Mental Health and Music

Happy Sunday guys.

Hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving holiday.

Today, I feel compelled to write about what's happened the last few days.

I wrote a piece on Friday while sitting at Grandma's bedside, worried that things were getting worse than they already were. Not a good situation to be in.

So, yesterday, I took off to my mother's for a belated holiday meal, hoping that the drive would allow me to collect my thoughts and focus on spending quality time with my family.

However, I was more of a mess than I realized. Spitting fire to people on Twitter over perceived slights at one of my favorite artists. Needless to say, I was engaging in behavior that in my right mind I would tell people to steer clear of.

I told Callista that looking back, I had a manic day yesterday, and while I'm on the other side today, it reminds me that right now, my behavior has been quite unpredictable. Never knowing how I will feel from one hour to the next is truly exhausting. It's only by the grace of God that I can actually sit here and type out this post.

There are many times where I will just sleep or rest to avoid certain things. I'll just lay there and listen to music on my iPod or phone until I pass out. Restful sleep is at a premium right now.

Today, as I do every Sunday, I threw Common's Resurrection on the iPod while laying there next to Callista, all the while thinking of a million different ideas of stuff I could write today. I pretty much settled on the fact that opening up my MacBook and just attempting to write something was positive in and of itself.

When you're struggling with mental health issues, it takes a remarkable toll on everything in life. Physical health. Relationships with others. Everything in life you do on a daily basis is directly related to how you're doing mentally. Just the fact that I'm typing today seems like a remarkable achievement after the last couple of days.

That's the greatness of creativity. It doesn't matter whether you finish the project, even though that's the end goal, but that you do something creative regularly in order to keep your tools sharp.

And the truth is, I feel like I'm much more stable now, then I was laying there thinking of what I could write, as opposed to just sitting here doing it. My mom always told me that the hardest part was getting started.

Listening to Common's album really inspired me to just do a little something. It might not be much, but it's something.