How to Stay Creative in a Summer Depression
Notes on Making Things When It’s the Last Thing You Want to Do
Note: This one has mentions of alcohol, depression, suicide, and some explicit language.
When I stopped drinking, I thought the depression would leave. It did, for a time; while the dark, Michigan snows were falling, I had my brightest February on record. Early this year I sent more than one hundred emails soliciting work for my freelance business, revamped my project management system, and started scheming to build an online store—all the while balancing the responsibilities of being a partner, parent, and employee. I was energized and at my best, mentally, in years. This was, I think—for those conversant in the language of sobriety—my pink cloud.
As the northern hemisphere turned to spring, the cloud began to dissipate, and I got sad again. What the fuck? I thought, genuinely angry. It’s May. I stopped drinking, I’m medicated, and it’s warm outside. It’s May. Historically, warm weather has calmed my stormy winter seas. But there I was, going out with the tide.
Here in July, I am treading water. Things aren’t nearly as bad as they were last year. But I hear the thunder in the distance.
When I was a teenager, there were periods in which I felt similar. I called them “funks.” I don’t know if this is a funk or if those in the past were something more. Depression is part of my family inheritance. One member of my tree died by suicide almost twenty years before I was born. Another, still with us, attempted. These are just the two instances of serious depression I know about, but I am willing to bet there are more—because stigma breeds silence. This history lingers in my mind like the melancholy in my blood. I wrestle with it often. Does naming depression allow it space to exist, to loom in my mind and spirit? Or does doing so help me resist? I don’t know if it matters. Either way, I don’t want to be creative. I don’t want the obligation of creativity.
“Hey Nathaniel, Send me your W9 and how about we give you a try?”
What’s this? I think, opening my inbox. Oh. Right. It’s a response to the automated email I scheduled nearly five months ago. I sigh, thinking of all the work I have yet to do, and rub my eyes with both hands.
My depressive states are characterized by exhaustion, apathy, and procrastination—a case of the “fuck-its,” my therapist calls it. In these moods, it is a wonder when anything gets done. Hell, I’m writing this instead of any number of things that would better feed my family.1 You couldn’t pay me to give a shit about your book about the future of creativity. Oh, wait—you are. Here’s an email. Here’s a deadline. Make a pretty picture, sad boy.
How do you stay creative when, despite the shining sun, your mind rebels?
A Book Designer’s Notebook is brought to you this week by The Weight of the World on Your Shoulders. The Weight of the World on Your Shoulders: Don’t You Shrug!
I have misled you with the title of this piece. I don’t have the answer. I thought I might find one by writing. I should have added a question mark.
The half-answers that do come to mind are simplistic (take a walk; create something for yourself), cliché (remember you are stardust; it’s okay to not be okay), or irresponsible (abandon your responsibilities; that’s what whiskey is for). At best a trickle, when what we need is a flood.
I’m not sure what the point of this is, besides bitching about how hard it can be to create things for a living—something other people would kill to do—and how poorly my brain apparently works. As I write, I question if I should even share this. Maybe it’s too vulnerable to ultimately not have an answer as justification for your consumption. My mom, my boss, and god knows who else reads this.2 I sound serious and brooding, I know.3 But maybe, I tell myself, maybe you need to read this.
How do you stay creative in a summer depression? I don’t know.
Maybe the point is that there isn’t an answer. That in a world filled with too much advice, “I don’t know” is okay. And that in this not knowing, we are not alone.
When I started writing this, I thought it would be a longer, more exploratory essay—but maybe, on this theme of not being alone, this is more of a discussion.
I know there are at least a handful of other designers, artists, writers, and creative people subscribed to this newsletter. I would like to hear from you. Do you experience funks, depression, or the “fuck-its”? How do you stay—or try to stay—creative when it is the last thing you want to do?
Let this post be a repository for ideas, tips, and commiseration. Maybe we can make this title come true. One more time, in case you need to hear it: “I don’t know” is okay.
Thanks for reading and thanks for contributing. That’s all for this time—I’ve got an email to send.
—Nathaniel
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This newsletter has so far earned me enough for three coffees.
Does telling you I’m fine and that this is nothing new make you more or less worried?
Ancient cultures believed that to know the name of something was to have power over it, but I think naming something allows you to better sit with it, to have a greater access to empathy. To greet the depression with grace and acceptance. To say to the depression "I see you, I will take care of you". When you can hold something with tenderness, it softens, and its easier to carry the load.
How do you stay creative in depression? I don't know either really. But, for me, it's ritual and routine. It's muscle memory. Going mindfully through the motions is no bad thing. It's a hand rail for my days. It's something solid to hold onto when the ground is shaking. It's something sure to cling to until the thunder quiets and the sun comes out again. It is in the nature of things to change. We work, we rest, we make, we wait, we breathe, we repeat....
This is perhaps an oversimplification, but whenever I have a case of the fuck-its I think of a quote I heard on the old Spine Magazine podcast (wish I could remember which episode or who said it): “no input, no output.” It’s a good reminder to me that the reason I started making things was because I saw things I wish I had made, and that creativity begets creativity. The best thing for me to do in those difficult moments is seek out other creative work of any kind. Sometimes it inspires me and other times it makes me jealous, which can be enough of a fire to get me back to work. But mostly, even if it does neither of those things, it’s brain food. None of us is a machine that can produce endlessly; we need fuel to keep going.