I'm in Norway and depressed.
For those who don't know, I came to Norway 2 weeks ago to complete my 3rd-year internship. (And yes, I'm still a "college student".) These 2 weeks were mentally tough and kinda fun so I thought sharing my inner feelings would be also fun to read.
So I realized I sometimes feel incredibly depressed during the day on random occasions and occasionally have emotional swirls due to this mental state ever since I have started living/working here. There are a couple of potential reasons that I could think of and I want to go through each one of them to debug my thoughts.
Sunlight
I could almost say that I feel like the day never ends here due to the sun setting down so late. (11pm-12pm?) I had a kind of a hard time adapting to this situation and it really affected my sleep cycle. I don't feel sleepy although it is pretty late + waking up from a nap feels like morning hours. Once I decided to sleep at 7pm and woke up at 9pm and thought that it was morning time so I almost prepared to go to work. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that it is 9pm, not 9am.
It is also affecting the way that my brain works so the poor thing thinks it can work more than it can actually do due to the outside being still bright. Result: burnout.
Weather
No, it is not cold here. It is actually pretty nice, sometimes. But that's not the thing.
The weather changes so drastically sometimes. I start the day with a pretty nice weather and 2 hours later it's raining and I'm sitting at the office trying to write code while feeling depressed as hell. The same thing happens when I'm going back home so I constantly feel melancholic and can't enjoy the environment as much as I want. Unfortunately, there is nothing that I can do so I'm trying to adapt to it and get used to feeling like this. I sometimes cry for no reason.
Emptiness
Unlike Turkey, there is not much risk/action in the streets in my area so it feels like an empty Garry's Mod map. I don't hear that much noise from my environment as well. I started to think that I have no neighbors. This dosage of peacefulness is driving me crazy.
Loneliness
I have never lived by myself before. I have never lived in a foreign country by myself before. Although this sounds cool, it has some side effects on me. I have never been a very social person, I know how to be social, but I didn't prefer it. Now I see the bigger picture and how family/friends/partner is so important in my life. I don't have many friends, but the ones that I have are freaking stallions. I'm also grateful to my girlfriend who supported me always all the way through the Moon <3
What else?
There are probably other things that messed with my nerves and I might share them later if you enjoyed reading this overly personal post. Just let me know!
For getting out of this situation I'm planning to focus on my projects more and keep trying to do something productive. That's what saved not from failing into the depths of madness and it will work again.
- orhun