Krubbz
Offline
Fargo

I don't know how many of you suffer from some level of depression, but I know some of you do.  I've been having a serious bout with it for several months and really want to start creating again to help boost my self esteem and get out of it.  The problem with this is motivating myself.  I'm sure many of you are familiar with the voice that puts you down and keeps you in your chair watching pointless bullshit on Netflix through all your limited free time.  So the question is, how do you deal with it and keep making stuff that makes you proud?  I am not looking for free therapy here, I am just genuinely interested in any tips for motivation people utilize who understand what it's actually like to be depressed and not just sad once in a while.  I've looked up tips for motivation, but the people who write those types of articles are far too fucking positive about everything.  I know I'm not that type of person, and I know how even negative energy can be utilized to form something positive and uplifting.  That's my goal.  I just need a push, and maybe a couple tips from you wonderful folks.  Thank you all in advance. 

P.S. My cat would like to let you all know that, " nmnnnnnhjuu8iujsjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjji vce. 
j".
Don't say he never did anything for you.

Popsicle Theory
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the Netherlands

Hi! Well, I've never been depressed but I've had a massive writers block (couple of years) and I just couldn't get myself to actually make some songs, didn't enjoy it anymore etc. I got out of that by listening to A LOT of chipmusic and wondering how to recreate those sounds (I only knew how to make music in DAWS). I decided to invest, bought a Drag n Derp cart and told myself to ''practise'' LSDj at least once a week. Now I suddenly know the basics of LSDj and really enjoy making new sounds and stuff. Maybe it's a tip idk.. try a new program or tracker or whatsoever, because it's really satisfying if you finally get that cool sound or song. The first step is always the hardest but once you get going it's a lot of fun!

Good luck!

ForaBrokenEarth
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Nottingham, UK

Just start. Set aside a few hours and do nothing but write music. Do your best to ignore the "it's shit" voices and just keep going forward. At the end you'll have something.

sandneil
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i dunno if this is helpful at all but here goes:

i agree that "positive thinking" is useless. if you are having thoughts that your music is crap and you can't be bothered to make it, you're having those thoughts and you can't stop yourself from thinking. if you try to not have the thoughts you'll probably have them even more and just feel like a failure. i really hate the "just imagine that everything will be fine and great forever" advice so popular with moms and other people who have never been depressed

i started studying a thing called "acceptance and commitment therapy" and one of the things it teaches is that you don't have to "feel like it" and you always have the option of acknowledging the thoughts in your head without buying into them and just doing things anyway. the aim is not really to increase motivation or reduce negative thinking but to reduce the impact that low motivation and negative thinking have on your life

i think this is quite along the lines of what popsicle theory and forabrokenearth have said too

having structure and routine has helped me too. i write a to-do list each night and in the morning i get up and do the things on it. offsetting the "deciding-to-do" from the "doing" like this has helped me. if i put "write a song" on the list i have to write a song. i say to myself "i feel really sad, and i just want to lie down in bed, and i totally don't want to write a song. that's fine, but i'm going to write a song anyway" ... this might seem like positive psychology but it's subtly different to me, i probably just havent communicated it very well

i really like popsicle theory's idea of treating it as "practise"

i'm sorry you feel so rough and that sucks and i hope you get better quickly. but also, don't think you have to wait til you are better before you can write music again. any time is a good time to write music

heart

Princedmorn
Offline
Michigan

I go through this stuff monthly, so I'll just give you some things that have happened to me in the past and I hope they help you out as well.

Not everything negative is good, but in order to have some sort of motivation some kind of event has to impact your life. Back a few years ago while I was in high school my first girlfriend broke up with me. I did some self searching and realized that I could have been a better boyfriend (less selfish and stuff like that) but after I went on this self discovery I found that she also was cheating on me. Some weeks later, I had an assignment to write a short story for my Creative Writing class. The 3-5 pages turned out to be 13 pages long about that journey I took and how even though it was for the best would never change the past. Teacher loved it so much, she sent it in to get published. (Just typing this small paragraph here made me want to pull out the original copy and go through it again).

This may not be parental approved, but; I love H P Lovecraft. His macabre take on occult esoteric magic of summon gods from an other plane of existence inspired me to do more writing. However, I needed some help. The few small stories I have done were actually just in one sitting, listening to ambient music with no lyrics and have a few glasses of wine. My words, coherent. Writing, legible. But the more I drank, the more my mind twisted the reality of fiction I wrote and it became a different story altogether.

