A Road Map

The last week has been a rough one. I have made little progress in fixing my sky...in fact, I think more has fallen. Perhaps, I am just seeing the outline of the hole a little better. It occurred to me that depression may not be the affliction. I have been searching for a starting point, a place to begin addressing my depression. I am so analytical and methodical at times that I get absolutely nowhere. Do I start at the current coordinates and work my way back to the ideal place, or I go back to a spot that I was comfortable and and unravel the path that got me here? Then it dawned on me...well "it" being several things that hit me all at once...but most of "it" will have to wait. The most relevant of the epiphanies was that I am not depressed.

That is not to say that my mood is no longer a depressive state of mind, or that I am suddenly cured, or that all is right with the world again. That is definitely not what I mean. What I realized is that my depression is not the problem. My depression is a symptom. I was searching for a way to deal with my depression so that I could get on with my life...and my life is actually the affliction...depression is one of my symptoms.

Whoa! That may seem obvious to many, but to me it puts a whole new spin on everything! Ultimately, I realize that what I need to be looking at is not "what is wrong with me," but rather "what is wrong with my life." Therein lies the first step! I sat down with a pen and paper, wrote a title across the top-"My Ideal Life"- and just started writing. It took on a sort of wild and messy mind map format. I do mean wild...I was careful to be careless about my format. After about 10 minutes of furiously writing words and phrases that reflected my ideal life, I then started to draw lines between the related ideas, connecting everything that I thought had a direct relationship. This made an even bigger mess of my paper, but it helped me organize those ideas in my mind.

Next, I took out another sheet of paper and set about creating a more organized format, taking care to not edit anything out, just rearrange things. What I ended up with was two main improvements I wanted to make in my life and a slew of small of improvements that would get me there! Two areas of improvement! Really!? Is that all it would take?

It seems unlikely that my depression could be a symptom of being financially unstable and failing to be active in this thing called life, but when I spread all my dreams out on paper...in a messy mind map...it all comes back to those two ideas...Being financially stable and active.

My paper was a bit to messy to post here, but I found this awesome free mind mapper that I will use from now on and you should try...bubbl.us You don't even have to create an account to start mind mapping.

Above you see my word frenzy...then, by dragging and dropping I was able to make the connections between ideas and organize them into a map (below).

Its a road map. By starting with the blue hued bubbles and working my way back...I can work toward My Ideal Life!! I am sooo ready to start!