Everyone has their ups and downs. It’s a cliché, but as we go through life, there will be inevitably good and bad times. Experiencing the emotions of joy and happiness, sorrow and sadness and everything in between are a big part of what it is to be human.

Depression can feel as though all your emotional range has be re-calibrated. Your baseline emotion has been dragged down to where most of time, you’re feeling pretty lousy, and everything is on a comparative scale. The good things only just feel ok, and bad things feel terrible.

Talking about when I’ve been taking medication, the effects that I felt from them is all fair game. As medication can play a huge role in someones journey with mental health, it would be erroneous of me to ignore it, or not speak of my experience.

That said, I don’t want to speak about specific type of medications that I have been prescribed. The reason is that everyone has different medication requirements (if any), and I am in no way a medical professional (which I’m sure were all eternally grateful for).

I imagine there is potentially more guilt about experiencing depression and anxiety in people who are comfortably well off, who haven’t had to experience poverty, violence, abuse, trauma, racism etc. or any of the other experiences or environmental triggers for mental illness in their lives.

Well, It’s a multiple of twelve, so It’s time for an update.

There has been a lot happening lately…

So… a big day done. The first of the physical events for the year, a significant spike in my anxiety, a chance to perform with my Father, and a lovely way to be a small part of the bushfire recovery effort in the Upper Murray.

Sunday is going to be be a big day. Starting way too early, is the City2City Fun Run/Walk&Talk event where participants walk from Albury to Wodonga in support for a mental health inpatient service at the local hospital, Nolan House. Shortly after finishing, I’ll need to race home, become half-human again, and get down to perform a work that my Father and I composed called ‘Water Music’ in a Bushfire Benefit gig starting at 2:30pm at St Matthews, Albury.

Today is the day that the Christian faith (Hallmark and just about every florist around) has decided to honour love and a 3rd century Roman Catholic clergyman who was martyred by being beaten with clubs and beheaded on the 14th of February, roughly 1,750 years ago. He became the patron saint of lovers (and epileptics, and beekeepers).

Then, from a friend that I’d recently confided in about being prescribed medication for my depression and anxiety, I got tagged in this meme with the message “Just go for a run dude”.

When the evening came, and everyone had gone to bed early, it looked for all money that I’d spend it in front of a screen, (probably accompanied by the dog, a bag of chips, and a side dish of mild self-loathing).

Instead, against my better judgement, I went out for a walk… and it felt terrible. I yearned for my couch, for my feet to stop aching, for my guts to stop churning. I’d have pushed a little kid off their bike and ridden home had I thought it would make the pain stop and bring an end to this terrible decision.

Today, I feel spent - Like a kids toy, barely operating due to dying batteries. It seems as though I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

Sometimes I’m accused of burning the candle at both ends. Right now, I feel like the candle got thrown in the furnace.

Sometimes, I need to get away. To be so far from reality and the pressure that it all disappears, even just for a few moments. In this time, I can recharge, regroup, reassess and recuperate, but really, I just want to be lost.

One way I can do this is through music. Music is at my very core - my first language. It’s always been with me, accompanying my every waking moment.

"A semicolon is used when an author could've chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life,"

Project Semicolon

As a child, I’d remember when Dad would come home with a ‘Be Nice to me. I gave blood today’ sticker. He was a superhero, giving someone his own blood in order to save their life.

Whilst the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has had some very valid criticism over the years, even being called a pseudoscience, I’ve found it, at the very least, an interesting exercise in thinking more deeply about how my mind functions, and how I interact within the world.

Over the years, I’ve ticked many of society’s boxes. Being functional, holding a good job, being part of a happy and loving family, avoiding climbing street posts whilst yelling incoherent abuse at random strangers whilst wearing an ill-fitting chicken suit… that kind of thing.

So when some people are now hearing that I’ve been living with mental illness for much of my life, it seems to come as a shock. Now that I’m being so open about it, it’s taken the veil off and exposed a far more personal side to my life.

A month and change into the project… time for another brief update!

Others however, look at you like a Dickensian leper, like you may have a contagion that may enter their body should they do anything but cover their face in disdain. This pejorative is their prerogative, but their expressions stay with me like another grain added to an already heavy sack.

I’ve been terrified about today - about this whole week to be honest. …the confidence I usually have in my kilt has been replaced or at least diluted with doubt and paranoia about how it will be perceived..

…a moving demonstration of how music and the arts can bring people together and heal.

It reminds me of a new friend, inspiration and fellow mental health campaigner, committed to helping communities and creating conversations. He’s a man with a big heart - A big thinker with big plans who has taken this phrase quite literally. But he does need help. The Ship is sadly not yet shipshape…