Depression is a subject I’ve been doing a lot of reading on lately. A few weeks ago, I discovered that I was actually coming out of a mild depression caused (I suspect) by back pain and lack of sleep. This pain and sleeplessness had been plaguing me since Christmas and I did nothing to alter my schedule, so I was really burning the candle at both ends. It was taking it’s toll.

Depression – even in a mild form – is one of those incidious afflictions that robs you of energy and passion.

Often you don’t even realise you’re affected by depression until you start to come out of it. For me on the inside, I caught myself admiring an autumn evening sunset and thinking how wonderful it looked.

I realised that for months I hadn’t really observed much of life around me, and certainly hadn’t been enjoying life. It was like I had been walking around in a fog – that’s the best way I can describe it.

Externally what was happening is that I was producing bare minimum finding it very hard to give anything out from myself. I was withdrawn and drained. I was withdrawing from enjoyable activities like blogging, podcasting, tweeting and socialising. I was lacking any form of inspiration to get podcasts recorded and edited.

So how did things turn-around? Well I’m not entirely sure, but a few things changed around the same time: changes to diet, exercise and sleep improvements certainly helped.

So for now, I’m not going to put myself under any amazing pressure to get out episodes, but you will find me blogging before then. In the meantime, I’ve been experimenting with BrightKite, and I have a few passes to give away if anyone is interested, just send me a message via the website.

If you are interested in learning more about Depression, or perhaps you suspect someone around you is withdrawing, you can find useful information on the Beyond Blue website at http://www.beyondblue.org.au/