#coronart 57: Instinct

Did you think my #coronart effort was dead? Oh no, just sleeping. And I guess it kinds of relates to the keyword for this piece. 

I did this piece at the tail end of May. That's over three weeks ago. First, my instincts told me I needed to take a break. And that may have been true, but they also told me that I'd manage to do #coronart just a few times a week. Rationally, experience should have told me that this would probably be more difficult than it seemed.

Then I thought, yeah, I'll publish it soon, I just need to write a really good blogpost about it. Maybe a video! Rationally, I should have known that I was way too busy to embiggen my workload like that, but my instincts told me that it'd be OK. 

One thing about depression, or at least my bipolar cycles, is that the worse I feel, the more my instincts go wrong. In terms of exercise my instincts tell me to rest when I need to stay active. They tell me to go one more round when I feel my shoulder tearing and I should stop. 

With art, they tell me that I can take on challenges I should say no to, and make me deathly scared of things that should jump for joy at. 

It's like constantly being in a fight or flight situation, and always choosing the wrong option. 

Perhaps depression has instincts of it's own. Perhaps the instinct of depression protects itself by steering it's host wrong at every turn.

Depression is self protecting. At least up to a point.  

At the very darkest edge of my depressions, even if life screams it's beauty at me, my instincts tell me I should end my own life. Which would end the depression, I guess. 

Don't worry. I'm not at that place now. I'm actually at a very good place. I'm slowly catching up on work and deadlines, shipping art, learning, doing personal projects, enjoying the weather, doing physical training around 2 hours every day, being more fit that I've been for years and years. I think I might even live through a summer without any major depressive episodes, for the first time in tens of years. 

But if I'm going to reach that ambition, the most important thing I can do is to not listen to my instinct.