Day 232: Hey, It's All Right.

I'm heading off to the second and final day of shooting for the Depression Project. There's a ton left to do, but I'm also feeling really sappy and take-stock-y. Because this shoot has been three months of hard-ass work in the making. And in many ways fifteen or so YEARS of in the making.

I wouldn't be standing there in front of the camera for those kids if I hadn't been depressed. And I wouldn't have gotten depressed if I'd stood in front of the camera more in the first place...if I'd let my Big Dreams turn into my Big Life earlier.

So it's poignant for me that not only am I living my dream by performing, but my dream has come to include the darkest points of my life. And the capacity to help other people.

I think that's one of the coolest things about this Just One Year idea. Is that not only did it come at a low point in my life, but a low point in history. Who takes a year off just as we're heading into the worst economy of our lifetime?

I do!

But that's the beauty of it. The challenge. The impossible odds. The worst case scenario. Adversity gives it drama. It gives it power.

People are getting laid off left and right. Half of them are scrambling to find new jobs to fill in the blank their old jobs left. Half of them are relieved to be let go. They've embraced the sense of freedom and possibility and are happy to leave the life they SHOULD have liked but didn't. They're using the opportunity to create the life they LOVE.

"I'm EI-ing it and loving it...am I allowed to say that?" one of my friends wrote me.

There's no good time to break up with your shitty life and go find a great one. No perfect moment when you've got everything together and you've saved a bunch of money and have everything under control. That perfect moment will never come. Except for the fact that it could be right now.

I don't know why it all worked out the way it did for me. Why I got depressed and depressed again. Why I chose to take this risk when I did. How I ended up helping kids who are going through what I went through.

But I do know I don't need to be afraid. Being unemployed during the worst economic crisis of recent memory means you'll never be afraid of NOT having a job. This is the worst case scenario and, hey, it's all right. The worst time of my life is now being used to help other people. That's all right, too.

I guess what I'm saying is, yes, everything happens for a reason. But oftentimes we don't get to see the reason for a long, long time, so the best thing to do is always remember that there IS ONE. Whatever is happening right now has a purpose. Your job is not to reject it or try to "fix" it. It's to embrace it and dive right into it. Use it. Benefit from it.

My tenant is leaving my condo. She's quitting her PhD and moving back home to Vancouver. And I'm going to have to either find another tenant to pay my exorbitant mortgage or sell at the WORST point of the housing market. Worst case scenario, right?

Hey, it's all right.

Day 229: The Three Day Rule

The really irritating thing about being a spiritual person is you can't get Just Mad anymore. You're always looking for The Lesson or The Message From The Universe and you can't just throw dishes and be done with it. Everything has to have "deeper meaning" or lead to "personal growth."

It's frickin' annoying.

So it really IRKED me when – after getting blindsided by the Depression People AGAIN at the ELEVENTH BLOODY HOUR – I descended into a blind rage the likes of which I've never experienced.

It was the kind of rage I can only describe as ALCOHOLIC – the rip-the-sink-off-the-wall, eat-a-plate-of-cocaine, drive-a-truck-off-a-bridge kind of fury reserved for addicts and outlaws. An out of control cocktail of self-destruction and homicidal mania.

This? Is not like me at all.

It scared the hell out of me. And I wondered how I'd let things get this far. I'd ignored the Three Day Rule for far too long.

I've learned the hard way that I've got three days without creative Me-Time before the time bomb starts to tick ominously. Before the jungle drums start beating and the air raid sirens start to howl. Before I start yelling for Boyfriend to TAKE COVER because goddamnit SHE'S GONNA BLOW!

It's strange, but it's true.

Creativity is as much a part of my self-care as getting eight hours of sleep at night. If I skip it, there are consequences. If I keep skipping it, things get ugly for those within a 30-foot radius. If I neglect it altogether, the rage goes inward I get suicidally depressed. This is how it works.

Three days to crazy.

But every once and awhile I, very mistakenly, try to get away with it and push my self-care to the bottom of the list.

I don't know how thought I could gut out a couple more weeks of balls-to-the-wall writing for the Depression Project, survive a four-day full-frontal-family weekend (where the only Me-Time I got involved a toilet and a wad of Charmin double-ply) and have enough gas in the tank for two days of shooting a hundred pages of script.

I was very, very wrong.

