Seasonal Netflix recommendation

I don't usually do this, but I feel compelled to tell you about a show that's available on Netflix, especially if you're looking for some deep, darkly-funny entertainment over the holidays.

The show is called Please Like Me. It's a billed as a "comedy drama" series, but I would describe it as a sitragicom – a situation tragicomedy.

I first saw the show a few years ago when it appeared briefly as a summer fill-in show on CBC. I got hooked. CBC only showed Series 1 and 2, so after those were done I had to hunt down the episodes in Series 3 on sites like YouTube and DailyMotion (usually with terrible sound and image quality).

This fall, Series 1-3 became available on Netflix and I watched all of the episodes again.

The show is centred around a young man named Josh and his friends and family.

At first glance, the show is about Josh coming out and learning how to navigate the world and his sexual territory.

Josh and his best friend Tom seem feckless and insecure. Their friend (and Josh's former girlfriend) Claire is pretty and clever. They are all under-employed and mostly broke and obsessed with things that seem completely trivial.

It could be that show. But the young-people-learning-adulting-through-their-hilarious-experiences premise is basically a cover for a show that is dedicated to a fierce and tender exploration of how people struggle with their mental health and what that experience is like for them and for the people who love them.

Josh's mom, Rose, has bipolar disorder. In the first episode of Series 1, Rose tries to kill herself. Not for the last time, either. Rose spends time in a private psychiatric hospital, where she meets Hannah, Stewart and Ginger. Josh's main love interest, Arnold has a severe anxiety disorder and also spends time at the hospital.

There are so many poignant, funny lines, I can't even begin to tell you about them. The show is hilarious and sly and playful and painful and sad and thought-provoking. There is death and love and and hope and disappointment.

When Josh's dad, Alan (who is just as feckless and insecure as his son) says that he's always felt a bit hopeless as a dad, Josh replies, "Well, you are. I mean, we're all hopeless. I'm hopeless. Arnold's hopeless. Tom, Tom is hopeless."

There are 26 half-hour episodes on Netflix, so if you start binge watching now, you could very easily come up to the fraught and funny Christmas-themed finale of Series 3 at some point on Christmas day.

Warnings: this show contains explicit sexuality, "bad" language, abortion, chicken murder, food porn, lip-syncing, ferris wheels, babies, self-harm, suicide attempts and Australian accents, so if you are not okay with any of those things, this is not the show for you.

Design Your Year: 2015

I find December difficult. I call it Holiday Seasonal Affective Disorder (or H-SAD): a dislike of the short days, the mandatory gaiety (or at the very least the struggle not to harsh others' buzz) and the rampant consumerism. Most years, I find myself wishing I could go to bed on December 1st and wake up on the 31st, just in time to bid the old year, and especially December, a hearty farewell.

This year, December has been particularly difficult. The past year has been a doozy – lots of heartbreak, some serious illness in my family, the realization that I've made some big mistakes over the past couple of years and am now facing the consequences of those decisions, an ensuing depression, and my struggles to answer a call from within to take better care of myself, including doing some challenging work to transform my relationship with food and eating. 

Yes, 2014, you were a big, bad year. One for the books. 

There can be something sweet about closing the door on a difficult year

Well, bittersweet, at least. Which is to say, that I've been mostly feeling bitter. I definitely have a tendency toward the year-end review, and I have been looking back over this past year with a bad attitude, my disappointments and pain looming much larger than my accomplishments and blessings. The sweet part though, is that time marches on and the present becomes the past. Wounds begin to heal and hope begins to return.

I am a fan of new years in general – I like the feeling of a fresh start, the feeling of possibilities and potential. The chance to re-think and change things, to make better decisions for myself, to evolve and grow. 

I know it's just an artificial line in our invented sense of time. Every day is the beginning of another 365, but personally, I'm always happy to draw a line shortly after Christmas and start again.

A little help...!?

I felt like I needed a some extra mojo to shape a plan for some new and different experiences in 2015. When I read that Jamie Ridler was offering a planning workshop called "Design Your Year", I was  very interested. Jamie is a creativity coach in Toronto and I've done work with her in the past, including a dream board workshop, a glorious creativity-sparking dance party and participating in the Kickin' It Old Skool Blogathon (which did wonders for my H-SAD last year). 

I'm not a formal planner, usually preferring to fly by the seat of my pants, but I felt in my gut that I wanted to take Jamie's class. Unfortunately, though, it was offered at a time that didn't work for my schedule. I had another commitment; I thought I had to let Jamie's class go. But then, I discovered that Jamie was making a playback of the class available until January 31, 2015 and I could do it any time before then. As soon as I heard that, I signed up.

I did the class this past weekend...

What Design Your Year looked like for me.

It was excellent!

I feel like it brought me a ton of clarity about what I want and what I need for 2015. And it was fun: with sticky notes, journaling exercises, visual exercises and lots of guidance from Jamie about the many possibilities: different ideas about how to structure, grow and release the ways I think about planning.

I often have a "get 'er done" attitude toward the year – for example: "this year I'm going to record and release a CD", or "this year I'm going to play as many gigs as I possibly can and find out if I have a chance at becoming famous." Yes, I don't usually shy away from big goals and I would even say that in the past I have had a tendency toward grandiosity. 

The coming year is going to be very different.

My hopes for 2015

I have a number of gentler, more personal and internal goals for 2015. I still want to make and share creative work, so I'm excited about my 2015 52-Song Project (more about that over on my music blog). And I plan to revive my old practice of running "Creative Marathons" near the solstices and equinoxes next year.

My main focus, though, is going to be on self-care and self-respect. I want (and need) to improve my ability to make decisions that are gentle, kind and decent to myself. I want to deepen my yoga practice, do more work around food, eating and body image and make peace with the past couple of years, through forgiveness, understanding and humility. 

I want 2015 to be a gentle year, a simple year, a fun and delightful year. I want it to be a peaceful year, a relaxed year, an easy year, a straightforward year. 

Most of all, I want this year to be for me. I have an overall tendency to give away a lot of my time and energy. Usually, I have lots to spare, so it's not a problem. Sadly though, I have shared too many buckets from my well and received too little rain over the past couple of years. I feel depleted. The coming year needs to be about conservation and renewal.

My word for the year

Until I started writing this blog post, I had forgotten about the word I set as my intention for 2014. It was "right-size" as declared in a blog post a little less than 12 months ago. I did make some steps toward right-sizing with my tiny home and de-cluttering efforts, but 2014 had its own ideas and the word it dictated for the year was heartbreak.

There are lots of contenders for 2015's word. Humility. Self-Care. Respect. Authenticity. Courage. Acceptance. But in the final analysis, I believe my word for 2015 is:

***

Do you have a word in mind for the year ahead? I'd love if you shared your word (or any other thoughts) in the comments below. Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2015 will be full of growth for you!

PS: If you're interested in taking Jamie's planning class, I highly recommend it! It's available until January 31, 2015. Here's the link again: "Design Your Year"

%$#&, I'm Depressed

Wow. Those are not words I thought I would ever say.

During my life, I've been around a lot of people who struggle with depression. I've been in relationships with them in various capacities: lover, partner, friend, family member, colleague, etc. Sometimes the depression was spoken and/or diagnosed, sometimes it was not. Sometimes the depression was masquerading as alcoholism. Sometimes it seemed like it was the other way around (I'm not entirely sure how depression and alcoholism are related, but it seems pretty clear that they are – they have far too much in common to be otherwise. A Google search for "Which comes first, depression or alcoholism", pulls up 1.2 million hits, so I'm not alone in seeing that there are connections).

I have never been very tolerant of other people's depression. It hurt me. It scared me. Especially when I was a child and adolescent. People with depression often behave in ways that I will simply categorize here as "not very nice". Mired in darkness themselves, they do and say things that are, well, dark. In order to protect myself, I adopted a stance of contempt and self-righteousness. I labelled people with depression as "drama queens", "bullies", "weaklings", "a$$holes". I decided that I was better than them and that I would never be like that. 

But wait, %&*#!—

The trouble is that depression is contagious. (A Google search pulls up more than 800,000 hits for "Is Depression Contagious?"). From my first relationship with a depressed person, it was already too late. I could fight it and I could struggle to heal. And I did. I went to therapy for years and I worked out a lot of things. But I had a big block: I would never accept that I experienced depression. Depression was always an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem). 

Eventually, there had to be a day of reckoning. In order to heal the wounds that depression has inflicted on me and the depression I've internalized, I would have to accept that depression is in me too.  
 

