What do you want to do today, if anything? What do you have planned and are you looking forward to it? Are you involved in anything exciting today?

It may sound unusual, but I look forward to going to work each day. I like my colleagues and get a lot of satisfaction from looking at dates and putting the yellow reduced stickers on things. I time myself on every area I do and try to keep to time – that gives a dose of adrenaline. I also award myself “prizes” if I come to the end of my shift and I have nothing that’s out of date – meaning I missed it last time – or if I only have one (second prize) or two (third prize).

On the other hand, this morning’s task was doing the ironing. Only my friend who made a business of it actively enjoys ironing, I think. Maybe you do, or maybe you just don’t iron. My mother doesn’t – she just tumble-dries all her clothes and they come out respectable enough to wear.

The Definitions under the Moodscope cards of Interested and Inspired are wanting to be involved in something and having a desire to do something.

Yesterday, one of my friends told me that she is currently spending twelve hours a day in her garden. She has a big garden, and it is the delight of her life. She has recently been ill and unable to garden and so things have become just a little neglected. She is busy catching up with things now. She said that she was scarifying her lawn by torchlight because she was determined to finish it that day. I can only admire and wonder at her.

My own hobby of card-making leaves most people cold. “I wouldn’t have the patience,” is something I hear a lot, yet I love my weekly card-making sessions with other people and enjoyed making two wedding cards yesterday for my daughter to send to friends. She is at that age when her friends are starting to get married. 

Doing things one enjoys is obviously beneficial to one’s mental health, but what happens in depression, when even these things have no flavour to them and everything seems as dust? Do we give them up?

I have been in choirs where I have given up when in the grasp of depression. On the other hand, I have continued with my card-making sessions even when I have been so wobbly on my feet I could scarcely walk around the table, and it felt as if I was controlling my hands remotely from a lonely prison far away.

When in depression, do we force ourselves to carry on doing those things which would normally bring us joy, or do we leave them and concentrate on just getting through the day and recovering as best we can? And what about picking them up again when we are better?

What do you think? What do you find exciting and Inspiring? Please do share.

Mary

A Moodscope member