Role Models
Role models, a potentially sleepless night and a little late-night chasing rabbits down holes got me thinking about that term.
We often speak of role models as being necessary for our youth to follow. Even though it's rarely practised in our schools, we acknowledge the power of leading by example daily. We say the student survivors of the Parkland shooting are great examples (if you don't say that yourself, you're probably reading the wrong blog. The door's over there) for our youth to follow. We also say that self-absorbed, too-rich-to-know-consequenses people like Paris Hilton or this generation's Khloe Kardashian are horrible examples to follow.
But I realized that following good examples isn't just for the young. It is no secret - and I'm learning - no shame, that my depression had recently started slipping out of my control for the first time in the roughly 15 years since I've had it under control with the help of antidepressants. I'm trying to avoid self-diagnosis but I feel it might not be entirely inaccurate to say that it feels like my depression has either slipped in to major depressive disorder or has developed into Bipolar II Disorder.
I'm still that same old guy who could live a contented if not entirely happy life with the aid of medicine, it just feels like the bad moods that would still occasionally come over me at times are coming more often and at some times so quickly that neither my honed coping mechanisms nor the Duloxetine can manage it. It even reached the point last week that I very nearly had a nervous breakdown at work. I only say very nearly because I just managed to delay that breakdown long enough to pack up my computer at work and leave. I had the breakdown in my car and a social service counsellor's office.
After taking her advice and talking earnestly with my GP, Abilify (Aripiprazole) has been added to my prescriptions and while it's too early to say if it's working, I have felt a little more stable since beginning to take it. Although that might also have something to do with my currently being on something of a temporary medical leave at the recommendation of my manager, another one of those people who make me think of positive role models.
And that's where the rabbit hole leads tonight. With this latest twist to my mental health I've been looking for my own role models, for good examples that may help lead me out of this unfortunate phase. I'm still not completely optimistic I'm going to work my way out of this one, if I'm being perfectly honest. I have hope and I feel a certain confidence in my ability to weather the storm. But I would be dishonest if I said I know I'm going to come out of this better. But it's a couple of those role models who have given me hope.
One is a close personal friend who has gone through a similar patch quite recently and I'm following their breadcrumbs out of my own dark forest that sounds a little like theirs.
The other is Wil Wheaton. To be honest, I've always kind of had a kind of affection for him since the first time I heard of him as technically the first civilian child living aboard the USS Enterprise. I'm about two or three years older than Mr. Wheaton so I was in first year university when Wesley Crusher first set foot on that famous ship. And unlike all the idiots who were running BBS servers with alt.net groups like alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die, I loved the character despite the terrible way the writers had him behave at times. And like his own departure from the public eye, my awareness of Wil Wheaton faded until recently when he started to appear on The Big Bang Theory, @midnight, and a number of his own Instagram videos and social media.
It was almost exactly at that time that my own life spiralled briefly out of control with my first official diagnosis of depression, and I learned then from Wil's blogs and books that he too had struggled most of his life with depression and I felt the bond of shared illness. Oddly enough another coincidence has made me feel like I'm following him again in illness.
Not too long ago, Wil Wheaton - along with a few other celebrities whom I can't recall - announced his semi-permanent departure from Twitter, probably the most toxic of the truly public social media sites. I envied his resolve to walk away at that time but was still too hooked on Twitter and the anger it hate-gasmed into my brain.
But I've followed Wil again and imposed my own semi-permanent ban. I say 'semi' because I do believe Twitter has a valid place in public discourse in the 21st century, but it feels a bit like the wild west right now; full of drunken cowboys eager to slap leather and draw iron. I thought I could be something of a gunslinger; trolling the trolls and taunting them into a gun fight only to call the cops on them, so to speak. But my hands have gotten shaky and I've managed to shoot myself a few times and I admit, some of the opposite's trolls have scored a hit or three.
So tonight I started thinking about how I have intentionally and unintentionally followed Mr. Wheaton's example for the entire time I've known about him some thirty-plus years. He too had been mentioning in blog posts and through his wife Anne that he's also been struggling a little more than usual with his own demons. And the way he's managed to let us watch his climb back towards a semblance of happiness has inspired me again.
His personal motto and perhaps as well known as he is himself is "Don't be a dick." It's a truly simple philosophy that mankind is having an awful lot of trouble with. I can see at times that Wil struggles with it too and again he allows me to feel that when I struggle it's not because I'm a failure, every body struggles.
So here I am, a 51 year old man with a 46 year old role model. And I feel like the fact that I picked Wil Wheaton as my role model means I might possibly make me one too.
