Up on Melancholy Hill

Several things that I need to accept:

1. From time to time, I will feel a depression so profound that it feels like nothing will ever be good or happy again, that I have never been happy and that I'm the most useless, lazy and ungrateful human being who's ever lived. This feeling is related to nothing that I or anyone else has done or failed to do. It can last for as little as ten minutes and as long as one or two weeks. There is nothing I can do to prevent it, although I've got some tricks to lessen its effect. Most importantly, it will eventually pass.

2. I'm at Cambridge. Therefore, I am going to be constantly surrounded by people who are smarter, more hardworking, more driven and ambitious, and more successful than I am. (This can, of course, be an illusion. I spent most of Monday night talking with a friend of mine who I'd thought was incredibly competent, only to discover she'd spent all of last year feeling lost and unhappy. So yeah.) But rather than compare myself with these people and feel depressed, I should use them as inspiration to work harder.

3. I am not a naturally happy person. I spend more time feeling dissatisfied or upset than I do feeling happy. However, it doesn't take much to make me happy, and when I do feel happy, it is AMAZING. I don't believe that being happy is a right or the default state of being, and I need to remind myself of this more often.

These things are not examples of positive thinking, which I think is, to be blunt, utter bullshit. Rather, they're ways of using my natural negativity in a productive way.

(Also, before I get a flurry of concerned emails (Hi, Mum!), I'm feeling more on the pensive side than in the depths of despair. I haven't been having a great day, but at this point I feel more analytical about my emotions than in the need of a virtual shoulder to cry on.)

Up on Melancholy Hill

Several things that I need to accept:

1. From time to time, I will feel a depression so profound that it feels like nothing will ever be good or happy again, that I have never been happy and that I'm the most useless, lazy and ungrateful human being who's ever lived. This feeling is related to nothing that I or anyone else has done or failed to do. It can last for as little as ten minutes and as long as one or two weeks. There is nothing I can do to prevent it, although I've got some tricks to lessen its effect. Most importantly, it will eventually pass.

2. I'm at Cambridge. Therefore, I am going to be constantly surrounded by people who are smarter, more hardworking, more driven and ambitious, and more successful than I am. (This can, of course, be an illusion. I spent most of Monday night talking with a friend of mine who I'd thought was incredibly competent, only to discover she'd spent all of last year feeling lost and unhappy. So yeah.) But rather than compare myself with these people and feel depressed, I should use them as inspiration to work harder.

3. I am not a naturally happy person. I spend more time feeling dissatisfied or upset than I do feeling happy. However, it doesn't take much to make me happy, and when I do feel happy, it is AMAZING. I don't believe that being happy is a right or the default state of being, and I need to remind myself of this more often.

These things are not examples of positive thinking, which I think is, to be blunt, utter bullshit. Rather, they're ways of using my natural negativity in a productive way.

(Also, before I get a flurry of concerned emails (Hi, Mum!), I'm feeling more on the pensive side than in the depths of despair. I haven't been having a great day, but at this point I feel more analytical about my emotions than in the need of a virtual shoulder to cry on.)