Hi, my name’s Mark. Welcome to my blog, my humble abode.
First of all, please excuse my English as it is not my first one. So maybe you will find a lot of grammar mistakes from my posts or even on this one.
This blog is just my way to keep my mind away from depression. I don’t even know if this is a good idea as a coping mechanism for any depressed person but at least, so far it can keep my mind busy enough. Just a depressed guy blogging.
This blog is a place for me to call home. It means that whenever I feel depressed, I can come back here to set my mind straight again. Whenever I feel my life starting to drift apart, I can always remind myself that I have something here that I can keep building and growing.
Everything that I shared here is just from the internet. Nothing new, nothing special. This is more like a note or a summary for myself after learning about a thing or two. If anyone find my blog useful, that would be great.
Table of Contents
A little bit about me and my depression
Ever since I lost my father back in 2011, my life become a total mess. I failed to finish my master degree, I took a job and it also didn’t end well. Right after that the depression came in.
For the next few years after that, I’ve spent most of my time mostly inside my room. If you’ve ever heard the term hikikomori from Japanese, that is almost exactly how I’ve been living. Probably not that bad but if I let it, I think it would have gone in that direction.
Feeling empty inside, useless, lost and to be honest some suicidal thoughts still can come. The only good thing is that I don’t have the guts to take that shortcut and end my life.
I’ve tried seeking help from family, friends or even professionals. It is either I’m getting a negative energy from them because they also have their own problem or they made me one from within because they were trying to take advantage of me.
The most I can get from a professional, was from an old lady. At least, I had hopes from her. But because of her condition, I had limited times for therapy. Of course, I’ve tried to find replacements but they were just not good enough and I thought, even if I get one, there is a chance that they will be gone too. And if that happen, it is getting worse.
So, relying on anybody is not going to help for the long run, if not at all. While sometimes I crave for any human affection. But I guess, it is just what I want not what I need. Still, the loneliness really haunts me every night.
No, waiting to die is not going to work.
Just because I don’t have the guts, doesn’t mean I didn’t wish for it to happen. I told myself that if I didn’t have the guts now, maybe I should just throw my life and everything I have left away, hoping to make my life more miserable.
That way, I hoped, maybe I finally have the push I need to commit a suicide. No, it doesn’t work.
Two years had passed and nothing’s changed. Life goes on around me but I’m still stuck here with my thoughts.
I guess that was when I realize that to survive it has to come from within myself. It doesn’t matter whether there is or isn’t someone out there to help you or whether the world offers or not a way to survive. As long as I have no will from myself I won’t survive.
How do I start recovering myself?
The old lady told me that I need to have something to learn. To occupy my mind with something else, with knowledge about anything. Not letting my mind succumb to the fear and negativity of depression.
Of course, I can just read to learn, no need to write it down like this but I think my mind is like a video where we can just hit replay button. What I thought was learning something new, maybe it’s just me keep replaying what I’ve learned in the past.
No sense of growing or advancing the knowledge. So, writing it down is a way to tell my mind “I’ve already learned about this. What’s next?”.
Why do I need to put it on a blog? Why not just keep a book as a journal to myself?
Well, I’ve tried that. I used to learn about architecture. I read and wrote stories, concepts, or anything that can shape the design of a building for many kinds of buildings. Each building has a sketch and three pages of hand written story.
The problem with this method is that, it’s a physical book, there are some limits like number of papers. I can’t add another information for my previous writing while with a blog I can keep updating the content with any new information I found. Another thing is that I can lose the book or ruin it while keeping them as a digital file I can keep them a lot safer and with better access.
By putting them online, I think I try to challenge myself not just to get stuck in my own world with my limited point of view but instead I open myself to the public. At least, to know whether I’ve been doing a good job or not. If they keep coming for any information I presented here, maybe that’s good.
I really don’t have much to offer right now as a content but hopefully I can keep adding some on this blog. As I mentioned earlier that the main purpose for this blog is not to teach anything to anyone but to learn something, at least, for me. I do hope that what I can share here can be helpful for anyone even just one person.
If not, that’s okay. I mean, what choice do I have? Stopping from this will only bring my mind back to depression.
From what I’ve heard, opening myself to the public can be very scary as it can lure some people with another negative energy to come. The good thing is that I know (hopefully) some ways to control them. I can at least just shut any interaction and keep writing.
The First Six Months of Depressed Guy Blogging
The online business training platform is where I start blogging. They teach people how to become affiliate marketer and for that we need to choose a niche.
Having a niche means, having a focus so people can build their website, add contents around that topic or niche.They suggest we pick something we are passionate about, our interest, hobby or something we want to learn.
It is not really a bad idea. We all have limitation. If we try to learn everything, we don’t have much time to really learn and explore more about each topic or niche.
Not that I want to make a business or even believe that I can do it. I decided to give it a try.
The problem is, as I said before, emptiness is what I’ve been struggling with. I really don’t have anything that interest me. Architecture no longer drives my interest as before.
So, in order to find out what my niche is, I need some time to explore and research before deciding what my niche is. For the first six months of blogging, I’ve been studying other people’s blogs. I planned to give this even a year.
Finding out people’s niche, how they develop their contents and their website. Try to read most of their posts, and find out how hard it is for a depressed guy like me to do blogging. Then I wrote what I’ve found and learned from them as contents for my blog.
