Not even for chocolate?

Each year, I take a week of vacation to make fancy chocolates for my friends and family. I start planning in the fall, creating a sampler menu and figuring out shopping lists. I love dreaming up new flavors and trying out different techniques. The feedback I get from these yearly samplers is overwhelmingly positive, even from people who don't like the idea of "weird" flavors.

When I worked in banking, I used to take my vacation at the beginning of December, so I could have everything ready for the holidays. The majority of my family celebrates Christmas, so that gave me a solid deadline. Now I work for a non-profit and December is too busy with end-of-year fundraising to take a week off, so I have to wait until January. Things at work have finally calmed down, so I took this week as my "chocolate vacation."

I thought making chocolates was the one thing that I was always going to have enthusiasm for. I love chocolate in all its forms (except for cheap white chocolate--that's just nasty). I love inventing flavor combinations and finding new ways to play with classic flavors. But not this year. This year, I have no energy for it. We built an awesome chocolate-making station with some new equipment that I would normally be dying to work with and fine-tune. Even that is not enough to inspire me. Not this year. I have a fantastic menu of things that I'd really like to taste but I have absolutely no interest in making those things. I finished the old stand-by peanut butter balls (because everyone loves those things) and some almond butter balls (so I can have some, too), which usually works as a warm up. But not this year.

I'm doing all the things you're supposed to do to keep depression at bay. I eat healthy, I exercise daily, I rarely drink alcohol, I'm taking all my supplements, I keep myself clean and presentable, I get a decent amount of sleep, and I make sure to socialize. But I'm still tired and miserable all the time. I know depression lies and that I can't listen to that insidious voice that keeps reminding me how nice it would be to stop doing all that stuff and just give up. It worries me to discover that I can't even muster a little enthusiasm for chocolate making. That's a scary depth of depression. I suppose it's time to find a new therapist, but I don't really feel like making the effort. (Ironic, right? Ha-ha. Depression sucks.)