It's no wonder I lack motivation and can't remember anything!
Several months ago, I was diagnosed as being bipolar. Before that, it was chronic depression and ADD. However, the diagnosis wasn't quite accurate and the medication I was taking for it didn't seem to help. A few months ago, I was subsequently diagnosed as having schizophrenia and my medication was changed. On the one hand, I felt really depressed and discouraged that I'd finally been declared insane (or so I thought) with a mental illness I really did my best to avoid, to the extent that anyone can. (No use of CBD-/THT-based products, for example.) On the other hand, I felt relieved that I had finally got a diagnosis that fits the symptoms I'd been exhibiting (such as memory loss, particularly with regards to working memory not transferring to long-term memory, lack of motivation and disinterest in having relationships with other humans). It was, to my mind, confirmation that I really am crazy/mentally ill, not simply "acting out of character" or "being lazy" just to try get away with it (as the few remaining people still in my life accused).
About a month later, I was past feeling depressed and helpless. I had questions, such as, "how am I supposed to motivate myself if I lack intrinsic motivation and appear lazy?". (Working thrice as hard and thrice as long simply isn't enough any more if my mind's gone for a loop or six.) I sometimes struggle to get myself to do even the things that I actually want to do, never mind those that I have to do to maintain some semblance of a responsible adult's life. Doing the simple day-to-day things like laundry can seem almost insurmountable, even when I'm pushing myself to do them one step at a time. I also tend to have blank/vague moments (sometimes lasting a whole day) where I forget how to do fairly simple tasks, sometimes mere minutes after starting them. It's not the size of the tasks (or subtasks) that's problematic. It's the complete lack of recollection and will that is. I'm hoping that practising Mel Robbins' five second rule (count down from five and then think something positive/motivating) will help a great amount with this.
A few to several months later, my questions have still gone unanswered and I have yet to see a psychiatrist so that I can ask them. It doesn't help that during my regular appointments with the psychiatrist, my mentioning this slips my mind. All she seems to do is ask if my medication is working and issue me more. I'm going to have to phone the outpatients' department and explicitly ask to speak to a psychologist about my concerns, because I want to book an appointment in which I can ask questions, in the nature of "What am I going to do with my life, other than eat, sleep, watch YouTube and write blog posts?" and, "How am I supposed to find and keep gainful employment if my memory is unreliable and I have vague days on which it feels like my brain/memory is broken/inaccessible?". Of course, I've likely forgot the other questions that I wanted to ask. I hope I had the presence of mind to write them down in my diary when they first occurred to me.
I sure as hell can't go back to programming professionally (or any form of knowledge work that requires good recall or learning a great deal of anything new). My attempts to get new material (such as PHP 8 and MySQL 8) to stick in my brain are proving painfully inadequate. I remember reading, but just don't absorb what I read. If I can no longer do the one thing I was being paid to do, that I knew how to do, what the hell are my options? As much as I'd like it to, blogging and publishing on LeanPub isn't going to pay the bills. Nor is crypto or music creation/production or, for that matter, any other creative pursuit I've tried. Granted, I've got a weekend job and managed to secure a welfare grant for my condition/disability, but that's not enough to pay for anything other than food every month. It doesn't seem likel to stretch to cover a psych appointment as well.
As anyone with access to the Internet might do, I went looking online for literature, such as Schizophrenia for Dummies and found that book available as an eBook. However, that title is focussed primarily on informing the nearest and dearest of the sufferer about schizophrenia, rather than directly helping the afflicted person. I have read a number of chapters of that book, but don't ask me to give a summary of what I have read. I remember that I have read some of it, but I don't seem to have absorbed any of it, my faulty memory being to blame. I tried taking the information in Schizophrenia for Dummies and writing a book titled Schizophrenia for Schizophrenics, but I lacked both the memory of what I'd read and the motivation to pursue it for any length of time, so that project fell by the wayside, just like so many before it. Besides, writing (particularly books) isn't going to pay the bills every month, judging by the lack of activity of my LeanPub account and the novel I published there.
Thumbnail: Author's own artwork, a cropped concept cover for Schizophrenia for Schizophrenics
