you tomorrow.

Jake