We often speak of role models as being necessary for our youth to follow. Even though it's rarely practised in our schools, we acknowledge the power of leading by example daily. We say the student survivors of the Parkland shooting are great examples (if you don't say that yourself, you're probably reading the wrong blog. The door's over there) for our youth to follow. We also say that self-absorbed, too-rich-to-know-consequenses people like Paris Hilton or this generation's Khloe Kardashian are horrible examples to follow.
But I realized that following good examples isn't just for the young. It is no secret - and I'm learning - no shame, that my depression had recently started slipping out of my control for the first time in the roughly 15 years since I've had it under control with the help of antidepressants. I'm trying to avoid self-diagnosis but I feel it might not be entirely inaccurate to say that it feels like my depression has either slipped in to major depressive disorder or has developed into Bipolar II Disorder.
I'm still that same old guy who could live a contented if not entirely happy life with the aid of medicine, it just feels like the bad moods that would still occasionally come over me at times are coming more often and at some times so quickly that neither my honed coping mechanisms nor the Duloxetine can manage it. It even reached the point last week that I very nearly had a nervous breakdown at work. I only say very nearly because I just managed to delay that breakdown long enough to pack up my computer at work and leave. I had the breakdown in my car and a social service counsellor's office.
After taking her advice and talking earnestly with my GP, Abilify (Aripiprazole) has been added to my prescriptions and while it's too early to say if it's working, I have felt a little more stable since beginning to take it. Although that might also have something to do with my currently being on something of a temporary medical leave at the recommendation of my manager, another one of those people who make me think of positive role models.
And that's where the rabbit hole leads tonight. With this latest twist to my mental health I've been looking for my own role models, for good examples that may help lead me out of this unfortunate phase. I'm still not completely optimistic I'm going to work my way out of this one, if I'm being perfectly honest. I have hope and I feel a certain confidence in my ability to weather the storm. But I would be dishonest if I said I know I'm going to come out of this better. But it's a couple of those role models who have given me hope.
One is a close personal friend who has gone through a similar patch quite recently and I'm following their breadcrumbs out of my own dark forest that sounds a little like theirs.
The other is Wil Wheaton. To be honest, I've always kind of had a kind of affection for him since the first time I heard of him as technically the first civilian child living aboard the USS Enterprise. I'm about two or three years older than Mr. Wheaton so I was in first year university when Wesley Crusher first set foot on that famous ship. And unlike all the idiots who were running BBS servers with alt.net groups like alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die, I loved the character despite the terrible way the writers had him behave at times. And like his own departure from the public eye, my awareness of Wil Wheaton faded until recently when he started to appear on The Big Bang Theory, @midnight, and a number of his own Instagram videos and social media.
It was almost exactly at that time that my own life spiralled briefly out of control with my first official diagnosis of depression, and I learned then from Wil's blogs and books that he too had struggled most of his life with depression and I felt the bond of shared illness. Oddly enough another coincidence has made me feel like I'm following him again in illness.
Not too long ago, Wil Wheaton - along with a few other celebrities whom I can't recall - announced his semi-permanent departure from Twitter, probably the most toxic of the truly public social media sites. I envied his resolve to walk away at that time but was still too hooked on Twitter and the anger it hate-gasmed into my brain.
But I've followed Wil again and imposed my own semi-permanent ban. I say 'semi' because I do believe Twitter has a valid place in public discourse in the 21st century, but it feels a bit like the wild west right now; full of drunken cowboys eager to slap leather and draw iron. I thought I could be something of a gunslinger; trolling the trolls and taunting them into a gun fight only to call the cops on them, so to speak. But my hands have gotten shaky and I've managed to shoot myself a few times and I admit, some of the opposite's trolls have scored a hit or three.
So tonight I started thinking about how I have intentionally and unintentionally followed Mr. Wheaton's example for the entire time I've known about him some thirty-plus years. He too had been mentioning in blog posts and through his wife Anne that he's also been struggling a little more than usual with his own demons. And the way he's managed to let us watch his climb back towards a semblance of happiness has inspired me again.
His personal motto and perhaps as well known as he is himself is "Don't be a dick." It's a truly simple philosophy that mankind is having an awful lot of trouble with. I can see at times that Wil struggles with it too and again he allows me to feel that when I struggle it's not because I'm a failure, every body struggles.
So here I am, a 51 year old man with a 46 year old role model. And I feel like the fact that I picked Wil Wheaton as my role model means I might possibly make me one too.
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