I have been taking anti-depressants for just over a week and I have noticed a difference in my temperament and general behaviour so that has to be a good thing. The thoughts of suicide no longer plague me and I am a lot calmer than I remember being, but there is another effect that I am not overly happy with. I'm not talking about the side effects (dizziness, nausea, the shits, and a general feeling of tiredness) but the effect that it has had on my creativity. 

At the beginning of the year I wrote a list of the things I wanted to do this year and even worked out a colour coded system of diary entries by where each colour depicts a different activity; The Sunday Alternative Podcast, The Sunday Alternative Live, radio appearances, compering gigs, The Random Saturday Sessions, filming, and other such undertakings are written in my diary in different coloured felt tipped pens. How organised is that? Although it is nice to be relaxed and catch up on reading, (not to mention how tidy my office is due to total lack of activity - I did a big tidy and sorted out my paperwork before I started the medication) I feel as though January has been a bit of a waste of time. All I have done is release a couple of episodes of The Random Saturday Sessions and two podcasts, the Bowie Day audio book doesn't count because that was recorded last year.

David Bowie's death had an impact on me just as it did a lot of people, but I have always been inspired to be creative by him (not that I am anywhere near as talented) and I know that everybody who mourns his death should do something artistic in his honour but I just can't be arsed. I couldn't even do the podcast last week because I hadn't listened to any other music than Bowie since the day he died, even now he is the only musician on my MP3 player. The ideas are there but the motivation has escaped me, I haven't even been to a gig this month, not one. To be honest I don't tend to go out a lot in January for some reason so maybe once I get back into watching live music I'll start to feel better. Imagine being a champion of new music and not going to gigs, this must be how Mark 'literally' Del and Dean Jackson feel all the time, I wonder how they cope with it. 

Maybe it was depression that encouraged me? A lot of artistic people have mental health issues so perhaps that is the key. I don't want to come off the medication, and I have been warned not to suddenly stop, but it is killing me that I am not excited enough to do something. The only downside to being free from depressive episodes is that on the flip side I also don't experience the euphoria that surges in and sets me off enough to spend several hours in my office working on something. Is it worth living as two very different people just to be able to get on with my work? 

Please read my January newsletter here.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #71 is available from here.

This week's episode of The Random Saturday Sessions is the final one from West Bridgford and stars City of Kites surrounded by Christmas trees. Watch it here.