How I parse depression and getting out

I've been having some really interesting meetings lately over a number of different projects. They've been in a number if different areas to do with education, educational technology and peripheral applications of technology in education. It has, to say the least, been exactly what I needed.

Over the last few months I've been struggling with depression. For me this tends to manifest as apathy for everything, procrastination in study and work and a sort of low level constant irritability.  To sum it up I become a grouchy git who just doesn't feel effective. This leads me to not try my hand at anything or get things done which makes me feel even more ineffective and so on. You can see how this goes.

Over the last few days I've been asked to: give my opinion on things I care about, produce a workshop for a conference on a project I'm involved in developing, observe a highly exciting data analytics for education project and just generally had a lot of external validation on the professional and academic front.

For the first time in a while I don't feel like a fraud. I don't feel like a stupid kid holding up the puppet of my adult self. I feel like I'm a little closer to being that which I strive to be professionally. I also realise that I'm not stuck. Something I was feeling for a while, like spinning my wheels, no forward momentum.

It's been said that you have to work through your uninspired periods, that if you only  work when inspired nothing gets done. When I'm depressed I need a little inspiration to pull myself into working. Today I got that excited buzz of inspiration which along with recent validation makes me want to get working again. To build the habit of working again and push myself out of this doldrum I found myself in for the last 5 months.

Today I'm a step closer to realising the me I feel I should be in a professional sense.

On Procrastinating

I've procrastinated something awful this academic year. Terrible terrible carry on altogether. There's an awful lot floating about the internet with regards to procrastination things like this or this, among the more humorous offerings. It's often touted as an anxiety thing and I can believe it.

You see for me procrastination is something of a vicious cycle. It goes like this: Stu has some sort of thing to do, Stu feels he may fail to do this, Stu finds more immediate things to be "busy" with, Stu has less time to do the thing, Stu freaks out about lack of time to do the thing. Rinse and repeat. It's painful. I've done this for a long time.

Today, rather than beating myself up about it like I usually do, I thought I'd take a step forward for once. Here's the step, you're reading it. I've been meaning, no I guess waiting for permission from some unknown source, to write a new post for ages. This is me giving myself permission to do this, by doing it.

So I'm also going to audit my current projects, something I've avoided for some time for fear of freaking out. I feel it's a first step towards getting the stuff I need do, done.

1. 3000 word ish thesis proposal for my Ed. Doc. substantive topic.

2. 5000 word ish chapter draft on internet uses in gifted education. Luckily I have 1000 done.

3. Teacher and student hand books for an App Dev course for Secondary Schools.

4. Leadership and work observations for a leadership and organisational effectiveness assignment.

5. Research on evidence based practice paper.

So for next Friday I have the following goals:

Must

1. First draft of proposal.

2. 1 full project written up for the handbooks.

3. 3-5 papers for book chapter read and critiqued.

Should

1. 2000 more words for the chapter.

2. 3-5 papers for evidence based practice paper read and critiqued.

3. Observation booked.

Could

1. 3-5 papers read and critiqued for leadership assignment.

2. 1000 words for leadership paper.

3. Second project for handbooks written up.

I'll check back in a week and see how I did.