theyoungdepressionist-blog

[theyoungdepressionist-blog]

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

[theyoungdepressionist-blog]

The first steps. My first time completing a morning routine.

Technically I am being a bit of a liar when I say I’ve completed my first routine. Writing this blog post is actually my final step to the routine so I am not quite finished yet.

These are my first small steps towards reducing anxiety and so far it worked until the end. For whatever reason, I have been hit with a bout of intense anxiety. Hopefully, through dedication and repetition, I can reduce this anxiety.

I am basically going to catalog what I did for my routine, how I could improve, and what I felt overall about it.

This is not a definitive guide on how to do a morning routine I will create that blog post at a later date. Let us begin.

Waking Up

This is obviously the first step. You have to get out of bed in order to start doing anything. I could have done a lot better in this department. I originally planned to wake up at six in the morning, and I did. But when I woke up I felt tired and groggy because I failed to get more than 6 hours of sleep. This caused me to lay in bed for about 1 hour and watch twitch streams. I should have gotten out of bed immediately but whatever, it’s a good first attempt. Once I did get up I got right to work though.

Score: 6/10 - probably would have been higher if you got your lazy butt out of bed.

Making the bed

Call me a lazy bastard or just simply sheltered or privileged or whatever. But usually, my mother would make my bed. I never really have done it too much in my life. So the bed's sheets aren’t really pretty and they’re all botched up in weird ways because I am not as experienced as my mother.

So why is this a part of the routine?

Well...

It makes my mom’s life easier (although she did judge me for not covering my bed in enough Lysol to kill every single microscopic germ that could exist on an 18-year-old boy's bed).

If I accomplish nothing else I at least made my bed.

It brings the room together.

There is this weird spiritual/mental aspect to making up the bed. It could be something with readjusting the energies in your bed or some new-agey bull hockey. Or it could be some extended metaphor for getting your brain and life in order. I don’t know it just felt nice to do.

This is my bed. Not too bad right?

Score: 7/10 - It’ll do.

Meditation/Prayer

Before you call me a bohemian or some sort of religious zealot hear me out.

Meditation, at least from what I heard from folks online and some scientific studies, could actually help with your brain activity/health.

Also, there are non-religious forms of meditation for you non-spiritual folk out there.

My first go at meditation was a guided non-religious meditation done with the help of headphones and this youtube video. It went okay, I had to stop after about 15 minutes because I completely lost focus and my head was starting to hurt. I am personally religious also, so in the future when I get better I want to add prayer.

Score 4/10 - meh could have done a lot better.

Taking a cold shower/Getting ready

Gross! Cold showers!

It actually wasn’t that bad. I have a very long routine for getting ready in the morning when compared to most dudes this is probably what took the longest chunk of time.

I didn’t take a full cold shower, I did about 8 minutes of warmth and 3 minutes of cold (Yes, I take long showers it’ll make more sense later). This was more of a beta test anyway I intent to reduce shower time in the future.

Basically, my full routine includes [TMI Warning]:

Taking my clothes off

Getting in the shower

Cleansing myself with a bar of soap

Washing my hair with shampoo

Washing my hair with conditioner

While condition is in my hair, cover body with hydrating body wash

Wash body and hair off simultaneously

Place short term leave-in conditioner in my hair while covering my body with cocoa butter in-shower lotion

Turn temp to super chill

Rinse off lotion and conditioner

Lightly pat dry body and hair

Brush hair thoroughly 

Wash face with exfoliator

Shave face hair off

Wash face with cleanser gel

Hydrate face with oil-control moisturizer 

Brush teeth

Floss

Mouthwash

Fix hair once more

Get dressed in comfortable clothing that isn’t PJs (generally you’d want to put on an outfit that isn’t PJs just so that you can trick your brain into a kind of ‘work’ mode. PJs program your brain to think ‘lazy’ and that is not what you want. I still put on nice sweatpants and a T-shirt. There is a balance of comfort and work clothes that you can achieve.)

Hopefully, you can get an idea of what your ‘getting ready’ routine would look like. Maybe you’ll get ideas from mine. I just wanted to list everything. Try and get everything in your getting ready routine done at this point in time just to get it over with. My routine seemed like a ton but I actually got all that done in around 40 minutes. Not too bad, but I can reduce the time further.

Here is my semi-casual work from home outfit complete with geeky digital watch and comfy black sweatpants.

Score: 9/10 - Did really well. Could reduce time though.

COFFEE!!!

This is my favorite part of the routine so far.

You can have coffee, tea, or any other breakfast drink of your choice. Just sit down and enjoy the energizing drink. I even popped on a couple YouTube videos as I sipped away.

You probably want to avoid having a breakfast here, the drink is supposed to quench your hunger a bit before you eat later on in the day. Unlike what your childhood teachers and helicopter parents told you; breakfasts, in general, make you groggy and lazy, especially if you overload with carbs. Postpone your breakfast until after you’ve gotten some work done. I usually consume enormous breakfasts, so this is something I'm definitely not used to. In fact, I’m very hungry right now.

(Think of your wonderful breakfast waffles and bacon as a gift for getting all the important stuff done for the day.)

Here’s my favorite mug. Not because it’s Starbucks. Because it’s the largest one I own. Score: 10/10

Brain Dump

Plain and simple. Grab a notebook and a writing utensil and just write down your thoughts and ideas. Doesn’t need to be anything cohesive, just write and draw whatever comes. Just take a look at the mess I made:

(I covered some private information)

The point of the brain dump is to get all those messy maddening thoughts out of your skull cage and onto paper. A metaphorical letting go of all these concerns and thoughts. In the end, you’ll feel lighter, more relaxed and focused, and just better in general.

Score: 9/10 - Fun and creative. Maybe later I can get better and make my brain dump pages more aesthetically pleasing.

Gratitude & Affirmations

With gratitudes at first, it may feel weird to write. But it’s a little reminder of the things you are grateful for, to keep you grounded and optimistic. I tried to follow a pattern of being grateful for a person, a random object around me, and something I would miss if gone. You could, of course, write whatever the hell you want. Here is mine:

(Covering more sensitive information)

You can also see my affirmations at the bottom. They are basically multiple quotes to amp you up. I know a little corny. But get over it and write some down look up some motivational quotes on the internet or make up your own (I did a mix). I tried to do that cool typography thing I sometimes see on quote images on the internet but I'm not good at graphics design. 

Score: 8/10 - I could have found some better quotes.

Daily Intention

Self-Explanitory. What do you want to do today? And what do you enjoy doing?

Here’s mine:

Score: 10/10

The End

And now we come full circle all the way to the end.

You finish by writing your 3-5 most important tasks and identifying which one is causing the most anxiety. And which one would cancel the other tasks out.

Identify one as the most important and dedicate at least 90 minutes to executing that task. For me, that number one task was this blog post. As of right now, I've been writing this for about 90 minutes. So now I’m done with my first morning routine. Felt good man. Now I am going to eat a huge breakfast and finish a couple other tasks I wrote down. I feel much better, less anxious, and a lot more accomplished. I really recommend you do this. You can either use this as a rough guide or wait (or look for depending on when you read this) my more definitive guide on morning routines. I still have to experiment with a variety of different morning routines to find what is best for me. We are still in beta testing people!

My takeaways from this first attempt were that these routines are designed to reprogram your brain to think more optimistically, to be less anxious, and to accomplish more. You get most of your work done in the first three hours of your day. So take advantage of that. Victims of depression will look at this and think that it is too much to do. Do not fall into that. Modify the routine in any way you see fit. Just try and do something. Start really small and you’ll see that these little steps will help you feel more accomplished. I guarantee it.- 

Michelangelo Cervantes

[theyoungdepressionist-blog]

Why writing helps with your depression. The purpose of this blog.

Laying in bed and not sleeping is one of the worst things you can do while depressed.

Especially at night. You will feel more deracinated as time progresses. A wandering depressed brain doesn’t help either. Your thoughts will be bleak, you will think about and contemplate death, and you will wallow in your own self-loathing.

Stop that. Now.

One of the easiest things you could do is grab a pencil and a notebook and write. If you are more tech-oriented, grab your computing device and write. Dump everything in your brain and then decide later if you wish to share it or not to. Quite frankly, no one gives a damn whether the writing that you wrote is “good” or “sufficient” enough. Those are concerns only your mind is worrying about.

You’ll feel better, just trust me.

Now, onto the purpose of this blog. The long and short of it is I am going through depression for the first time. (If you wish to read about depression I recommend going to this link simply googling depression can lead to a lot of clickbait garbage and poorly made online quizzes, please avoid those.) I won’t go into many details about my personal struggles, but in essence, I fit almost every symptom listed in that UMM article.

Here is what I'm going to do about it.

1. Make this blog a long-term project for myself and my readers.

Working on this in the morning every day will not only give me something to dedicate creative energy to but also (hopefully) inspire others to do the same.

2. Condense a plethora of information.

There is lots of information out there on how to climb yourself out of depression. Hopefully, I can condense some of that for you.

3. Create a morning routine with this project, stop being depressed.

I will go into morning routines more in future blogs. But this is one of my summer projects to give myself something to do.

(I know 1 and 3 are basically repeating the same notion but just don’t pay attention to that)

To end it all. I’ll leave you with a short (not so) commonly asked questions.

Why did you mention laying in bed at the beginning of the blog?

Because I was doing that very thing right before I got off my ass and wrote this. Now I feel a ton better.

Why do you want me to write?

Because writing this blog post made me feel better and writing in a journal, blog, social media, notepad app etc. would probably make you feel better too.

Why is this blog called The Young Depressionists?

The word ‘depressionist’ doesn’t mean anything. It’s a play on words I made up in order to seem le smart. Also, I created some loose rational and forced metaphors to explain it in the description of the blog. You should read that.

What is the future of this blog?

Hopefully an everyday blog. Hopefully, someone will read it. Hopefully, I stop being depressed. Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully...