Extended Episodes Happen

For the past several months, I can say that I’ve most likely been in an extended anxiety/depressive episode. I don’t know what’s causing it, but it’s been interfering with me enough that I can’t help but notice it. I used to be able to write a lot of stuff, but I’ve been withdrawing from it in an unhealthy way. Part of it is that I’m really censoring myself, and another part is that other stuff is interfering with my daily routine.

A lot of little frustrations build up over time, but the frustrations are just a symptom of the episode (and not a cause like I originally thought). This has been a happy discovery for me, since it means that my disposition in itself might not be prone to making me anxious. The unhappy part of the discovery, though, is that something else entirely is going on. Some of it might be change that I know needs to happen, but am too afraid to handle.

There’s been a lot of things I’ve wanted to write about, including the recent report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concerning religious freedom and its intersection with civil rights. A few other things have grabbed my attention as well, such as the proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution wanting to make abortion a first degree murder charge, and the state of the presidential election here in the United States. Many of these things are the result of politicizing faith, which in turn makes people more militantly vocal about following Jesus.

While I’d like to say it’s been nice not writing as much as I used to, that’s not entirely the case. I’ve deleted a lot of drafts in the past several months. Personally, I’ve still written about a post a day, but for many different reasons, I delete them.

This one I’ve promised myself I will post. So here it is, warts and all.