Dear Reader,
As I mentioned in my last post, depression is hard and it makes a lot of things challenging. The first step in handling your magical and spiritual life while depressed is to lower your standards for yourself. You would not expect a person with a broken leg or a badly sprained ankle to run a marathon. You should not expect yourself to perform as you would with out the illness of depression weighing on you.
I am currently in a depressive episode and I have had to drop my expectations for myself down a good bit. You'll find that I am posting less right now. This is not because I am giving up on the blog as much as I am posting what I have energy to do on a given day. Depression can make your energy levels fluctuate and cause problems with your ability to focus. As a result of these two things, I write less and try to do more concrete things that are fairly low effort (i.e. wash the dishes, crochet a washcloth, do some mindless task).
My magical practice takes a pretty big hit when I am depressed. I don't do nearly as many rituals and when I am engaged in a ritual, it's challenging because of that focus problem. This is where I pare down how many steps in a spell and just strive to get through the day. As of right now, I'm at lighting a candle and saying a prayer for something to happen. Super simple, really low impact on the effort scale, but effective magic.
Like I posted last week, you have to pace yourself. You have to take time to assess what you are able to do and what you are not able to do. Somedays will be better than others because of that fluctuation aspect of depression. Some times of day will be better than others. Don't pour all your effort into one big thing when you have several little things to do as well. That one big thing might use up your energy and leave you too exhausted to do the little things that you need to. Remember, the goal is progress not perfection. And anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, because at least you tried.
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