

Everyone I Know is Brokenhearted - brianwillis
http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/

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thegrif
I'm currently reading Touched with Fire by Kay Jamison. It's a fairly
quantitative examination of the links between depression and creativity.
Though it's specifically about manic-depressives, I think much of it is
relevant to the article as the author describes himself as a writer, web
designer/developer, musician and artist.

I was shocked even paging through the book when I first got it, jumping from
chart to chart. Check these three out:

Showing Van Gogh's seasonal depression:
[http://xomf.com/rzbwz](http://xomf.com/rzbwz)

Suicide rates of artists and writers:
[http://xomf.com/xysmn](http://xomf.com/xysmn)

Mood disorders in writers and artists:
[http://xomf.com/mxnqq](http://xomf.com/mxnqq)

I think it would be easy for someone to say "oh but wait - this guy is a web
designer, he's not sitting with oils and a canvas - these stats are
irrelevant." They'd be wrong. Here is what Steve thought about the people who
worked on the mac:

"These are the people under different circumstances would be painters and
poets but because of the time that we live in this new medium has appeared in
which to express one's self to one's fellow species and that's the medium of
computing. And so a lot of people that would have been artists and scientists
have gone into this field to express their feeling..."

(from the 1990 interview at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nMD6sjAe8I#t=16m25s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nMD6sjAe8I#t=16m25s))

I think there's probably more depression in our industry than people let on.
TechCrunch recently did a post on depression in founders. Hell - I just
commented on a HN thread of a guy working on an app to combat loneliness. It's
a real problem, with a real nasty stigma, and I think it's important people
start talking openly about it.

------
a3n
"Hell, a major motion picture company put out Fight Club, which is about as
unsubtle an attack on consumer corporate capitalism as you can get."

And that major motion picture company made a shit ton of money selling that
fantasy. We're drinking what they're selling.

