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I feel terribly guilty if I’m not somehow being productive. Most of the time, I’m beyond driven to just get things done. It doesn’t even matter what things. I just have to feel like I’m doing something useful. It’s satisfying.
But my “issues” often get in the way of working productively. Either I’m too distracted, miserable, or hyper to get much done. At other times, I’m whipping out 7 things at a time, with highly variable success (but mostly pretty good). It’s a little bewildering. Jorge Cham, author of Piled Higher & Deeper, totally gets this state of mind:
I <3 PhD Comics! “Wishful Thinking” – originally published 5/18/2012
This rings very true for me. Of course, I did manage to get through the PhD in a mere five years. Despite knowing that it’s utterly unrealistic, I still feel inadequate when I can’t keep up hypomanic productivity all the time. I get constant pressure from peers who only see the high productivity, and have never seen the months and months where the only thing I accomplished was endless worrying.
But I set the bar pretty high, didn’t I? No wonder I’m always disappointed in myself!
It’s a quandary, isn’t it? Hypomanic=getting way more done in less time, due to superhuman focus and energy. If that’s the bar you set (or if others set for you, all unknowing), then you’re bound to feel disappointed in yourself when you’re euthymic, and of course even worse if you’re G@d forbid depressed. I relate. At one time in my life I was the director of a pediatric emergency department plus prehospital emergency services (ambulance). AT THE SAME TIME I owned and ran a 32 horse boarding stable, owned 13 horses myself, owned a very popular breeding stallion, had two of my horses in training for a horse sport (me riding), made 25 acres of prime alfalfa hay 5 times a year (I drove tractor), had a petting zoo for clients’ kids, sponsored draft horse pulls at county fairs all over the state, and rode herd on two young boys and all their activities. Oh and I forgot to mention doing the business part of my then-husband’s asphault hauling business. It sounds completely impossible, doesn’t it? Well, it was, but I didn’t know it because I was hypo as hell, slept an hour or two every once in a while, and was happy as a clam at high tide when I wasn’t biting heads off.
I really think one has to look at one’s productivity graph with clear eyes and say, this is what I can get done when I’m hypo, yay, but at what price? And this is my euthymic production level: kind of disappointing, but still better than most, and it’s actually healthy. I don’t like it either, but that’s the way it is for us BP sometime-superpeople.
I love your comic, it sums it up perfectly!
It’s very difficult to keep up the pace, especially when others are expecting it of you and you just don’t have it in you. I have perfectionist issues, and so my bar is always set way too high and I can never reach it. Because of that, I start to get down on myself when I can’t reach that bar. That’s when the berating and self-loathing starts and then absolutely nothing gets done. Which in turn, brings on the depression, and so we are stuck in a terrible cycle of defeat.
(That’s how it works for me anyway.)
Oh yes. I can relate. Especially when the depths of depression hit, which is almost always with me. Good luck.