06 Mar

depression lifting?

I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that I am getting a handle on my depression.

Last week, there was a massive crisis in the office, when our server was suddenly flooded with 1.6 million junk emails. This slowed down our email throughput to basically a standstill, for two days, causing huge headaches in the company, and lots of anger from our poor clients, who had to suffer with us.

Some of the symptoms of my depression is a feeling of responsibility for everything, and massive paranoia when things go wrong. Last week was a real test for this, as I was put under a lot of strain while we tried to get this sorted.

Thankfully, we finally got through it all, with the help of our good buddy Brian of Synergy Int, but it left the whole company in a state of strain.

The reason I say I am optimistic that I’m getting a handle on my depression is that, even though I felt at many times during the week that it was time that I took up my life-long dream of becoming a farmer, I recognised the hopeless despair as simply a response to the stress that I was under. Also, when I felt extremely paranoid that fingers were being pointed at me, I recognised that this was also stress talking.

I am very proud that I managed to recognise these symptoms for what they were, and to continue working despite them.

In total, I lost about two days work last week, but was able to start up again very quickly after the crisis was past.