Spring has come early to Portland. My garden is full of daffodils and crocuses. The magenta magnolia in front of the house is blooming its deep purple cup flowers. I have planted snap peas outside and started lettuce indoors. We’ve had a few weeks of unseasonably warm and sunny weather. I wore short sleeves without a jacket in the afternoons. The weather is gray and cool again, but I don’t believe we will experience highs below 50 degrees for the rest of the spring. (Please, don’t let me be wrong.) We’re not getting any more day time than we do any other year, but our days are more pleasant.

My #100DaysofDepression project is over. I took a selfie (almost) every day for 100 days beginning in November and posted them on Instagram. It was a countdown to early spring, when the days would be getting longer, and I expected my Seasonal Affective Disorder to improve. My pink hair faded, got redyed, and faded again. I traveled outside the state twice. Pimples I picked at never healed. A weird irritation under my eye remains. A cold settled into my asthmatic lungs for a couple weeks. I bought a house and I look more anxious about it than happy. This Samsung Galaxy S4 front-facing camera is impressively adept at picking out the embarrassing details of my rosacea. My earlier photos were more enthusiastic and had more variety than my later ones. I missed a few days. I let photos build up without posting them until half a week later. The #100DaysofDepression project became another thing I could fail at and I beat myself up about for not meeting goals and not being interesting.

I started the #100DaysofDepression project during a period of depression and am ending it in a state of continuous anxiety. It’s typical for me to become more anxious than depressed as the days get longer. I don’t know if the anxiety is rearing up now depression is no longer stamping it down or if the anxiety is a new spring growth. Despite the name #100DaysofDepression, many days I wasn’t depressed. I went to Arizona for a week and Florida for two weeks. I got a sunlight recharge during the darkest days of the year.

For those of you who have followed along with me, thank you. I hope you got something out of watching me. If you did, would you let me know?