About a week or so ago, a coworker asked me “How do you do it? How is it you say you’re depressed, yet you’re smiling so much and you seem happy?” I told him that I usually try to follow the lyrics to an Allman Brothers Band song and “leave my blues at home.” I also told him that sometimes the lyrics to an Arch Enemy song, “behind the smile, I feel nothing” is where I am. But, overall, I’m not in a bad place right now. Well, let me re-word that. I’ve been much worse. Where I am now certainly isn’t great.

I committed myself to writing at least one blog entry per month in 2015. If you’ll notice, many of my entries are later in the month, as I’ve never been too good with deadlines. The majority of what I write about deals with my ongoing struggle with depression, anxiety, and probably some other forms of mental illness that I haven’t even fully identified yet. Part of the reason this particular entry is so late in the month is really due to an issue of writer’s block that I’m dealing with. And it’s not that I don’t have something to say, it’s mostly due to me not feeling too bad lately.

I’ve documented my struggles with money. I’ve taken some steps to make that a little bit better, and so far it’s working. Part-time jobs on top of my full-time job are helping me out. Actually, I’ve recently accepted and left a job that I felt wasn’t working out for me. It’s nice to have a few options there for myself and so far, as I’ve said, it’s working.

I’ve also even seen an upswing in my social life lately. There’s actually hope where there didn’t seem to be. Of course, it’s not my nature to have too much hope in any circumstance. Naturally, I have my doubts, worries, and fears about all of this. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.

This entry is absolutely not what I imagined writing. It’s so far from the way I started it too. It had a different title and a different name. The original draft had a much darker tone to it. There’s things that I was going to write about that didn’t fit with my current mood. And I probably will write about them at some point soon, but I’ll want to put significant thought into them before I do that.

It’s probably not a good thing that I fully expect my good mood to change at any time. I expect whatever good things I’m doing to crumble. I expect everything around me to fall back into the full despair I’m used to. There’s significant precedent for that. And you know what, it very well may happen that way, but for the time being, I’m going to do my best to enjoy the ride.