If You’re Feeling Depressed…Change Your Enviroment

When I say “change your environment,” I don’t necessarily mean change the location, although a trip to Fuck Off Island, would be AMAZING, (ahem), but what I mean is change up your environment by changing the elements within your environment.

Today is a day that I plan to get as much done as I can, this morning I am focusing on the blog by writing as many well written essays as I can about mental health, so that I can get it out of my head, and then this afternoon I am going to try and get some cleaning done, because I’d really like to have a clean space.

More than having a “clean space”, I also want to get out of the routine that I’ve gotten into over the last year and ten months.

This is what an average day looks like for me:

• Get up whenever it is that I wake up because I have no set schedule. (No it’s not that nice actually.)
• Make coffee
• Go to the bathroom (if I haven’t done that before coffee)
• Set down at my computer, check Twitter, Facebook, Website stats, and other social media before playing my games.
• Trying to decide how much time I am going to be able to spend focusing on the blog to distract myself from the shit in my head.
• Sit and watch tv for the rest of the day and call myself “productive” because I did as much as I could that day.

Which often isn’t very much. This last year and ten months has been really difficult, not just because of the trauma, but because I couldn’t go anywhere.

On Thursday May 13th I got my first vaccine shot, and mom and I walked to the bus on the way home because I didn’t want to take a cab. I had taken a cab to the vaccine site because I didn’t know how to get there, but I wanted to prolong the time that I a) got to spend with my mom and b) wasn’t at fucking home. Dear God I miss the outdoors.

The sun was hot, and walking from the site to the bus was hard because my legs have seen so little movement in this past year, which is precisely why I am so frustrated with myself.

On one hand I’ve done a lot of really great work on myself, I’m pretty much precisely where I thought I might end up, when I started thinking about the future of LMBG four years ago, so I can literally take a step back from it to admire my work, and that scares the shit out of me.

I am in this place now where I am literally being reminded that friends that “it is time,” to stop for a moment, talking about trauma. I didn’t know that I would get here, I’ve been asking myself “when will I heal” for so fucking long, that I couldn’t conceptualize the fact that I had actually done enough of picking at my own wounds.

Changing your environment and your routine is absolutely necessary. In the days of our grandparents they were told that they had to go school to get an education, in the time of their grandparents education was absolutely a luxury reserved for the wealthy and powerful.

Now a days you can educate yourself by downloading a free e-book. Now a days, you can educate yourself.

There’s power in that. Every day I am learning, but it’s “what” I am learning that is important, and what I am learning is that I have kind of dug into this place where I am stuck in my routine. By the time I’m done venting every thought I’ve had on this blog I am too emotionally spent to do anything physical, and it’s purely because of a lack of sun.

In Witch Craft we call upon the elements, everyone has different elements that they call to, but the five major ones that I’ve learned to call (in this order) are:

Earth

Air

Fire

Water

Spirit

We believe that if your environment doesn’t have something to represent each of these elements, then your environment is out of balance, and as we know what we do surround ourselves has an effect on overall health.

I’ve been surrounding myself with stuff that I don’t need because letting it pile up was just easier than actually taking the time and effort to get rid of it…but now that I am realizing that I have reached and surpassed every single one of my goals up to this point, I realize that it’s time to set new goals, and yes, I am afraid.

I am afraid to change my environment for all the reasons you might suspect. I might fail, something bad might happen, bad people might hurt me, I might stumble, and while all those things might be true, I’m never going to find out if I don’t make an effort to try, right?

So to that end here are some things you can do to change your environment on both a small and a large scale way to help bring happiness and light to yourself.

1. In my house we don’t do plants, because I kill every plant that I touch, but I am getting encouragement from my Budsista’s to try at least one plant, so next week I am going to go out and find myself a plant that doesn’t require too much care. I’d like to see if I can keep it alive for a year. Interestingly cats are much, MUCH easier than plants, so maybe there are some transferable skills.
2. I am also going to start going out for walks more. Damnit I’ve been inside for a year and ten months, I finally have my first vaccine shot, and I am going to encourage myself to get up and get out of the house for an hour a day. As a child all I wanted to do was stay close to home, I was definitely born with agoraphobia, now that I think about it. As I got older I learned to work on this and I spent time in 2019 actually enjoying being outside. Not just to avoid shit, but because I liked my own company. I want to get back to that.
3. I am going to start my mornings off with coffee and music. Music is super important to me. For years I listened to only one kind of music, until I couldn’t breath. It was all great stuff like Linkin Park and Nightwish, but it kept me in an emotionally dark place. From now on I am going to focus on listening to music that lifts me up and sets me up to be in a good mood for the day.
4. I am going to spend an hour a day cleaning my house, or maybe half an hour to start. Not just because I want a clean space, but also because I need to force myself to take some time away from the blog, AND away from the mental health work that the blog inspires. If I focus too much more on my own thoughts and how I am doing emotionally I am legit going to go crazy again.
5. I am going to shower more during the week. I probably do a good 2-3, but that’s only because I never go anywhere and I never see people during the week. Unless I’m going out there is no need to shower, but the “routine” of showering is about preparing for the day by washing off the day before. It’s not just about getting clean, it’s about taking time to get in touch with yourself when you’re at your most vulnerable. I want to do that more. I want to take time to use my shower time to remind myself to have a good day, since so few others do.

These are not cure-all examples of how to heal, but they are a list of goals designed to set your mental state up for preparedness and success.

It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to do, and I realize now that I suffer from crippling indecision, but my hope is that this list of goals will help me with that issue so that I can move on.

What goals do you have that help set you up to make sure that you’re doing what you have to do, while making time for what you want to do? I’d love to know because I learn just as much from you as I hope you do for me. Let’s have a chat in the comments.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall

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