There is depression, and there is depression.

The former is a disorder of the mind: that which we knows as ‘clinical’ depression, or Major Depressive Disorder. It has unique causes, symptoms, and solutions compared to ordinary sadness.

For now, one difference matters most: persistence.

True depression can arrive with no apparent cause and remain long after you fix the suspect causes.

Like humidity, it flattens life with a sluggish, sticky weight while presenting no logic to justify itself, nor a clear face to attack it from. It is a cruel and elusive enemy.

I oversimplify, but you’re here for learning metaphors, not medical advice.

“Depression,” the other form, is the word we apply to a fleeting, general sadness. As a breeze may announce itself with the rustling or leaves, or ambush you in the dead stillness of summer, so behaves sadness.

There are times you expect it—your house burns down, your wife leaves you, or worse yet, you break a stick of RAM—but also times where it arrives for no apparent reason whatsoever.

You are sad because you are sad. It is what it is.

The relief comes in that sadness is easier to shake.

It’s unpleasant, but like hunger, thirst, or the pain of a stubbed toe, it blows away as fast as it arrived.

Normal sadness also tends to have a clear cause, making it yet easier to endure; there is a target, a deficiency to attack, a vector to translate that gloom into action, all unlike the invisible weight of real depression.

If one is fat, stupid, ugly, poor, lonely, or recently broke a stick of RAM, then that sadness is a welcome warning that something must change. It is eustress, the “good stress” that inspires movement.

Again, I want to narrow down on the fleeting nature of this sadness because it helps us deal with the hardship of learning new skills or subjects.

When you step into a new topic, you are a dry sponge ready to saturate every crevice with new knowledge. Almost everything is new, and the rate of learning is speedy.

But thereafter it slows . . . and grinds . . . . . . to a . . . . . .

. . . halt.

Or at least, it reaches a gentle plateau.

The basics are covered, information starts to feel repetitive, and the main chasm of the rabbit hole is fully mapped. Those Youtube tutorials have outlived their usefulness, and now the hard work begins.

From here, improvement demands mundane practice and application; the churn of calculus practice questions, hundreds of essays inked down, and taking the damn camera out the house for once. Whatever you pursue must be given life beyond the books and screens.

This is the birth of wisdom, where information—separate but related facts—come together in a network bound by practice and experience.

It’s incredibly tough.

Unlike the early stages, where every fresh source came with a kick of dopamine, there is no such promise here; the pace is unsteady and triumphs feel sparse.

Practice is harder to commit to, and daily immersion dwindles down to occasional guilt-ridden pity sessions in a faint hope of rebuilding a once-healthy habit. Soon, they are gone for good. Dusty relics in a museum of past interests.

To disrupt this tragic cycle, I treat learning like everyday gloom—”depression”.

Often inexplicable, sometimes inevitable, but always  temporary.

I’m learning my way around Da Vinci Resolve, and half of every session is spent troubleshooting or peeling through some new technical layer I had never heard of; codecs? Equalizers? Why am I on Github all of a sudden? I hate this place.

There are many shits hitting many fans.

It's a pain in the ass, but when you treat this process as temporary sadness, you give yourself the permission to suffer.

Yes—effort seemingly goes in vain.

Yes—it’s not “fun” like it used to be.

No—progress will not be linear or visible. This isn't a videogame.

Now satisfaction is a slow burn that demands patience and stubbornness.

But knowing that this struggle will become an afterthought in the coming days and weeks makes it bearable, that perhaps there is no visible progress, but it’s there, hidden past the empty stretches of late nights and fruitless grinds.

Soon it will wash away and yield something tangible. Float with it, or you’ll drown.