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(Seriously, when I was at Mitel I was in pretty much the same boat as you. Going back to school worked wonders for me, as it was something I had always wanted to do. Plus, they let me play with the big telescopes now! Muhahahaha!)

sungo: BODY PARTS AND BESTIALITY YAY

dagbrown: Thanks, I really appreciate your input. I don’t think drugs are what I’d consider a last resort, but they’re not really a first either. Now that I’ve recognized the problem I’m going to see what comes out of it, and then see if I need additional help even with it recognized.

I really like your observation about the correlation of lack of motivation and miserableness. I think it was that I wasn’t really miserable that made it take me this long to go “Oh, here’s what’s wrong”.

There’s a number of ways you can deal with it. The first is, if you’re reasonably certain it’s temporary and not chronic depression, you can start by drugging it into submission, which has the effect of getting you back to a reasonable-enough simulation of normal that you can function the way you expect to be able to do so, until you manage to get yourself back up to your normal self naturally. Plus, you get the advantage of YAY PROZAC.

The drug-yourself-back-to-life approach should only be taken if you’re certain that it’s only a temporary thing. If it’s chronic, you would be better off taking a different approach.

Chronic depression is something that you first have to acknowledge is there, and then you have to work with it. You need to accept that the lack of motivation (which is, really, all that depression is–it’s nothing to do with feeling miserable all the time: that’s just a symptom caused by not being able to manage to get anything done) is something that happens, and consciously work with it. That involves accepting the occasional zero-motivation times and working with them, and when there is any motivation available, taking every advantage of it to do the things you want to. And that requires deliberately Doing Stuff–much more deliberately than when you’re at your normal state. When an opportunity presents itself, you have to deliberately leap at it, rather than going “eh, I’ll have another chance at this”.

Me, I’m in the latter category. I’ve had to put up with this as an ongoing thing, but grabbing the occasional bits of motivation and doing something crazy has almost never failed to, at least, get me into something interesting.

But really, if you can handle it by drugging yourself up to your previous level and then using the artificial stimulus to get yourself back to a positive baseline, that’s much better. Drugs never did anything for me, because my baseline is much lower, but they might be good for you. Just so long as you remember to treat them as a stopgap while you get back to yourself, and not as a crutch to lean on as an excuse for not being what you want to be.

Also – don’t be afraid to pop in and have a talk w/a doc about it – they may have some good advice for you as well on getting things headed back in the right direction.

Best of luck with your new pursuits!