 Oh boy, I'm home from school and I can't wait to get started on my new YouTube video. Hello, my name is Seasonal Effective Disorder. I hear you want to start work on a YouTube video. Well, that's too gosh darn bad. How about instead of doing that, we watched Netflix and HBO Go. You want to text your friends? Cch! That's silly, leave them on red because you don't have the mental capacity to respond to them. Mmm, I see you've been jamming to some pretty uplifting vibes. Let me swap that for some hardcore music. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! It's getting harder and harder for me to make videos for this channel. It's not because I'm running out of things to talk about, but rather because I'm having trouble sitting down at my computer to work. Like, the motivation involved with that. It's like just the whole recording process. Cch! My life was ruined, I started listening to my chemical romance. Nope, that was a bad take. My life was ruined, I started, nah, geez, these inflections are weird. My life, you know what? Why am I even reducing myself to cheap clickbait like this? I mean, the 21pods video is bad enough and I changed the title on that to make more people angry. Oh my god. I'm just gonna watch every video game donkey video ever made in a glorious marathon. He's got a lot or I'm gonna throw myself off a bridge, whichever's easier. Literally two weeks ago, something inside me snapped. I just woke up my bed. I was like, I don't want to be alive right now. Well, I could just slip into the floor and exist there until Christmas. Sometimes it would be nice to have remote control just fast forward through all the bleh parts of your life. I would love to just skip to my high school graduation. Move out, tour the country with whatever musical project I'll be a part of at the time and get a billion subs on YouTube, buy a crappy apartment in Boisier, Seattle, and donate all the money I don't need to charity. I can't just snap my fingers and do that though. There's a lot of in-between stuff that requires work, effort, diligence, blood, sweat, and tears. That's icky and not really my vibe. This kind of mentality and mood just comes over me during winter months. Freshman year at high school, I thought it was circumstantial. Same as sophomore year and junior year. This year my life is like at an all-time high. I'm fulfilling my lifelong goals. I'm making money while doing so. My GPA this year has been 4.0. I've been having a few family members come out of serious medical conditions successfully. My life is great right now. So why do I feel bummed out all the time? The only recurring theme that I can see is that these sad vibes begin early November and they last until March or so. This is having a huge impact on my workflow. In the summer, I could just sit down and 20 hours straight, have a video done, and I'll feel great about it. It is so hard to work up motivation now, even though I have a ton of love and support being directed to me every minute of every day. I have no excuse to not be bursting with life and excitement all the time. I actually looked into this. Why is it that creative people tend to get depressed more than average folks? I dug into a few online articles and I found some pretty compelling theories. It actually has a lot to do with the creative process itself. Creative people tend to ruminate their thoughts a bit more than the average folks. Introspection plus imagination is like a recipe for emo vibes. I think Twilight Paths wrote an entire album about that. So that leads to having no motivation. And here's what I don't get. How do artists make art when they're sad? Because I'm in the same boat and it's darn near impossible for me to get anything done. When Van Gogh is like Van- No! How did he garner the energy to get off his couch and make weird pictures neat paint? Oh and Kurt Cobain is like Kurt, nothing! How do you work up the effort to record and perform all of his iconic music? Or when the King and Queen of Losers are cranky, how do they record such masterful, exciting, catchy and clever jams? What a good band, by the way. That kind of taught me to seriously appreciate artwork from artists who suffer with depression. They'd better seriously believe in what they're doing if they go to the trouble to get out of bed and actually do the things that they do. So I guess I'll try to end this with a point to ponder. What evolutionary sense does it make for humans to be sad? Why is it important that we feel down from time to time? The way I see it, it's kind of like a natural call to improve the conditions around you. Are you feeling lonely? Sadness acts as a natural homing signal for people who care about you. It's there to serve as a strengthening tool for relationships and self-care. It is so important and necessary to feel sad from time to time. With moderation, a little bit of feeling bummed out is ridiculously healthy. It can be a really powerful tool for self-improvement and progress, as well as betterment in your life. The hard part is actually learning how to apply it and using it to his full potential. I Am Who I Am Today is a result of crushing bad vibes in middle school. Bullying, getting beaten up, called names. Learning how to cope with those like sculpted me into who I am today. And I kind of like myself now, which I think is really cool. I wish that more people like felt good about themselves. Of all the people you're going to spend time with throughout your life, you're going to be spending the most time with yourself. So I'd hope that you're good friends with that person. That was so cheesy. There is so much power in learning that you have the ability to beat the crap out of your own personal depression monster. Or at the very least, throw them in a headlock or control them to a certain degree. This can be done through experimenting with new hobbies, making efforts to reach out to new people and pre-existing friends, and seeing professional help if need be. Keep making art, keep an eye out for your friends, and send only the funnest vibes wherever you go. I'm trying my hardest, and you should definitely try to. I pinky promise, your future self will be pretty happy that you tried. Take care of yourselves and stay safe.