And I emerged from a molten white rage last night around midnight to find myself tearing a journal almost in two like some kind of steroid-addled Monster Trucker. Smashing all the car windshields on my street with a baseball bat also seemed like a very good idea. It was fucked.

But, since I knew from whence the white rage came, I chose against baseball bats and turned to Julia Cameron instead. I opened up Vein of Gold to a section entitled 'Voluntary Victims,' which goes a little something like: "Sooooo. You didn't give yourself the creative time or space you needed and said Yes to everything everybody asked you and now you're A CERTIFIABLE MENTAL CASE and what exactly did you THINK was going to happen? Hmm?"

I did one of her genius little exercises (in my ravaged journal) and felt better. But I wasn't done yet, so even though it was a quarter past late o'clock, I opened up a story I've been working on (pssst...one of the PARIS stories!).

I felt the train wreck of rage in my head clear away and the knot of barbed wire in my chest loosen. I was WRITING! For the first time since Paris and it was glorious.

I wrote until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore and then slipped into bed beside Boyfriend. Who was still wearing his riot gear and clutching his pepper spray under his chin. Adorable.

Day 228: Insert Bloodcurdling Scream Here

Dear Depression Project Team:

I have read over your changes to the Module 8 script. While I appreciate the new theme of Celebration, I have some serious concerns.

The first half isn't about celebration at all – it simply sums up the previous seven modules intercut with overly cheerful and content-lite wahoo music videos. The exercises, which we created for the original theme of Module 8, are now no longer relevant or related. What does a visualization about the road less traveled have to do with celebrating? I notice you've left the second half of the content as-is even though it was written for an entirely different theme and no longer makes any sense whatsoever. And the story for the story section was, I suspect, written by someone from the research team.

You sent me this new content at 6 pm on Monday night. Today is Tuesday, the day before the shoot where I, as an actor, need to deliver over 50 pages of script authentically and honestly. It will be a long day and an exhausting one – and I want to do my best for the production team. It is Day One of two days like this. In between the two shoot days, I need to prepare the next 50 some-odd pages of script I need to bring to life.

What you are asking me to do is completely rewrite and refocus the script of Module 8. This will take a full day of writing. A day we don't have in the current schedule.

So when you say you'd like to find a way to approach this without putting pressure on me, I'd say it's a little late for that. Once again, I feel the timely delivery of the product resting a little too firmly on my shoulders.

I am a human being. I have given a lot to this project and am just about to enter the most vulnerable phase of it. Baring my soul and history on paper is one thing, baring it in front of the camera is another. Asking me to shoehorn an entire day of reworking a desperately under-realized module into this week is not acceptable and it's not going to happen.

Melanie

P.S. You owe me money.

Day 216: When The Magic Got Lost

My wrists are sore from writing. My brain is sluggish. My body fatigued. My creative well depleted and dry. My deadline...tomorrow.

For more than two weeks straight, the pace of the Depression Project has quickened and the intensity increased. We were like horses: hitting our stride and running full-tilt across the prairie, then fatiguing, straining, sweating and bleeding, gutting it out until we saw home.

I got to that point where I was done with the journey, but the journey wasn't done with me. And so I kept going. And past that point – that limit – I found something.

This project is amazing.

What we've made here is so incredibly powerful, the fact that only depressed teenagers get to see it is a crime. It's that good.

I wish I'd taken it when I was young – at that point where I started to second-guess myself and look outside for answers. The point where I started to let my childhood dreams die. Where there was no more Santa Claus and the magic started to fade.

This course we're making is a lesson in dreams and possibility and purpose and connection. It's like an arsenal of weapons against the tidal wave of bullshit a person has to wade through on the inelegant passage to adulthood. Those soul-sucking expectations that weigh down your wings and tarnish your shine. The choices that took you off your true path and onto the superhighway of Someone Else's Life.

How do you expect to make a living at that? Get a real job. Make money. Lose weight. Get married, have babies. Look out for Number 1. Find a hobby. Buy more, save more.

School Rules. The Cult Of Cool. How We've Always Done It.

Normal. Better. More.

The damage we spend our twenties undoing. The person we spend our thirties finding.

No wonder we got depressed. It's shocking more of us aren't. No wonder we're angry, confused and feel ripped off. No wonder.

I wish all of you could see this course. I wish all of you HAD seen it...when you were twelve or thirteen. Whenever the magic got lost for you. When you stopped believing in fairies and dragons. And resigned yourself to something more ordinary.

