Stuck in the depths of despair

an authentic start to my conversation with myself

I am stuck. Or should I say - I have been stuck. To no fault of 2020 or the COVID-19 pandemic, the past year was a difficult year for me. I used to be an Agile Coach at work, but someone who constantly questioned the value that I delivered with that work and the associated joy that I derived from it. I felt like a cheat doing peripheral change (IMHO) that the clients were going goo-goo and gaga about how “Agile” they were.

I spent the last year in introspection and in pain trying to solve this world problem of why do people want change, but want to get away with the minimum? And not with a master plan to do the minimum, but from the fact that we are humans and this is how we roll.

Over the last eight weeks or so, I reached a low point of being deeply stuck in a state of anxiety and depression on top of other design burdens I carry in the ADHD/OCD spectrum. My life had come to a stop. I had no motivation to do any work. Or open my laptop. Or respond to emails. Or even switch on the TV and watch Netflix.

But all the while, the human brain keeps churning on. The human system is designed with a little more hope to counter the worst the humans often face so that the race doesn’t disappear and in this deepest of despair, I clung to hope. And my brain continued to model its answers for my survival and what I would do to exist and to thrive. The thirst for survival never went away.

In my look for answers to what one would do under situations like what I am going through, several answers came by. Answers including finding goals, purpose, following planning and do-ing systems, routines, meditation, exercise, sleep, medication, therapy, etc., etc. Lots of answers but too few questions to find one’s own answers in context. Most answers were to create some sort of “flow” that would bring one back from the brink.

Then, I had an “Ah, ha” moment. These were not my answers. Humans as a race are driven by one thing that helps them with their survival in the application of hope over fear - it is applying the cognitive creativity for that survival. That is my hypothesis - cognitive creativity creates everything else including the flow, predictability, and order that which we crave for but is an illusionary target, never reached.

So I start this journey of creating something new each day. And let me see where this creating something takes me. There might be flow. There might be something of utility created in my personal context that is of value to me. Or not. But like Dory keeps singing in “Finding Nemo” - “Just keep swimming (creating)…”