Other than some stories of how people are blogging, I also tried to write other types of post. Since I learned about affiliate marketing, writing review of products is one of them.
The result? How bad was it?
It was indeed very hard for me to do blogging or probably any other job. There are several things that made it even harder for me.
First of all, after years of doing nothing and emptiness, getting myself back to doing this kind of work is very hard. Usually I just did some daily chores like cleaning and laundry which can become a habit of repeated actions.
Other than that, usually I spent my time surfing on internet, play games, watch movies or listen to music using my laptop, lying in bed. I needed time to gradually move from working in my bed to working on my desk.
Blogging consists of doing some research online and try to write it down as an article, not just making a list of points. Researching is not that hard, since it is basically just surfing and Googling. Writing a story is another thing.
Essentially, blogger is the same as any writer, whether it’s a journalist or fiction novelist. Even a fiction fantasy novel needs some senses in order for the reader to understand. If we can convince them enough, they will continue to read what we write. The same goes for blogging.
Sure, that the more we do it, it is easier later. I know that it takes time but it feels like everything takes time. I guess, this is the price I have to pay for having a depression.
Another effect of depression is that most days I had insomnia, trouble sleeping and even until now. Because of this I really don’t have a fix schedule for daily life. Some days I slept in the morning, others at noon.
I tried to accept that I won’t have the same life like common people but even to fix them like to work at night and sleep during the day is not that easy. I even try to change my diet and do a bit of exercise in order to get me tired. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. Everytime I fail to do so, I probably just waste one day of work.
One last thing that I could think of is my choice to use English to write contents for my blogs. After years with lack of human interaction and communication, even with my own language, I tried to take a leap by using another language when I should have taken only one step at a time. I’ve never even used English as conversation outside school.
The reason for this is that, in my mind, if I were to do this blogging thing, I want to go big or not at all. I thought to myself, if this is going to be a long term thing, why not just open the possibilities with broader audience from around the world instead of limited to the people of my country. It is hard but hopefully I can get better as well with this.
For anybody who wants to walk the same path
Once again, I am not saying that this is a good or the right way for coping a depression. Just me sharing my experience.
If anybody who wants to try this, I suggest that they should get used to blogging first. Instead of trying to write something meaningful. Don’t immediately try to sell, write something long or even hard information.
Maybe people can try blogging like using a social media, where we can just tweet something very short. Maybe just make an announcement by sharing links or another people’s tweet or posts.
Write a very short review like “this is great.” and share the link. If we watch vlogs on Youtube channel, people can just post something like “reaction to movie trailer” before moving on to making an animated parody of a movie.
I started this trying to make it perfect, writing a very good post. Now somehow my perfectionist side prevents me not to do so.
Writing content is just one part of blogging but it is the essential. There are a lot more aspects of blogging that people can or need to learn like SEO aspect, social media, monetizing, etc.
Start small but steady and consistent. Just one step at a time, lay just one brick a day.
What I need so far to start blogging
So far, aside from the internet connection and laptop to work, I just need my own domain and hosting for the website. Making this blog as a business is not my first goal even though I do wish that. Since I use my own domain and hosting, a few extra money can help me to keep this website going.
Why didn’t I just use one of the free platforms? I’ve been doing that for 6 months. The one I used was from the online business training platform that I mentioned earlier and turns out they didn’t let me keep my website after 6 months for free. Unless I pay for premium membership, I have to move my contents from their platform should I want to keep them.
Sure, I can try using other free platforms like Blogspot, WordPress.com or Wix, but there is still a chance that could change as well. They could shut it down the service or it can be blocked by government.
My country even block access to Tumblr and Reddit, not letting people change safe mode on Google. There were also rumors about targeting social media platforms after scandal like Facebook leaked data or as they were use by terrorist group.
Maybe it is really far from happening for some platforms, but I just don’t want to waste more time for that. Well, it’s also very far for this blog from being profitable. Just a depressed guy dreaming big.
That being said, I have to remind anyone visiting my blog here that I will be using affiliate links, which if you or anybody click it, I may get money. The purpose is just to to apply what I’ve learned so far about blogging. Feel free not to use any links from here. The point is that I don’t want my attempt on making money here overcome my attempt to get out of depression.
From what I can tell, there are a lot more expenses if I want to grow this blog like paying for premium themes, plugins and other programs. I will keep updating this post as soon as I use any new paid feature.
Can I actually pull this off?
That’s pretty much about this blog. I can write about anything. Right now, I don’t know where it is going but I will try to keep updating. Hopefully someday this could be something, maybe an online business. Who knows? Just a depressed guy dreaming big.
Right now I really don’t have anything specific to write about. Still in the process of finding myself or my purpose again. I started with a topic about blogging just so I can understand what I can do with my blog. I can learn from other people’s blog and at the same time learn about their contents on other topics that I may have interest with.
Some people have successfully made money from their blog or even become a full time job. That is not my main goal, although I would be lying if I wasn’t hoping for that. In order to do that, it requires some dedication, hard work, skill, time or even money to invest that I don’t have or still need to develop right now.
Can I actually pull this off? Keep blogging, writing content until it can become an income?
I wouldn’t find out if I don’t try. I will let you know when that happens. In the meantime, hope you can find something useful here. Let me know if you have similar experience as mine, whether about blogging or depression by using the comment section below. Thanks for reading.
Mark M.
Keep writing, best wishes to you, マーク!
Thank you. Best wishes to you too. 🙂