Oh, so that's what I've been doing wrong!

Over the last couple months, I've been growing more and more... frustrated?  Stressed?  Annoyed?

Whatever it is, it's been bad.  It feels like the sky has grayed out, which is, in my experience, one of the signs that I'm depressed.  Naturally, I've been concerned about this.

But the thing is, I haven't felt depressed.  I've been smiling less, true, and I've been seeing some of the symptoms... but not all of them.  Not even half of the ones I'm so familiar with, really.  Which, to my mind, meant I was in the "danger zone", but not actually depressed yet.  Mostly just stressed, which is no minor thing--stress affects an awful lot--but it's not the inescapable spiral of the depression.

So okay.  I've been aware of this, as I say, for a couple of months.  And it's been frustrating:  I'm finding myself frequently aggravated with people who aren't really doing anything wrong.  I've been finding myself wanting to snap over things which, hey, would annoy anyone, but they're probably annoying me a bit more than they should.

And, you know, Hilary's condition isn't helping.

But it wasn't until today that I realized what the problem was.  And in a way, it's gratifying, because I was right:  I haven't been depressed.

I've been without Joy. 

Joy is seriously freaking important.  Which we knew:  I'm sure there are plenty of studies out there on the effects of love on a person's personality, and the effects of vacation on productivity, and so forth.  Some day when I need post material I'll go dig those studies up.

But what I hadn't realized is that a lack of joy was what was affecting me.  I've been busy, okay:  there are times when I don't see my best friend the whole week, and I barely read fanfiction at all these days; I cook less because I don't have time, and I don't do yoga anymore, and I don't even have a cat these days, much less a significant other.  I don't have time:  I go to work, I come home, I sleep; I go to school, I come home, I volunteer, I go to work; I visit my sister, I come home, I do homework, I sleep.  No time.  I am not making this up or exaggerating.  No.  Time.

I've been trying for almost a month to get together with my college advisers (somebody decided it would be best for us to have two, for some reason), and of course the schedules haven't been meshing, but the reason I've been trying to get ahold of them is because I've known subconsciously what I just figured out the reason for:  I can not do this another quarter.  Next quarter I must have a lighter schedule, because I almost had a breakdown over a lost earring today, and that's really not acceptable.

Even if it was one of my favorite earrings.

And the reason for all this is, no joy.  Joy is what makes everything else worth it, and without joy, it really hasn't been seeming worth it.  I've been wondering what the heck I'm bothering for, really. 

And it's not like my reasons have gone away; I just... forgot, for a little while:

When I'm dating, I want to be the sort of person my significant other is proud of.  When I'm a mother, I want to be able to support my children.  When I go to Meeting, I want to be an elder, and I want to support my community.  I want to be the person that other people lean on.  When I look back on my life from the age of eighty, I want to be able to say honestly that I lived up to my full potential and, consistently, helped people. 

That's all stuff in the future; but to get to the future, I need a solid base now.  That's why I'm doing this. 

But it's hard to remember that when you don't have time to go see any of the people you love.

Well, that's one way to put it.

This article, I feel, wins some sort of an award for best introductory paragraph.

And yes, we did already know that... sort of.