I miss it. The magic. Don't you?

Day 213: I Think I'm So Smrt

Why does the Universe INSIST on reminding me who's boss? Seriously. I'm flowing, things are awesome, I'm going to frickin' Africa and then BOOM: I burn out, my computer crashes and I have to spend my Sunday afternoon chipping a 6-inch tall speed bump of ice so my tenant can get her car out of the parking lot of #426 Slum Street USA.

WTF.

I have this weird innate Doom Reflex that kicks in when things start going too good. When I got the Africa-India Water Project, every time I talked about it out loud, I kept expecting a bolt of lightning to streak down and fry my brains. Since I got home from Paris, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Me = SUCKER.

Because feeding all that energy into the doom-y feeling is like sending a very nice party invitation to Doom itself. Not that losing two files and chipping ice necessarily counts as Doom. It doesn't hold a candle to hurricanes and economic nuclear winter. But still.

That incredible flow I'd had in Paris – the one that turned into an out-of-control Raging Rapids theme park ride when I got home – has caused me to rethink my approach. This week is all about slowing down and tuning in. Turning the Crazyhorse River into a nice, manageable babbling brook.

I need to get this Depression Project finished. Need to. And in order to do that, I need to NOT do 4 million other things. Full stop. So despite the fact that I just signed up for Twitter and am tempted to tweet every passing random and slightly dirty thought that enters my mind...I'll just say, 'See you tomorrow Internet.'

Day 211: What Too Busy Looks Like

it looks like losing
things you can't afford to lose at the moment you can't afford to waste
you should learn
you should learn
you should learn which you would if you weren't
so bizzy,
frizzy,
overwhelmed,
too hanging-on to see

anything
but that day off-off-off dangling, sun-warmed
off-off-off...if
you hadn't lost those files with those notes from that client
those phone-talk hours distilled
into capital letters
misspelled
and hasty

and now
too tired to remember
two documents to finish
that job
that leaves you drained dry and empty on the friday
when you forget to save

that snapping circle
and you think you're faster
faster more cunning
running
the next thing the next thing the next thing
runs the battery down

in so many ways

things switch off suddenly
and everything is gone
except consequences

Day 208: And Now...More Depression!

I've had a request for an update on The Depression Project. After the Parisian Panic Attack followed by the Great Boundary Setting of 2009, I haven't said boo. Inquiring minds want to know. So. Here's the scoop:

Two days before I returned from Paris, a meeting was scheduled for five minutes after my plane touched down at home. POUNCE. I, Grade-A Sucker, agreed to it largely because I want this godforsaken project out of my life as quickly as possible and if that means hauling my haggard, jet-lagged ass into a meeting the day after I get home, so freaking be it.

On my way home, I turned my cell phone on for a period of fourteen seconds in the Toronto airport. Just long enough to inform Boyfriend that my plane didn't go Oceanic Flight 815* over the Atlantic. During that microscopic window of time, who should call but...The Depression People.

EEEEEK!

It was good news though: "We've worked ahead on the scripts. All you have to do is tweak them." This means less work and gutwrenching hell for me. This makes me happy.

We get into the meeting and talk timelines and moving forward.

Then, Dr. Guru shows up. The man whose work in spirituality and depression forms the bedrock of this project. The man who cuts right to the effing chase: "Last week in Halifax, nine teenagers were rushed into the emergency room because of a suicide pact. One was dead by the time they arrived. Four are in ICU. The rest were treated and released. This is why we're here."

Oh.

Right.

For the next hour, Dr. Guru spins a mesmerizing web of personal stories, no-BS project management and super-clear communication about what HE needs to get his part of the project done. He, like me, is sick and tired of the zig-zagging, where's-my-mommy progression of this thing and he wants it the eff DONE.

"Tell me what you want," he says to the two ladies in charge of executing this thing.

My thoughts. His mouth.

Dr. Guru turns to me and asks how I'm feeling. I give a bullshit answer like, "Fine thanks, how are you?" But perhaps he sensed from the emanating waves of murderous rage that simply wasn't true.

And so, I started talking (God help us all):

"For two months, I've been shooting in the dark because all I hear is: 'We don't know what we want.' Well, you sure know what you don't want: EVERYTHING I GIVE YOU.

