Coping with Depression: Lessons

Coping with Depression: My Lockdown Story

Introduction

It has been 10 weeks since my last blog post here and also on my investing blog over at Steemit.com. Truth is I have been in a black hole coping with depression.

The dates are really quite important – February 21 was the day the stock market crashed when Saudi Arabia undercut Russia in the oil markets. That plus the Covid-19 escalation in Europe brought the markets to their knees. I watched my investment portfolios wipe out more value than I used to earn in a year when I was still working (now 20 years ago). I got the same feeling that I felt in March 2009 when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the Global Financial Crisis was triggered. I was waking during the night in a cold sweat thinking about the state of markets, wondering how I was going to meet margin risk on some trades – would I be forced to buy Boeing or Apple or Tesla or Alphabet at much higher prices than the current market? February 21 was also options expiry time and I had a number of margin liquidations on trades that I would have happily waited for time to fix – no chance. The broker chose to liquidate the positions and handed me the losses on a plate.

Renovations Adding Pain

So what is that feeling? It is the feeling of being out of control and not having enough cards to play. Life has a habit of layering stuff on too. We were doing some renovation work building a new kitchen and building a wine cellar under the house. Renovation times are always a good time to not be in the house – there is constant noise and it is impossible to concentrate on any brain work. It did force me to take action to tidy up the garage from the last round of renovations we had done. We had built a new sun room – the drawers and cupboards that were in there were stacked in the middle of the garage = no place to move. So I moved them all to the side wall and put the bench top back on. That gave me space to store some of the kitchen stuff. More importantly it gave me space to install a desk in the centre of the garage for my own office space a little away from the noise. I could at least work on my laptop and make some progress on building the membership that I last blogged about. So where is the membership site you might ask. Well, I needed to work on the desktop PC to finish off some of the documents to upload to the membership site. And there it all got stuck.

The next layer of life’s mystery came along with the builder. We had used him before as a trial on a small job doing gables. He had offered some ideas for the kitchen and we decided to take him up on doing the job. I did get on really well with him – it helped that he went to the same primary school as I did and knew quite a few people from those Johannesburg days. Knockdown work went just fine. The cellar digging out work went just fine. The preparation of the base elements, like electrics and plumbing and rendering and painting went fine. The problems started to arise when the kitchen units were installed. I had hints of stuff going awry on the wine cellar when it became clear to me that the builder had not listened to my brief and was over-speccing the job. A wine cellar needs only be a waterproof box with foil board lined walls – nothing fancy. The kitchen discussions were heading the same way – it was clear that the builder had not listened to my wife’s ideas OR worse, he thought he knew better. Well, well, it is not a smart person who thinks they know more about symmetry and alignment compared to a Libran and especially one trained in tailoring. My wife knows measurement and she knows symmetry. The kitchen units were installed – the kitchen sinks my wife had sourced would not fit. They had been available to measure all the time. The cutlery drawer configuration was wider than she wanted. There was a cupboard missing – even though the space on the wall had not been painted which tells us the builder knew. The cupboards were too tall not leaving space up above to put things. What is the point of all this detail? I had a big falling out with the builder and told him he should listen to the customer and write stuff down so he did not have to keep asking questions. He became quite rude toward me each time he came to work – no escape as my wife was working in the city.

Coronavirus Lockdown Kicks In

The builder was the second layer of strife to add to an already unhappy mind. Markets down. Kitchen problems flowing back down to me from my wife and from the builder. And then the coronavirus thing hit. Now lockdown does not affect me that much as I live like a recluse. I spend most of my time at home or out on the road on my bicycle or in the bush walking.  I can keep doing that. It did mean that a cycling weekend we had hoped to take part in was cancelled. It also meant that we could no longer go to visit our country house in the Hunter Valley vineyards – a short 139 km trip away.

And then the work from home directive came along and my wife’s office arrived in the house. Now I have a pretty good idea of what her job is – what I was not ready for was how much time she spends on the phone or in conference calls. What was a quiet home environment became quite different. Not just from the home office but from the changes all around us – power tools going all the time as work from home people started their renovation and tidy up projects.

This reminds me of a story. My grandfather served all 4 years in World War I as a sergeant in the Kings Fusiliers running a machine gun detachment. He was seriously shell-shocked by that experience and hated noise. They lived in a quiet street in Reigate, Surrey. It is quiet even the last time I visited – we lived one village away when I moved to England. He was finding it got too noisy and he moved to South Nutfield as it was quieter – just one village away. The house was at the end of a lane that dead ended onto the Nutfield Airfield. World War II came along and they set up a Tiger Moth training base there – he could not win. I must have some of these noise intolerance genes in me – it is driving me bonkers.  More about that later.

Coping with Depression Tactics Deployed

So I have been in the black hole for some time with a persistent headache and a lump in my chest. I had no desire to do anything.

BUT I have been here before – big time in 2009 and 2010. I recognise the symptoms. It is the black hole of depression. I certainly notice on social media that lots of people are facing lockdown and showing the symptoms – they just do not know it is depression. Now does it help to put a label on it? As soon as you do the trolls are out at you telling you it is all in the mind and to “man up”. Nothing is further from the truth. Now depression is a complicated subject and I am not an expert. I just know my story and I did spend some time with a counsellor in 2009 and 2010 to get to the bottom of it. What I do know is there are two root causes of depression – one is situational (i.e, based on what is going on) and one is chemical (i.e., the body is hard wired that way). Mine is situational – the clinical diagnosis is acute stress-based depression. It has a strong ally in a psychological state called low frustration threshold – that is my biggest bug bear. I get really frustrated when things do not work as planned. I get really frustrated when things happen that get beyond my control. When the stress builds too high I slide into a depressed state.

Now it is worth understanding a little about how this works chemically. Too much stress leads to elevated levels of stress hormones, especially cortisol, and reduced levels of serotonin and other neurotransmitters in the brain, including dopamine.  Read about it in this WebMd article – no judgements and no prescriptions are given.

That understanding helps me navigate my way out and that is what I have been doing for the last two months. It is simple really.

Remove the Sources of Stress

So I stopped following news. I have seen two news bulletins on TV in the last two months. I stopped looking at what the markets were doing. I changed my trading activity dramatically. I recall in the 2009 crash my portfolios dropped in half. It took something like 6 years to recover – why? Because my fund manager did what fund managers do – he re-balanced the portfolio as it went out of balance. That meant he sold stuff to get back to balance and realised the losses. I have just let my portfolio run and it is now 27% better than the February 21 lows. Here is the chart of one component, the S&P 500 (US market)

All from doing nothing I recovered 27% from the lows. I did continue running my income strategies. I write covered calls on stocks I am holding each month. The idea is to let the market decide exit points if it wants. How do covered calls work? I promise to deliver stock that I own to someone if price moves up more than 5 to 10% in a month. They pay me for that right. (It is called a call option). I figured that the late February selling was an over-reaction as all the fund managers were doing re-balancing. I figured that the market would find a bottom and claw some back. In that first month, I wrote covered calls with 15 to 20% coverage. If a stock wanted to go up 20% from the lows and I had to deliver, that was a better place to take a loss than at the bottom. Of course when markets get volatile like this the price of options rises dramatically – so it is a good time to be selling options. I cover the household bills doing that.  For some of the stocks I had to deliver, I bought them back – Gilead Sciences is a good example. It looks like they will rocket ahead once FDA approves remdesvir as a Covid-19 treatment.

I chose to ignore the builder – I did not talk to him at all. As soon as he came into the house I disappeared – get away from the sources of stress.  His work was only 4 weeks but it was 3 weeks of big stress.

Work on the Chemicals: Small Wins

Back to the chemicals – excess cortisol reduces the amount of serotonin available to the brain. There are simple ways to fix that. I used two simple ways. I started to set out to make small wins. It did not really matter what the wins were – but they were small tasks that I could get up and going and finished without raising the frustration levels. An example: My coffee machine is in the garage – it went there when we did the first renovations and never made it back. One day a week, each time I go to make a coffee I rake a quarter of the back garden. We have huge gum trees next door and there are always leaves and branches to rake. 4 cups of coffee in a day and that is the lawn raked = no need to rake before I mow the lawn either as it is already done. The raking is a gentle form of exercise and it is outdoors in the sun – guess what that all does? The win creates endorphins and together with the sun exposure stimulates serotonin.

Another example: some time ago my wife’s brother built a raised vegetable garden for us. My wife wanted a platform either side to hold some big pots we have plants in. I set that up as a set of small tasks – remove the grass turfs and create the frame and the base on one side as one task. Just do one side and leave the grass turfs aside. In a few days lay half the grass turfs in the front lawn to fill in some gaps. That needs watering a few days later – small task is to re-lay the hose lines from the rain water tanks below the house. Then a few days later lay the other half of the turfs in the front lawn. Then a week later do the other side platform in 3 stages again. Of course a gung-ho testosterone filled man would tackle it all in one go – small wins gave me a chance to step out of a depressed state 6 times for starters – 3 for each side.

More than that – share the photos on social media and bask in the adulation from ones adoring followers = more endorphins and more serotonin. Better than that they get motivated and they share their wins and we all feel better. Here is a progress photo of the first one

Now that word endorphins is really important too. I am a keen cyclist. I am also a keen orchid spotter. We are allowed to do one form of exercise a day. I kept doing what I have been doing – sometimes I ride to a spot in the local National Park and walk looking for orchids. Other times I just walk out the front door into the bush close by and look there. I take lots of photos of the stuff I see and I share them on social media. People like the pictures and get inspired and that is all good for the flow of serotonin. Of course, many people are not allowed to do exercise like that – my pictures help them as they can travel vicariously with me. Their support kept me pushing out to do the walks and the rides. My wife came along on a few walks too – she is not a walker but she got a lot of enjoyment out of our shared walks.

I did notice a change in one of my Twitter accounts – it has over 23,000 followers. Quite a few ladies started to share more revealing photos than they had previously – mostly cleavages. It was like they were wanting to express their personalities or their feminism or their boredom more openly. Maybe they were just looking for positive support to build their own serotonin levels. These are down the middle normal people starting to express themselves differently. Here is a tweet expressing why they do it.

I comment sometimes – I like lace for example – so I say so and back comes a positive affirmation. More importantly, it is starting to create a level of engagement which I have not really seen in my Twitter feed (not that I have been good at pushing that from my side).  Just maybe a few of my leads have come from there.

Coping With Depression: Some Risks

Now I do want to step back to one of the risk areas in coping with depression – bad eating and alcohol. All the articles from doctors warn about it. I love cooking. I have always eaten healthily. I just keep doing that as every fresh meal made is a small win. It gives me joy and I find the process therapeutic. Now it does help that I do have time to do it. Even when we had no kitchen I cooked a solid fresh meal every day outside on the barbecue – it does have a side burner for pot work. I love wine. I collect wine – we now have a wine cellar beneath the house. The psychologists warn of the perils of drinking and depression. The World Health Organization warned in this crisis of the perils of drinking. I drink more than is recommended. However, I apply a discipline to my drinking – none during the day. One beer only a day mostly after 6 pm. A few glasses of wine and that is it. Wine is about aromas and flavours and not about drinking. It is about the release from serotonin from the enjoyment – not the way alcohol stimulates dopamine at the start.

Back to Internet Marketing

Now this is a long winded story that is a million miles away from my last blog post about building membership sites. I laid out a clear action plan then. Here it is repeated

1. Get base site up for one product (Passive Income Building)
2. Choose what products to promote from within the site. Each course page includes banner ad space to cross promote. Ideally this is used to do upsells into the rest of the membership. To start off I can promote Internet Profits products like the Iceberg Effect and The Perfect Offer
3. Work through logos and branding and create templates for the other modules.
4. Roll out to other products in the collection (there are 5 products).
5. Decide on pricing strategies – e.g., free vs paid vs bundles and monthly vs annual or 6 monthly
6. Integrate new products from existing PLR (Digital Course; Time Management; Copywriting)
7. Roll out to other collections (more technical product specific topics like Youtube Marketing and Podcasting)
8. Supplement individual products with new modules as market and technology evolves

