Writers Can’t Be Sick or Take a Break

Being sick and depressed over the holidays, and then finding a way out of the muck.

It is probably true for a lot of professions, especially in the service industry, but writers can’t get sick or take a break. This past holiday season I came down with a serious case of pneumonia. No, it wasn’t COVID or any of the other brag-worthy pandemic viruses; it was just a plain old cold that developed into pneumonia. The point is that it was serious enough that it laid me on my bed for almost a week.

It happened just before Christmas, too, so while I was already recovering by the time the festivities came, I decided to take it easy and take some time off as well. I probably needed it, but that came at a great cost. I know I was exhausted but I think I ran myself into the ground. This was a surprise to me because I’m usually rather fit: I exercise, I watch what I eat, and I keep a healthy schedule… at least I did until I became ill. That’s when it all went awry.

Then Came the Depression

Another part of being sick is that I sunk into a fit of depression that lasted well after my illness. I think I was mostly disappointed in my own vulnerability. The fact that I wasn’t sticking to my schedule was adding to the disappointment. While everyone around me was partying and having a great time, I was struggling with even getting out of bed.

Here’s the thing that is so difficult for others to understand about depression and illness: we all know that the way out is to exercise, be healthy, and get back to a schedule. Just get off your ass! However, the condition prevents you from getting there. This then leads to more depression and disappointment and so on into a downward spiral.

As a result, I also wasn’t writing. So not only was I feeling terrible, but I wasn’t earning anything. Hence, this was one more reason to be depressed. This carried on into the new year because that’s when other things start to occupy your mind, like business planning, processing documents, and of course, tax season. Ah, the joys of being self-employed!

Pressures from the Outside World

One thing we tend to do when we are depressed is to go online to find answers. The problem with this is that it generates comparisons. This can go one of two ways, and neither is healthy.

On the one hand, you can turn to Social Media, but this is where everyone is leading a fake life. This is where the people you follow show off their professional successes, their great relationships, and the money they seem to be earning. They are just so damn happy! So, why aren’t you like them? When you notice how many more followers they have than you, the depression kicks into overdrive.

The other online source is news. It’s not very newsworthy, though. It’s more like repetitive sensationalist noise that is desperately trying to compete for your attention and pull your eyeballs away from Social Media. So, it’s full of misery: war, famine, disease, and natural disasters. You see that photo of that starving child and you think to yourself, why am I complaining? What’s wrong with me for being so weak when others are suffering so much more?

The problem is that neither makes you feel better. Either you don’t measure up, or you are pathetic for complaining about it. So, while your original plan was to seek help from WebMD and Psychology Today, most of your time online is diverted towards things that aren’t helping you at all, and so your depression spiral continues.

Writers are Content Creators

Just like YouTubers and Insta personalities, writers need to continuously produce content to stay relevant. Unlike those other more visual platforms, though, writers don’t need to look good doing it. I usually write in my sweats and a t-shirt — this makes it easy for me to go exercise in between marathon writing sessions… when I’m feeling up to it.

The point is that writers have more freedom to hide their appearance, so when they’re not feeling 100%, their audience will never know. Now this may seem like a benefit, but it’s a false security. This is because not looking great is another part of depression. While I was still dressing in sweats and T’s, I wasn’t exercising, eating well, or even getting up much. I was hiding my misery behind my status as a writer. Other content creators don’t always have that option.

In the end, I wasn’t doing myself any favors. Every time I walked by the mirror in the hallway, I saw myself and I didn’t like what I was seeing. Others may not see me, but I saw myself. Hence this caused more depression into that downward spiral. I wasn’t being healthy, I wasn’t getting anything done, I wasn’t writing, and I wasn’t earning… and I was seeing it all happen in that mirror every day.

How to Get Out of the Downward Spiral

I know this may sound cliché, but you need help. If you’re not too far down the spiral yet, maybe your family and friends can help. If that’s an option, then ask for it. It’s tough admitting to anyone that you need help, but if they can’t help you, then you need to seek professional help. It will provide that professional distance that will allow you to open up about it and get back on track.

Another way out is also with the help of others but in a different way. Ironically, you need to find someone who needs your help. It can be as simple as offering advice online in one of your online chats. Whatever it is, draw on your expertise and offer some free advice. What this will do is bring back a sense of being important to someone. For writers, this should be easy. Use this as the first step out of the spiral.

For me, I was asked to help someone I cared about with a big problem. At first, I didn’t want to, but they were really in trouble, and I was uniquely qualified to help. It wasn’t an online gig, though; they needed me in person. So, I needed to get up earlier, dress better, leave the house and I needed to have the energy to actually be helpful. Funny how that works but being useful to someone made me forget about my own problems a bit.

Not Out of the Woods Yet

Of course, when I returned home, I was back to dealing with my own problem. I did realize that when I was out helping that other person, I felt great about it. So, I decided to make this a regular thing. One day of every week, I was going to go and help someone else out who needed my specific skills. This created a new regular appointment in my life that I could not ignore or dismiss, because they needed me.

Every time I went out, I felt good about it, and that helped lift my spirits. So much so, that I decided to write about it. I’m a writer so writing about this was a natural thing to me. Now, I had two new regular things to do every week: I had two things I felt good about. This is when it hit me: I was writing again!

After a month of not writing, I was back on the horse. I also started to understand what was happening. I was able to merge the good feeling of helping someone with how I felt about writing. Now I was writing again, feeling good about it, and feeling even more accomplishment from continuing to write. So not only did I help someone else, but I also helped myself.

Conclusion

It’s so tempting to tell someone who is going through depression to just get up and snap out of it. It’s not too different from the disdain we feel when we see a homeless person on the street and think of them as lazy. It’s also not too different from thinking that people in war-torn places should just get up and move elsewhere.

Many people find themselves stuck in a hole that they can’t see themselves walking out of so easily. I’m sure some still believe that it’s possible to scramble and claw out on one’s own. Even so, it’s likely that it will be much easier with the help of others, so why not do that?

When I started to think this through, I felt pretty good about myself because I thought I also had done this all on my own. The reality is that I hadn’t. If someone I cared about had not needed my help, who knows how far down the spiral I would have gone? We don’t live in this world in isolation and we don’t succeed in this world by ourselves either. We need each other, especially when times are tough, and together we can be better than we are on our own.

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