You want my voice and style, but not when it actually comes out in the writing. You want my sense of humour – which was what hauled me OUT of depression in the first place – but not around people who are depressed(?!). You want authentic, personal stories (VERY, VERY PERSONAL STORIES), but then rewrite them as though I am a MAN.

I am frustrated, isolated and defensive. The closer we get to being done, the farther I feel from the truth. If I'm not true and real, the kids are going to see right through me and I AM GOING TO LOSE THEM. In every sense of the word."

There was some silence in the room.

"But...we think you're the right person for the project," Lady #2 said, patting my arm.

As though I needed validation of my existence and not a CLEAR SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM. Teenagers are killing themselves...but you're a good person, Melanie. Thanks.

Other Film Guy, in charge of schedules, offered: "I think we had to go through all THAT to get where we are NOW."

YOU didn't go through anything, Mister. I did. Next?

Matt, the Original Film Guy, says it's a Test From The Universe. Personal growth in the form of the writing contract from hell.

Bizarrely, this made me feel better.

Somehow, there's a POINT to this gong show cluster f*ck and somehow I will benefit from it...eventually. I drove home, nursed a massive, full-body tension headache and went to bed early. Then, when I woke up the next morning? BOOM. Clarity.

I wrote an email:

Laughter was my way out of depression, but it's also a defense mechanism for me. It's coming out in my writing because I'm shooting in the dark. I'm GUESSING what you wanted the kids to get out of every section and it's making me (and my writing) tentative and nervous. Now I'm frustrated...so the stabs I take will likely get more wild and off the mark.

It's time to get grounded in the point of all this. On a segment by segment basis.

If I know what you want, I have the confidence to explore a range of emotional voices in order to communicate with the kids. But if I'm on my heels all you'll get is defensive jokes and people-pleasing B.S. Not authentic content written for the people we are trying to help.

It's not often I use the words "people-pleasing B.S." with my clients. There's a first time for everything.

Since then, I've been talking on the phone with The Ladies for an hour every day, going through each segment with a fine tooth comb and rewriting everything for the THIRD (and in the case of Module 1...SEVENTH) time.

(Can you say Contract Renegotiation?)

It's a grind and it's hellacious, but it's happening and we're moving. There's a point to every sentence and every story. And for the first time since the beginning, I feel like I'm not only speaking to depressed kids but actually helping them, too. Yesssss.




*A reference to the TV show Lost for those who don't watch it. Short form for 'Catastrophic Plane Crash Involving Lots Of Blood And Death And A Magic Island With Mysterious Hatches And The Occasional Touch Of Time Travel.'

As The Co-Dependent World Turns

Dudes. I don't know what happened, but I went ahead and wrote to the Depression People. Ack! I have boundaries...WHO FREAKING KNEW? I guess my time in Paris was the thing I wasn't willing to lose.

From the email:

I am more than willing to work on this until we get it right, but right now I'm in the position of having to choose between 'my' work (the creative project I'm here working on) and 'your' work. It's upsetting feeling like I'm either letting you down or letting myself down.

In order to feel like I'm not wasting precious Paris time, I need to choose my work. The project is a book set in Paris and I cannot do this research back home. I'm back in less than two weeks and will be able to give this my full attention then.

Day 187: Zounds! They Found My Secret Lair!

Paris, Day 16. It's a horrible feeling to find yourself on the wrong side of the halfway point. And an even worse feeling to be on the downward slide to home time and have the Giant Ungainly Neverending Soul-Crushing Work Project that you hoped would be finished before you LEFT for Paris follow you TO Paris and threaten to poison the precious few days you have left.

The Depression Project returns.

The clients were three weeks late with their comments on my first drafts, but OF COURSE they've sent them to me now. Which means if this project is to stay on schedule, it's all up to me. In Paris.

This makes my personal issues flare up like teenage acne.

I spent all day yesterday grinding over the rewrites, which are more like primal therapy sessions than text edits. I tried desperately to remember this is about helping kids and not about clients completely overstepping their bounds and totally f*cking up my life. I tried to force the words 'complete waste of a day' out of my mind.

And in the end, none of that worked. I had two modules (out of SEVEN) rewritten and I felt like crying.

Why? Because it wasn't supposed to happen this way and I can't let that fact go.

Why? Because this project is an endless game of Melanie Pours Her Heart Out And 10 People Repeatedly Judge Her, Screaming 'DANCE MONKEY DANCE!'