Just recently, and what had brought me to chiptunes, I became sad that there were no more games that grabbed my attention like the classic Final Fantasy (FF VI to be exact). So I began to write, and when I wrote something down, something else came to mind. This kept happening so quickly that I bullet pointed events so I can move from page to page. When I put all of this on RPGMaker, the harddrive crashed and I gave up trying to be creative. A friend showed me chiptunes, and I slowly got back into music. But it wasn't until I stepped out side from watching the Final Fantasy Concert when I realized that I wanted to pull what ever music I had and turn it into 8 or 16 bit.

Now this might be silly or some kind of placebo effect; Exercise. I don't know why, but I run for 30 min to an hour every morning and afterwards I feel so much better about everything. Whenever I eat salads and apples or oranges instead of cookies, I tend to stay more on track with what I am doing. I stopped buy fast food and cooking at home with actual ingredients, and I sleep more sound and wake up more relaxed. Might not work for everyone, and it may be a placebo effect, but the running and changing my food is keeping me remembering all the anime that was on Netflix.

BeatScribe
Offline
Chicago, IL
Princedmorn wrote:

Now this might be silly or some kind of placebo effect; Exercise. I don't know why, but I run for 30 min to an hour every morning and afterwards I feel so much better about everything. Whenever I eat salads and apples or oranges instead of cookies, I tend to stay more on track with what I am doing. I stopped buy fast food and cooking at home with actual ingredients, and I sleep more sound and wake up more relaxed. Might not work for everyone, and it may be a placebo effect, but the running and changing my food is keeping me remembering all the anime that was on Netflix.


I was thinking of writing the same thing. I used to be very unhealthy (I wasn't really overweight either, just not healthy) - I ate junk, drank too much coffee and energy drinks, stayed up late for no good reason, slept randomly. I was depressed and angsty and I listened to music that made me more agitated and angry or ska which was just sort of like a musical manic sugar high. I was hyper and easily annoyed or totally down and wasted a lot of time and energy.

One day I just wanted to get outside so I went for a very half-hearted jog, slowly overtime I started to enjoy it more. Now, my life is very busy but I still make time to lift weights or jog every day. I still enjoy some junk on occasion, but I mostly eat healthy food. It's not just good for you for losing weight and stuff (which is what I used to think, which seemed not worth it) - but for your mood.

I have more motivation and handle stress better just from changing my diet. The exercise just adds to that. My life isn't perfect but I handle crap better than before.

Without writing a giant health article:
more protein / less carbs - less hungry/less spikes and crashes in energy level - i used to eat oatmeal thinking i was being good but then i was cranky and hungry at 10am
hemp seeds - super magical power seeds that give you 12 hours of energy
green tea - better than coffee
coconut oil - metabolism equalizing and high energy

sandneil wrote:

having structure and routine has helped me too. i write a to-do list each night and in the morning i get up and do the things on it. offsetting the "deciding-to-do" from the "doing" like this has helped me. if i put "write a song" on the list i have to write a song. i say to myself "i feel really sad, and i just want to lie down in bed, and i totally don't want to write a song. that's fine, but i'm going to write a song anyway" ... this might seem like positive psychology but it's subtly different to me, i probably just havent communicated it very well


heart

Agreed here too. To do lists are super helpful. I kind of view each day like a RPG. These are my mission objectives. And I'm also gonna build my character stats...it makes all that passion i have for old games serve a purpose in my day-to-day life. no one around me has to know i see it like that..but it keeps me motivated.

start iPod full of 16-bit RPG soundtracks...

Last edited by BeatScribe (Feb 19, 2015 1:40 pm)

JodyBigfoot
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i wont go on and on but i'll just say:

exercise - natural anti depressant, seems hard and daunting at first, but reward system is great

read a book called "The Kyballion", hermetic philosophy and alchemy based on rising above mind and matter. helped me learn and understand how to change mental states

dont push yourself too hard

PolarBirds
Offline
My Igloo

I have been depressed for the past 8 years now, gradually become worse over time. Seems like many "creative" ppl suffer from this for many reasons. I am currently on antidepressants, which made me feel like shit the first month or so, but now I feel a lot better. Aside from that, I also would like to vouche for regular excercise, routine and a healthy diet. It is helping me quite a lot. Self acceptance is very important too imo. You are you and that is perfectly fine (input other generic advice). I also tend to spend waaaay too much time overthinking stuff, never helped anyone as far as I know hmm

Also, lol at the picture there BeatScribe. Funny and true XD

Hope you get better Krubbz and that this thread might help you somehow!

