Crazy How Bullying Is Not Really Acknowledged As A Real Trauma Like You Really Have To Endure Years And

I have a simple, yet incredibly important and difficult question. How do I defeat depression?

Depression isn't Sauron. There's not a magic ring to throw into a volcano.

Strategies that work for me are: 1) work. Work helps and making things help. 2) having other people who make you feel better and brighter around helps, so do animals, 3) Exercise. I'm not a natural born exerciser, so I have a trainer who turns up once or twice a week and works me out until I'm exhausted then finishes with yoga. Walking and weights and biking and running, or whatever you can do, are all real ways to change your mood.

Stop doing things that increase your depression. Do more of the things that lift your spirits.

And work with a therapist, talk to your doctor, all that.

Albert Camus, from a novel titled "The Fall," first published in 1956

Via @danacea at Bluesky.

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”

— James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket

follow your dreams at a sustainable pace

Joy Sullivan, from Instructions for Traveling West: Poems; “Instructions for Traveling West”

what your favorite William Morris print says about you (a non-exhaustive list)

strawberry thieves: you're a basic bitch and there's nothing wrong with that. those little fuckers are cute

tree of life: you think we all moved on from the whimsigoth trend way too soon

pimpernel: you're going to put an Alphonse Mucha print on top of this and you know it

voysey: you're a massive goth. you've probably watched Bram Stoker's Dracula a lot

blackthorn: you're a massive goth who doesn't like making things too hard on yourself

willow boughs: you say "timeless" "classic" and "modern twist" a lot when decorating your house

owl and willow: admit it- you really just want mid-19th century panoramic wallpaper

melsetter: admit it- you really just want 15th-century Gobelin tapestries

lodden: you genuinely believe, deep down, that you will decode the Voynich Manuscript someday

marigold: you enjoy versatility. you probably own the same shirt in four colors- and why shouldn't you?

balmoral: your ringtone is Rule, Brittania

I don't have a favorite Morris print because I prefer [insert another late 19th century textile/wallpaper designer here]: you are a hipster

I don't have a favorite Morris print because I don't know any: you have a social life

the classic trope of "what if you went to a town and it was weird" never fails

“Any form of human creativity is a process of doing it and getting better at it…[Writers] don’t usually peak in their 20s. It’s usually quite a lot later on.”

— Margaret Atwood