This is not about depression due to isolation, although it is. It is about my observations of depressive states and conditions and cycles in the absence of distorting stimuli. Depression taken in isolation. This fourteen months past has provided an interesting window into the tides and turns, the vicissitudes, of my chemical/emotional landscape. Without having actual detailed records to turn to, it seem that I experienced a total of six depressive episodes, one of which is (I hope) lifting now. WHile I do think of them as not really starting until late last summer, if there one in early summer that pretty much spreads them out evenly, at one every two months to perhaps as long as ten weeks. But more likely every two months, with the first couple of months not being indicative due to the change going on as the isolation began to have its dual effects. One effect was perhaps to provoke the onset of the episodes, or certainly to make preventing them much harder. That could also be phrased "to make them more likely and more pronounced". The other was to remove any stimuli that might have muddied the data with too much noise. Eveyr two months is much shorter a cycle than I would have guessed from past, noisy, muddy data and observations - before this I would have guessed from two to four times a year. I suppose four times is almost as often. But in the noise and disruption of life, some never get their heels in. And they almost all are much shorter, historically lasting only 3-4 days and definitely seeming to serve a purpose. Some sort of "housekeeping" purpose. This past year it has been harder coping with them, as in a sense all I *have* is my state of mind. The simple "getting out of my head" afforded by interaction with other people has been denied me, leaving me to concern myself much more with delaying or preventing such episodes, or at least managing their duration and intensity if at all possible. (Another aspect to "managing" them is to try to be careful to critically damp the stages of their passing, to avoid or prevent an oscillation into mania.) Most of them have been more "agitated" or chaotic than low or inertial/actionless. But those are still characterized by a sense of pointlessness and a strong degree of ineffectiveness without seriously concentrating. Sometimes I simply redirect and find that there is some energy that can be utilized. Instead of "doing what I have to do" I just do something else. I sort of achieve "something", and at some point return to doing what actually needs to be done. Luckily, a week or two of that is not enough to really screw things up. And a week or even two is very long for me to be caught in one of these. I think that with sufficient human interaction, three times a year - every four months or so - is about the norm for me. That's basically every other of the ones I have been seeing with virtually zero contact. And those "normal" ones last for an almost precise three and a half days. My main concern during these totalled several weeks of emotional dislocation and mental struggle has been for it not to become the new wallpaper, the new landscape of my mind any more than absolutely necessary. This is not a place that I would want to live any more than that ten days or so of "housekeeping". Somewhat like sleep and dreaming, these periods (the shorter, less frequent ones) act as a break from awakeness, or "normal" consciousness. During this time things get quietly rearranged and reconstrued, at best overlong-held things slip away and new and welcome ones somehow find homes. It takes a different state of consciousness, a lowered ego and increased bleed into or flow with the zeitgeist, for this to happen. Almost a curative spa for the westernized human mind, if you will. The last couple of weeks I did not get much done. So instead I did some dutiful watering and mowing, and measured with some precision the locations of every woody plant on an acre of land. I wrote a song that is almost too angry to work on. And I sort of enjoyed some fairly visually intense Spring days. 5/14/21 Prior and later works. There may be more to add to this list if I ever sort through my notes (my "blank thoughts"). 5/14/21 Depression in Isolation Reflections on a year of mental cycles (You Are Here) 10/29/20 Solitary confinement ...which is also late Oct pandemic notes 10/5/20 Isolation and depression A rather raw piece about plague-driven depression 11/16/00 Periodic depression depression, my little black puppy... 
© Huw Powell
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