It happened last week. That's when I realized that I'm currently depressed. This revelation came to me at the start of my yoga class last Monday, when for no apparent reason, I began to cry. (Which reminded me of being in a yoga class years ago in which someone burst out crying and proceeded to spend most of the class having a breakdown in the middle of the room. I remember being in a silent rage about it. Didn't she have the decency to leave the room? Didn't she know that the rest of us were trying to relax? Yes, when I say I approached depression from a place of judgment and intolerance, that the kind of thing I'm talking about.)

I managed not to disrupt class last Monday. I was able to keep my tears quiet and eventually I got them under control. I feel grateful that I managed to not make a scene by leaving or by sobbing all over everybody else's yoga. But bursting into tears in a public place, even if few people noticed, forced me to admit to myself that I've been experiencing a lot of unprovoked crying lately. And a number of other tell-tale signs. 

I'm depressed? What was my first clue?

1. okay, the unprovoked crying thing is a major giveaway
2. excessive irrational irritability
3. a tendency to go back to bed in the middle of the day and stay there for a suspiciously long time
4. difficulty sleeping at night (tossing and turning or waking up at two, three or four a.m. and not being able to get back to sleep)
5. things that used to be pleasurable for me currently are not
6. I started writing my first blog post about depression eight days ago and every day until today, I've tried and failed to hit the "Publish" button. 
7. I feel listless and am having trouble getting motivated to do things (for instance, I'm moving at the end of the week and I haven't really packed anything yet)
8. I have periods of feeling totally numb and/or not present (aka: zombie mode) 
9. random pain: tummy aches, ear aches, headaches
10. feeling removed from my normal appreciation of the beauty of the world (For instance, I drove past the LaHave River valley last night as the sun was setting and it was gloriously wrapped in autumn colours. Normally, such a sight would fill me with wonder and awe. Last night, I thought, "That's pretty" and I didn't feel anything.)
11. an inability to suppress or deny the dark thoughts that I used to be able to suppress and deny
12. I hear things coming out of my mouth that I wasn't thinking and don't mean (or wasn't consciously thinking and wish I didn't mean)
13. the future feels like something to hide or run away from, not something to make plans for or embrace
14. the dirty laundry is shin deep and I don't want to do anything about it
15. I can smell something rotting in my fridge and I'm not the least bit interested in looking for it and throwing it out
16. I can smell something rotting in my car and I'm not the least bit interested in looking for it and throwing it out (I mean, seriously, my car has fruit flies and it looks like the only thing that's going to change that is a good hard frost)

Saturday was our last West Dublin Community Market of 2014 and not one, but two people made a point of saying to me (with kindness and concern) that they were glad to see me looking better – that at the last market two weeks ago they had been worried about me. And you know what – I'm not even really able to remember that market two weeks ago. Obviously, I was in zombie mode and didn't even know it. But it was apparent to others.

 

I know I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'll take it as a good sign that two smart and perceptive people think I'm "looking better" than I was two weeks ago. And my ability to push the "Publish" button seems to be returning, so I take that as a good sign, too. 

 

What now?

I take hope from simply being aware of what's going on. Given that I've been refusing to admit to any kind of depression for most of my life, I'm a bit surprised at how quickly I've been able to accept what's happening now. Obviously, something in me has grown and softened. I'm not angry at myself for being depressed. I'm feeling humbled, but not humiliated. I'm making some plans for how I'm going to work this through. And I know I have resources to turn to if those plans aren't enough.

 

I expect I'll have a lot of things to say about this experience. There will be more blog posts. Even if it takes me a while to hit the "Publish" button, I'll get them up here eventually. 

 

NOTE: by a happy(?) coincidence, Canadian singer-songwriter Amelia Curran distributed a wonderful video about depression last week. As I'm struggling to make sense of where I'm at, I have found it to be good company. It points out that 100% of Canadians are affected by the impacts of mental illness through themselves, a family member or loved one. Given that all of us have some experience with depression, it's kind of shocking that we don't often talk about it and its impacts. I am lucky to have a few dear family members and friends with whom I can talk and/or exchange letters about depression. I didn't feel much like talking this past week, though, and this video was a wonderful, safe-feeling way to be reminded that I am not alone. I encourage you to watch Amelia Curran's video at the thisvideo.ca website (or simply click play below).