Why? Because I'm in EFFING PARIS, yo, and would very much like to tell my clients to SUCK IT but am too much of a people-pleasing asshole to do it.

Can someone out there please Fed Ex me some boundaries? Or perhaps several pounds of Xanax?

Day 161: Spin Around Three Times and Tug Your Right Ear

So I wrote that big group-hug of a post about the Crazy Train, but I never actually TOLD you what kind of crazy I was dealing with. But that's because I would have cried if I did. I'm better now.

Here goes. 'Member that depression project? 'Member the seven scripts I needed to write? 'Member how I killed myself all last week writing them and forgoing things like dinner and sleep in order to stay one step ahead of the barking, ravenous dogs at my heels?

(You probably didn't know about the dogs.)

Well. Turns out most of the work I did last week was for NOTHING because we (meaning me) were on the COMPLETELY WRONG TRACK. So I spend 30-something hours writing stuff that I will now be deleting. I'm starting from scratch.

And it's all due Friday.

Which would be tomorrow.

Are you feeling the crazy? I'm feeling the crazy.

So after that super-fun conversation with my client, I had a wee cry. And then I made a massive cup of tea and went back to the drawing board.

My mom contributed a thought, which I used not only in the script but to get me through this desperate holy-crap-I'm-screwed moment: "Sometimes the big picture is too scary. Just look at one corner."

I worked through the script moment by moment and I started to feel that weird kind of efficient flow people get when they have to plan funerals for their loved ones and you think how the hell are they STANDING let alone ordering flowers and printing invitations and shaking my hand?

I sent it off and I huddled in front of the fire, rocking back and forth and drooling.

The next morning, I got the email. They loved it. Like LOOOOOOOVED. I had to read the email seven times to believe it, but it's true. I effing NAILED it.

Which is great...only I wrote it in that weird adrenaline fugue where mothers lift cars off their infant children. I mean, come on, they are not actually that strong and obviously that first script was a FLUKE. I can't possibly deliver six more just like it. Clearly that was a coincidence and I can never, ever, ever recreate the mysterious ju-ju that inspired it.

Maybe I can get Boyfriend to fire a gun at me a few times and get me all freaked out and panicky. Maybe I'll hire a pack of rabid dogs to chase me around the block or maybe, please God, they'll just put me out of my misery and FIRE me.

For delivering a script they are salivating over? Oh God. I'm screwed.

Day 160: All Aboard the Crazy Train

When I worked at WHERE Magazine, at least once every production cycle either Dulcy or I would end up crying. We called it the Crazy Train. Well, she coined it. I jumped on board.

When life is swirling so fast you can't possibly survive the Mach 10 insanity. When you're yelling at the carny to stop the ride only he can't hear you because he bailed out five miles back. When you're punch-drunk from all the shit hitting the fan. That's the Crazy Train.

At WHERE it was always that point in the process when we couldn't see how making a magazine was humanly possible because so many things had gone wrong and so many people were assholes. Sales closed late. Nothing was ready. And no one seemed to see the disaster looming except one of us.

Usually, I'd get an email from Dulce about how she didn't sleep the night before and was trapped on the express route to Crazytown. I'd dial her extension and say, 'Get over here.' And we'd hang out until both of us were laughing.

My Crazy Train journeys frequently had to do with my divorce. Dulce was there when it happened and was like oxygen to me during the worst of it. She was the one who held me up on days I didn't think I could fake it for another second.

Later, after we both left the magazine and everything changed, I'd get an email every once and awhile with a subtext of: HANG ON. Sometimes, I'd feel a ripple in the fabric of space-time and I'd send a similar note. These emails were always right on time. Just when the swirl of black oblivion had opened up and whispered, "Jump!"

It's encouraging to have someone well-tuned to my insanity.

It's also nice not to have to explain what's going on or why it's turned you into a clawing, shrieking jungle cat. You just say Crazy Train and that's enough. It's shorthand for, "I'm drowning, now throw a fucking rope."

I could wish our friendship was something different. And she might wish that, too. Maybe that we were soul mates for things like cupcake cravings or the deep need to watch Meg Ryan movies in our jammies. But that ain't us.