What happened? I diverged from the plan a bit. I chose to do a base site on WordPress Basics rather than Passive Income using a PLR product I had bought. I did all the branding and logo work for that. Doing the logo work from a new module gave me a platform for applying to the other modules. I branded and uploaded all videos and the transcripts. Given that I had the branding and logos thought through, I applied it all 5 modules in the one passive income collection. I have a little work to do on the cross promotion side and I have to build a sales page. I did buy in a few more PLR products on related themes.  Here is the overall branding logo for the whole program – Stratocharge Your Income Masterclass

I am a little stuck as I am not totally happy with the mobile responsiveness of the site and the navigation does not work as well as it could. I need a few small win tasks to clear those obstacles and then I can get to launch. My thinking is to add the site as a bonus on an upcoming promotion. That means I only have to sot out the cross-promotion stuff. I can use feedback from new members to fix the responsiveness and the navigation.  That next promotion is two days away.

Now it is not all doom and gloom on the Internet Marketing front. I have kept up the solo ads program with one small campaign running a month from Traffic4Me. That converts around 30% and has produced some sales of Internet Profits products including my first 4 figure sale last week.  I have been promoting Alice Seba’s PLR products and made a few sales there too. I like her stuff. I must say I have been remiss in deploying stuff I have from her. Mainly as I was not seeing results.

I Lied About Not Blogging

Now for a twist to the “not been blogging” saga. It is not true at all. One of my projects last year was to use an app called Actifit to post about my daily activity. What the app does is track your daily physical activity on your phone and then gives you a tool to post a summary of the day to a blogging platform – Steemit.com. Steemit is a crypocurrency-based blogging platform – if people like your posts, they upvote it and one collects a reward paid in cryptocurrency. The neat part of the app is that if one’s daily activity is above 5,000 steps you get rewarded in Actifit cryptocurrency tokens as well (AFIT). They can be sold or exchanged for other cryptocurrency. The app has a way to update the activity data from a Fitbit watch. My wife bought me the Fitbit as a gift for our wedding anniversary (September). I wore the watch but I did not start doing the posts for a while – looks like all those projects in my life.

My grand idea was to use the Actifit posts to do a daily report of stuff that was going on – photos from my rides and walks, actions from trading and actions on Internet Marketing. As I could get paid a little for each post that feels like a small win – just got to get into the habit of doing it every day. The app allows you to post for today and yesterday only – so it is a really good forcing device to post regularly. Well the whole saga is not as bad as it sounds. My first Actifit post was made on February 2, 2020 – only 4 months after the project idea was kicked off.  That post is now worth $0.11 at current Steem price and I got 23.5075 Actifit tokens. I have posted one pretty well every day since with 81 done – so I have been blogging. An idea that struck me today was to find a way to integrate it into my blog. I have already figured out how to do that for my investing blogs – just do the same again. This saga has got a little complicated as TRON Foundation recently acquired Steemit.com and created a ruckus. The Steemit platform continues but there has been a splinter blockchain called Hive – good news is I get to post on both from the Actifit app. So I get paid in two places plus the AFIT tokens.

Now there are some other side benefits. Getting a reward above 5,000 steps a day pushes one to do a bit more. It is not hard for me as trips to the garage for coffee and some raking all count. The Fitbit has a feature where it will tell you wit 10 minutes to go each hour how close you are to doing 250 steps inthe hour. Get up and do those steps and that lifts serotonin lelves.

Resources

Actifit – an app for rewarding your everyday activity. Sign up here free 

Hive.blog – a decentralised cryptocurrency-based blogging platform. Get paid to blog and no censorship. Sign up here – there are free options to join

Solo Ads: Traffic For Me is a traffic brokerage service that finds the best solo ad providers. They do all the work to get clean leads to your specification. Explore Traffic For Me – it works

ProductDyno is a product delivery and membership platform. Their words

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Credits

Head in Hands Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay