Being 3:30 am it goes without saying that I was tired. When I'm tired I often feel depressed. More specifically, when I'm already in a depressed state my down moods get magnified. Annoyingly, depression makes it difficult to sleep, creating an evil loop that's not easy to get out of.
In this tired and depressed state I often have dirty "What if..." thoughts. "What if I walked in front of a car now? Who would care, if any? Would it be selfish? Would it fix anything? What would it say about me? Maybe now is not the best time because I have to figure out how to make my death be not completely useless for others. My money and scant possessions will have to go to people. What if..."
I don't like these thought. What's to like about them? They don't make me feel better about myself. They do, however, help me make up reasons why I should go on, and think of things to make myself useful/valuable. Many of the things I do, many of my drives, especially when I'm depressed, come from a desire to be better than I am, a desire to not be useless.
While walking I was thinking about ways to measure myself. How will I know when I'm fit enough? And will fit enough be enough to be a better me, to be useful if the shit ever hits the fan and I need to help someone? How will I measure my life progress? What other things can I measure? Will having concrete measurements help me stave off depression? Can I measure these dirty thought I have when I get depressed?
These Dirty "What if..." Thoughts (DWIT), and in particular a way to measure them, came to occupy my mind. How would I go about doing this?
Would it be useful to count every single time I had a suicidal thought? Should it be every single thought, or could I count a sequence withing a short period of time as one instance? Both of these seem like it would take more time than it would be worth.
How about just counting the days that I have these thought? That would be easy enough, and more useful, I think? A mood generally lasts a full day. When the mood lifting event happens during the day then it mostly just helps me to get some sound sleep, which makes me feel much better when morning comes.
But how will this scale work. The count could go up to pretty much any number. What would be the point? Would there be any use of knowing that my DWIT score was 40 versus 8? 8 seems plenty high to inform me that things are not going well? What if I suddenly have a single good day. I would go from a high, bad, score to a low score instantly making it seem like everything is suddenly fine. No, that would not work.
How about counting days without dirty thoughts, but only for a 7 day rolling period? That would mean a high score, 7, would be good, and a low score bad. It would also allow for useful in between scores. 0 would be a real WTF score. 1 would not be much better, but it would allow me to say "See, you had a decent day there. Things are not that bad, are they?" A score of 6, on the other hand, is really good, but it still immediately says "Hey, buddy! Be careful. Relax. Take a deep breath and concentrate on important things in life." Being a rolling score this 6 would then be around for a week to remind me to stay focused.
But what do I do with this score? Do I post it on Facebook? What would be the point of that? "DWIQ score for today: 5. Please pity me."
Can I use this to create an achievement hunting game? "Achievement Forty Seven! 40 days of 7. Here, have a Bingsu!"
Can I make pretty charts with it? That will keep my mind occupied and away from the dirty thoughts?
Do I paste it up against my wall? I mean, I already know how I feel, right, but seeing a 6 for a week might help me focus. And seeing the fluctuations for everything other than 6 and 7 might cheer me up, or slap me awake.
I just don't know.
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