Steve the Owl's Blog

This blog post is something that is more personal than about building a business. However, there may things that i say that teach you about some of the things that you need to deal with that may help you in your business or in life in general.

Personal Demons

As I mentioned in a previous post, I suffered from depression in my childhood. What I did not mention is that I had to deal with something that I now know is depression since just before my ninth birthday. Most of the time, this is what could be called a low-grade form of depression, which expresses itself as more of a general malaise. I have had more serious bouts with depression in 1988-89, 1995, 1998, 1999, and 2003, with the absolute worst one being the one that I suffered in the summer of 1995 at the age of 15.

However, my childhood dream was to go to West Point (I did not, but I am definitely glad that I finally ended up at West Virginia University for my undergraduate studies.) and I knew that this was a demon that I would basically have to battle alone because there was no way that I could get into West Point with a history of mental illness. By the time I left my first college, and came to WVU, I had mostly accepted  my depression and figured out how to handle it.

By the time I entered seminary in 2005, it had been two years since my last serious bout of depression, and I had to take the big diagnostic psychological profile with all of the true/false questions. (I think it was called MMSI but I can’t remember the exact name), and I found out in February 2006 that I had been diagnosed with depression. This was something that did not surprise me, and it did not surprise the person running the program that I already knew, because he said that a lot of people are pretty self-aware about such a diagnosis. Fortunately, my depression is a type that I have been able to treat without the use of anti-depressants. (I am not opposed to any and all uses of anti-depressants, but I personally do not like the idea of being dependent on any medication to get through the day.)

It Returns

Earlier this month was a good time for me. I had started to get the hang of building my blog, I moved into a new place with my wife, and my personal development had really kicked into high gear. Then, out of the blue, I started to have another bout of depression.

The cruel irony of depression is that it is something that will make it that much more difficult to do the most basic things in life even if, or especially if, these are things that are important to getting out of the depression. However, I have been through the ringer enough to know that this is the case, and I know that, if I want to cut down the time of this bout with a bigger depression, I have to know that there are times when I must do like George Costanza and say,

“If my instincts are wrong, then the opposite must be right.”

I know that this piece of advice won’t necessarily land me my dream job with the Yankees or anything like that, but I know that, faced with my depression, I have two choices:

I can either choose to let my depression get the best of me, or I can choose to fight. Well, I choose to fight.