We're dark and sticky with railroad tar. Our hair is messy and we smell a little burnt. We're bonded by the Crazy Train. It isn't pretty sometimes, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Day 154: Breakdown, Breakthrough, Break Dance

I joke about depression a lot, dropping one-liners and innuendos, calling myself a mood swinger, calling myself crazy. I joke about it because a relapse of depression is my greatest fear. It’s with me almost every single day and the jokes help me make it seem smaller than it is.

The really scary thing about depression is there is no bottom. The black hole just keeps on going, so falling back into it is about the worst thing I can imagine. Think about what it would feel like to plunge down a hole that never ended – that constant loose-guts feeling of free-fall. If there’s a hell, that’s what it would be for me.

I was on medication for six years, starting a drug called Celexa one week before my husband left. I started feeling better immediately, and I’ll never know if it was the meds or him leaving that helped me come out of four years of almost-constant horror and pain.

Whatever it was took that free-fall feeling away. I could function. I could feel happy. I could focus and move forward in my life – get a job, get a boyfriend, set goals like marathons and Ironman and actually have the capacity to complete them. But I always that niggling, uncomfortable feeling that I had to take happy pills to get through a day.

In the six years I was on meds, I tried to get off them several times. Each time, I would gradually decrease the dose until I was down to half a pill every few days. If I took one on Monday, by Wednesday, I’d start to feel lightheaded and a little woozy. By Thursday, I’d feel like I was going to pass out and by Friday, I’d be nauseous, dizzy and barely able to stand. This pass-out brain-damaged feeling was not depression. It was withdrawal symptoms from a medication that my body was addicted to. They don’t tell you this when you start antidepressants.

But beyond the withdrawal, there was a more subtle feeling. The feeling of jumping without a parachute. Or tightrope walking without a safety net. The feeling you could fall at any time. That feeling kept me from going off meds for many years.

Finally, last spring after returning from Paris, I weaned myself down to a quarter of a pill every few days. Then one day, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I took the meds and I guessed that meant I was off them.

The funny thing was, as I was going off my meds, I was slipping into a depression. Common sense would say I should have stayed on them. But I was done. I was through not knowing what was actually happening in my body. Through medicating an illness that I now felt was linked to me not living an authentic life.

Because what Paris did is it told me I am an artist. It told me that living this fake parallel life – where ‘creative’ meant writing hardwood floor ads – was not enough. Living a fake version of your life seemed to be a good way to make yourself depressed, so I tried an experiment. I put the pill bottle away and committed to my creative work. I started writing a memoir of my trip to Paris, a book about being authentic and realizing your dreams.

It was tough going. It seemed like every couple of days I had some kind of panic attack or micro-breakdown. I questioned everything in my life, including my boyfriend who I put through the wringer on a daily basis. He was the only person who saw me every day and who knew what was going on – as much as anyone can know another person’s experience – but every day I considered ending our relationship.

People kept telling me it was the writing – that the creative process is tough and tumultuous. Some blamed my boyfriend for stifling my creativity. Some suggested I should do something else, date someone else, move somewhere else. But I ignored everyone and kept going, enduring bad day after bad day after bad day. Sometimes, I’d cry all day. I’d pull out that pill bottle and stare at it for a very long time. But I never took one.

I was operating on faith. I had no rational reason to believe things would work out – I’d never heard of a clinical study saying creative work increases seratonin levels. But deep in my gut, I had this feeling that if I kept going, kept writing, everything would work out.

In December, I started feeling better. I finished the first draft of my book and I celebrated a feeling of possibility for the first time in months. I also realized I had four months of blog posts about my daily mental breakdown and a two-month period where I very publicly debated breaking up with my boyfriend. I was embarrassed and ashamed. I felt terrible for having dragged him through hell for half a year and documenting the whole process on the Internet.

In mid-January, I spent a couple of days in the mountains with a friend of mine. It was there I realized I’d been off my medication for six months. That, for the first time, I was living my real life as my true self. That I’d freed myself from depression and medication, that I was living my dream of being an artist.

And also that I’d been holding myself to a standard of perfection the whole time.

I had struggled like hell for six months and the whole time, I’d beat myself up for not being perfect. For not being instantly cured and instantly happy. For taking five months to write a first draft instead of two. For not calling people back.

I’m not sure what the lesson is here, to be perfectly honest. Whether it’s about the power of living your dreams or some sad fucking parable about the perils of perfectionism. But here I am. And here it is.

Right now I’m working on a course to help teenagers with depression. It’s rewarding work, but it’s bringing up all kinds of feelings I’ve been packing down and hiding from for years. It’s making me see my own denial – I’ve been studiously ignoring my depression since I took that first pill six and a half years ago.

Writing about it makes it all REAL again. It’s scary and it’s hard and I feel like I’m passing through a kind of portal. Like on the other side of this difficult but necessary work, there is a whole new world waiting for me.

I’m removing a huge heavy coat that I’ve been carrying for ten years and I don’t know what to do once this weight is off me. I feel like I’m fumbling with the buttons, not sure if I even want to take it off. That if I take off this weight, anything is possible, and that wide-open Anything is terrifying. I don’t know why I feel this, but I do. I guess I’m operating on faith...again and still. I guess it’s all I know how to do.

Day 147: Oh God, Now I Hafta DO It

It's the morning after agreeing to work my bony butt off for the next three weeks. Annnnnnnd I'm terrified. This is typical of my "process" – the great build up to scoring a fabulous project, the celebration of getting it and now, the abject horror of actually having to follow through.

This is the part where I wonder why the hell I put myself out there in the first place and couldn't have been happy to sit around reading novels and watching my bank balance retreat faster than Bill Zane's hairline.

Why do I always dooooooo this? I ask myself, in a really whiny inner-head voice. Why do I always say yesssssss? [See Freak Show for further details.]

Sometimes I go to Boyfriend, pouting like a three-year-old, and he tells me something like: You do this because you love it and you might be scared right now, but that will fuel you.

Then I say something like: But I don't wannnnnaaaaaa! And then he sends me up to the bath (a.k.a. hydro-psycho-therapy). And later I think how lucky I am to have my very own personal computer programmer psychiatrist nanny.

But today, I did something different. I looked at my newly revised JOY Plan list for January and worked on a delicious portfolio of writing samples for the Haiti/India/Zambia photo documentary project.

In other words, oops, I'm about to do it again.

Pitching a new creative project has become like dating used to be. The thrill! The anticipation! Do they like me? Could they love me? You tell me the difference between a project proposal and the first three dates. Go on. Try.

The only trouble with the proposal (and proposals of any kind, I might add) is that afterwards? You gotta freaking commit.

Day 146: Awkward Professional Moment of the Week

So, I meet with the depression project people and the film dudes they have on board and finally after six weeks of total and utter vagueness, this project begins to take shape. It looks like I've been chosen as the writer...although no one has officially told me as such, which is a tad on the weird side but I'm rolling with it.

Regardless. We go through the structure of each 'course module' which is basically ten or so video segments. We chat through what the host will say and blah blah video stuff blah. And as we talk, I realize two things.

One is that spending all that time (as in THREE DAYS STRAIGHT) writing them a proposal was, in fact, pointless. Because what they actually want is drastically different than what they said they want which was, 'We don't know what we want.'

Moving on.

The other thing I glean is that not only am I the writer of this project, but I am the on-camera host, relating personal stories of my experience with depression and about my own spiritual practice.

In the timeless word of Keanu Reeves: whoa.

Turns out, I'm a three-for-one special on this gig. I have TV hosting experience, I'm a writer and I was once coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. I knew my mental illness would pay off one day!

So this leaves my to-do-before-leaving-for-Paris list looking like this:
1. Bust out 8 video scripts with 10 segments each, including a total of 30 or 40 personal stories and anecdotes related to depression and spirituality. Because we all have a big pile of those lying around.
2. Get the scripts approved by a committee of researchers who took forever to maybe-possibly hire me and by a not-yet-formed focus group of teenagers
3. Expose myself (emotionally) in front of a camera for three very long shooting days
4. File three years of taxes
5. Pack

It's fine.

What's not so fine is that I left the meeting elated but with no idea how much I'm being paid. So, halfway out the door, I decide to go back in and clarify this important lil' detail. I poke my head around the corner to find my two clients whispering with each other.

One looks up at me. She's clearly mid-rant and is CRYING. She gives me a black look that says something like, "Well, isn't this fucking great."

I apologize profusely and begin to back away, only to be stopped in my tracks by the other client-lady who decides it's a good time for small talk. She tells me that she's only working part-time and blah blah something about her cell phone.

Meanwhile, Crying Client and I are standing there humiliated and wishing we were never born. I decide I'd rather work for free than stand there any longer, but the cell phone thing is still happening and WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS and then finally, finally it's over and I shrink out the door.