Depression and the 365 Photo Projects (Self Reflection)

It’s not often that I think back about too many of the unfinished projects I’ve had but one stuck out with me. Like a lot of folks, the idea of a 365 photo a day project was interesting but it wasn’t until I started taking a few that I realized my life was pretty isolated. It wasn’t that there weren’t people in my life.  There was my now ex-wife, family, our dog.  No, it was more a self imposed isolation, or perhaps isolation of heart would be a more apt description.

Hadn’t really thought about how ever day, every shot started to remind me that my days were a loop.  When Monday, and Saturday all look and feel the same you start to question what’s the point to the things you do. Depression creeps into your life in strange and painful ways and unfortunately that project, left incomplete by likely 200 days was a subtle peek at my depression that I recognized too late.  Hindsight is 20-20 though and here I am now looking back on that project and seeing not my former artistic eye but a painful trail of things not so positive.

I doubt I’ll ever get into projects like that again, ones drive by popularity and trends. I used the phrase “my heart’s just not in it” a lot towards the end of my marriage. Here on out I need to try to find those things that my heart is in.  Even if the projects are painful, long and never get seen.

Projects and Distractions

Being able to focus on positive things during severe depressive episodes is a critical thing.  For me besides my artistic projects which were more therapeutic focused I also tried to spend time working on various technology oriented projects (this blog and a revamp of my neglected for years website).

One of the last projects I worked on was very much off the wall. Building VMware ESXi systems and a Hyper-V testbed system out of Intel NUCs.  In my youth I probably would have tinkered with a car, or lesser scale an RC car but these days it’s things that can overlap with my work. Perhaps owing to the same mindset that causes my depression to get me into a negative loop, I’ll typically bulldog problems in projects until I can find solutions.

VMware Homeserver – ESXi on 6th Gen Intel NUC

There’s several great resources.  While my generation of NUCs are all 5th Generation, it sounds like the newer devices can be made to work with ESXi as well and there’s an interesting community that use them for the same purpose as I was, test labs and home servers.