CONTENT WARNING for discussion of depression/anxiety and its effects.
Over the past four(?) months before starting the fourth year of my design degree I have thought a lot about the topic of my major project in 2017. During December I worked six days a week in retail and at Massey’s in-house design agency, OpenLab. On those days I worked some 12 - 16 hour days and probably burnt myself out a little bit. I went to Nelson for Christmas, and enjoyed time with my immediate New Zealand family. I made new friends, went to Rhythm and Vines which I regret somewhat. I saw some horrible things and some wonderful things. I tried to do a summer paper at which point my anxiety and depression which has been steadily increasing since June last year culminated in hallucinations, vomiting, inability to eat, feel anything but pins and needles in my legs and arms. When my anxiety was extremely bad, I lost the ability to feel pain at all and the injuries I sustained while unable to feel them were particularly scary. I lost 15% of my body weight. Other things I experienced were a heightened sense of smell or phantom smells. In my head looped gory images, crippling me with fear. Enough about the gross/sad/scary stuff. I am deeply grateful to my parents, who dropped everything to come up and help me when I couldn’t help myself. My very close friends Jasmin and Sam who held my hands when they couldn’t stop shaking. The health services at Massey who gave me excellent advice and care when I needed it. My friends who went on walks with me. My ever-omniscient and kind sister. Everyone I have spoken to about mental health, who has been kind and understanding. My cat. Extremely kind lecturers at uni who believed in me when I did not believe in myself. I am sorry if I have not mentioned you by name but you know who you are. You mean everything to me and I am forever grateful. I am working hard on trying to be kinder to others and to myself. It has been very confusing and unsettling but I am determined to finish this my final year at university and reach a place where I can be proud of myself. With a lot of support I have made steps towards putting myself in a position to succeed, Thank you.
So what does this all have to do with my chosen topic for my major?
During my recovery period there were several things that helped me relating to colour.
When the mind is extremely distracted and can’t focus on what is right in front of you a simple exercise is to identify shapes and colours in the area around you. Example - red triangle, orange circle.
Rainbows projected by the cut glass that I got as my Secret Santa New Zealand Twitter present that bounced all over my room.
Rainbow by Kesha. The whole album, but this song is very good in particular.
The rainbow/queer community.
During class on Friday, Lee talked about how over the past few years there are recurring themes that come through these major project such as craft beers and so the next year he said “Don’t do craft beer” and no one did. He asked that this year we don’t do any projects about “My depression”, “Anxiety” or mindfulness. I do not want this project to be about those things. I just am explaining how I got to what I am intending to research.
I am intending to research colour theory.
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