Two careers

Dear Reader,

My career with design is only outdone by my career in dealing with mental health issues. (Yep, I’m getting straight to the biscuits with this post.) I could write a resume’s worth of experience with depression, anxiety, mania, chronic pain, night terrors, and more. Yes, I am proficient in Adobe Creative Suite; I am also proficient in coping.

For years I shied away from writing about this because I was worried it might affect my hire-ability, but I’ve outgrown that fear. I’m simply not interested in working with people who might think less of me (or anyone) for it. No, this post is for the fellow workers who are wondering whether they need medication or a vacation. This is for college students who are buried under debt, and new leaders who wrestle with imposter syndrome. This is for me because I felt like writing it and this is for you if you know what I’m talking about.

This is how I’ve learned to manage both careers:

I go all in

When I’m feeling “off”, I try to be off 100%. I used to multitask edits and self destructive thoughts, but that only caused unintentional errors and a lot of confusion. Now if I start to feel the pull of the Doldrums I put up a Do Not Disturb in Slack and put myself in mental time out. I often “reset” my day. I physically go back to bad, settle down, nap, get back out of bed, take a shower, walk my dog, eat something, and go back to work. When I was in college, a good professor shared a cigarette with me as I was teetering on a nervous breakdown. She said, “You can freak out from time to time, but after 45 minutes it's just wasted time.” Thank you Susan.

I consider Sisyphus

Designers, writers, coders, how many times did you want to throw your computer after you were asked to create the 100th draft because a new stakeholder got looped in last minute? My advice to you is to regard “the final draft” as a pipe dream, both in the project sphere and for your own personal growth. Somedays, I see myself as Sisyphus rolling a massive bundle of dreams, fears, and pixels up a hill, only for it to fall back down again ad infinitum. I might make progress one day, but it’s possible (if not likely) it’ll be undone and I’ll start anew only slightly different every time, but hopefully wiser. One must imagine me happy.

I mind the cycles

I know when depression is more likely to hit by the time of day, time in the month, and year. I know this because my best friend* took note of those patterns. Now that I live alone, I mark days that were especially rough on a calendar (or an app) and see what’s repeating, when. This is especially critical since I have a tendency to forget and confuse things when I’m “off”. Writing things down helps me remember things on the short and long term. I’m a creature of cycles, but that doesn’t mean I’m stuck. On the contrary, it means I can strategize now. I’m cautious to take on extra work during months I have had a tendency to struggle harder. I take breaks late, when I’m more likely to feel low or be less productive. Years of monitoring helped me see what would have been invisible landmines. *Thank you Steven.

I see mental illness as an environment

For me, depression is not a shoulder-devil whispering evil thoughts in my ear, it’s more like a strange planet with impossibly high gravitational levels. The atmosphere is thicker, wrought with imperceptible toxins nestling in my body in the form of aches, exhaustion, and paralysis. It’s a place I wake up into wondering how I got there. One minute I was collecting images for a mood board, and the next I’m on the floor listening to Everything In Its Right Place on repeat. If I see mental illness as an entity, then it’s something outside of me controlling me… and I have a healthy problem with authority. If I see it as an environment, then it means I have the ability to come and go. (And sometimes, being there isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can even be necessary and healthy). I’ve been here before, and I’m not lost. The trouble is that navigating environments necessitate movement and any movement (mental or physical) can be… challenging, and worse, the exit is never in the same place. So it’s less a matter of losing my self, and more a matter of losing my direction. But I know the way to navigate out of the land of mental quick sand is not to panic. Incremental steps are well and good, but only if I actually make them.

I try to see the biggest picture

As a brand designer, I’m faced with existential questions all the time. Most of which can be boiled down to “Why?” It is my job to ask what the purpose of something is. It’s very easy to turn those questions inward. After any given research session, I find myself no longer contemplating why a project exists, I’m contemplating why I do. But I’ve found thinking big helps me cope too (so long as I can avoid the risk of it overwhelming me). Years ago I decided my mission was “to work for people I could learn from and laugh with”. That north star guides the potential projects I take on, pass on, or the way I conduct myself in a team. When I start to get buried under petty edits or late nights, I remember the north star that lead me there and remember it’s probably worth it in the end. Good ole Nietzche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”.

And hey, let’s not forget the biggest picture of all. Life is a temporary flash of limitless absurdity and death comes for us all. I take comfort in that.

Ultimately, I stopped fighting and started folding

You might notice a theme in these lessons—acceptance. It's easy to conjure war-like words when describing mental health. Up-hill battle, “the struggle is real”, fighting the illness, beating the illness. I found the less I fight, the better I fare. Back when I was a 22 year old design student I saw Frank Chimero’s insightful talk The Shape of Design. In it, he deconstructs a favorite quote of his, “We are a process and an unfolding”. He considers origami, an art form that is neither additive (like painting) nor reductive (like sculpture), rather it begins and ends with a single sheet. A square one moment, a crane the next. For me, that concept had nothing to do with design and everything to do with mental illness. I stopped fighting and started folding. Paralyzed one moment, high energy the next, accepting both as necessary and OKAY. Depression was never going to fully go away, it was just going to change shape. From there I started accepting that those bouts of symptoms weren’t like a bunch of disparate freelance gigs unexpectedly coming and going. They were more like a collection of experiences unified under a single story, a lifelong career. Something that changes with me. Something I now learn from and laugh at.

RG+B

PS. This is the longest, most personal blog I’ve written, if any of this resonated with you at all (good or bad) tell me about it.

PPS. Thanks for reading