Cheers

Imaginary
Offline
Whateverville, California

That cycle of: "All I want to do is play videogames, life is bullshit."
Sit and play videogames in all your spare time for months on end.
Turn on the console one day, stare and the screen and think "Every day I die a little more."
Get super productive for a couple months until the mental energy is exhausted.
Repeat.

Finding motivation to do music was what broke that cycle for me. In a way, not playing videogames is my motivation to make videogame music. I look at it like this, no one will see your high scores, or that perfect save file of that RPG as worth historical archival. But if you make a cool album people might still be jamming out to it after you're dead. Don't get me wrong, I still love playing games now and again, but I now see it as a downtime activity instead of "what I'm doing with my life".

danimal cannon
Offline
buffalo, NY

DEADLINES.

SOMEHOW INVENT THEM IF THEY DONT EXIST. Ex: Weekly Beats, Compos, etc

Last edited by danimal cannon (Feb 19, 2015 5:04 pm)

BeatScribe
Offline
Chicago, IL
Imaginary wrote:

Finding motivation to do music was what broke that cycle for me. In a way, not playing videogames is my motivation to make videogame music. I look at it like this, no one will see your high scores, or that perfect save file of that RPG as worth historical archival. But if you make a cool album people might still be jamming out to it after you're dead. Don't get me wrong, I still love playing games now and again, but I now see it as a downtime activity instead of "what I'm doing with my life".

Well said..This is where my "life is the video game" internal mentality works great.

Last edited by BeatScribe (Feb 19, 2015 5:08 pm)

herr_prof
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Unsubscribe
danimal cannon wrote:

DEADLINES.

SOMEHOW INVENT THEM IF THEY DONT EXIST. Ex: Weekly Beats, Compos, etc

DIS

the key for me is to set aside time every day to work. No matter what you do in that hour or so, work, even if it blows. Finish songs even when they suck and you wont share them, just finish stuff.

TetrisEffect
Offline
JodyBigfoot wrote:

i wont go on and on but i'll just say:

exercise - natural anti depressant, seems hard and daunting at first, but reward system is great

read a book called "The Kyballion", hermetic philosophy and alchemy based on rising above mind and matter. helped me learn and understand how to change mental states

dont push yourself too hard



Listen to this man he knows what he is saying...

And the Kybalion is a fantastic book, a personal fav!!!

an0va
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As a mental health professional I'm actually withholding myself from making a super huge post here (at the risk of demonstrating that I am an even bigger nerd than what's obvious here), but sandneil is absolutely nailing it ITT and basically hinting upon meta-cognition therapy - definitely give that post some thought !

\.../

n00bstar
Offline
Montreal, Canada
Krubbz wrote:

and I know how even negative energy can be utilized to form something positive and uplifting.

About that one particular line. I mostly agree with the statement, but I feel you don't fully..erm...understand what you're saying? In a way? Lemme explain....

Yes "negative energy" can be creative, positive, and uplifting. *BUT* you need to make the distinction between the music becoming uplifting, and your life becoming uplifting. What I mean to say is... your music can be gloomy, suicidal, creepy, and every other variations of dark and depressed there is, but that doesn't mean that the process of creating those songs wasn't an uplifting and positive experience FOR YOU. I have a couple of friends who are quite hardcore about their goth bullshit, going as far as sleeping in coffins and whatnot. Yet they are some of the happiest, most well-rounded people I know. Because they like their goth shit, indulging in it makes them happy, even if for the outside world they just look like a bunch of suicidal morons with too many pairs of black leather pants.

Anyways.. just a thought I wanted to share.

Last edited by n00bstar (Feb 20, 2015 1:40 am)

chunter
Offline
Brunswick, GA USA
danimal cannon wrote:

DEADLINES.

SOMEHOW INVENT THEM IF THEY DONT EXIST. Ex: Weekly Beats, Compos, etc

I do this too, and as a result I'm discovering that I have multiple releases in a year where I wasn't sure I'd even have one.

This isn't so easy to do when you have to balance it against depression. It takes real courage to recognize it and share it, but remember that it takes real help and real work to get through it. The "experience" I have with it is not mine, so I can't give great advice besides not forcing things and being with people who support you regardless of your depression.