Introducing my Moodboard

I will try to be brief and stick to the dystymia topic, that is chronic depression, and it's treatment. My voice speaks for 34 years of living with dystymia. It's a word that few people know. I have learned it from a therapist about 4-5 years ago, but I am only finding it usefull today.

It's a tricky monster. Hard to catch, hard to diagnose, and can be hard to accept. My own perspective is that I'm now happy to have named that bastard, because knowing your enemy is rule number one if you want to win a war. In truth, I'm not sure if it can be cured completely and if one day it will go away without reappearing. I think it can, but this is unknown territory. In truth it has to be fought battle by battle, relentlessly. Combat language is accurate.

It's really important to know causes and consequences for my mood. How does Sleep, exercise, sun, relationships, environnement, etc are linked to my state of mind. I'm currently in a pretty dark period. I typically shy away from contact with others during these phases. I protect myself with an invisible shell and keep interactions to a superficial minimum. This in turns makes me sad, lonely and frustrated. A vicious circle that is fairly common for most people who occasionnaly go through hard times (bereavement, loss, burnout, depression, etc).

Anyway, for now lets just say that I know that in my case I have to be super precise about what's going on in my environment and habits that have an impact on my mood. My mood changes a lot in one same day. I can feel elevated in the morning (one of my favorite moods to have), indifferent in the afternoon and downright despaired in the evening.

So I'm working on creating a little piece of helpfull software that I'm calling Moodboard for now. I jotted down all the things I want measured and how it will all be functionning. It will be attractive and highly personalisable too because those are my standards (web site stuff is my day job).

Yesterday I jumped right into the design. After a few hours re-accouainting with photoshop, I decided to call this an exploration. I'm many steps away from designing it. So i splashed a few bits of colour here and there and called it a day. Here it is:




What do you think? Too pale?

As I said, I'm far frow what I want it to be. I could be discouraged, but i'm fighting that feeling.

Amourxxx