Hello all.
I run a festival about design. It's starting in a week and a half, and it goes on for 9 days. This is the 4th year of it. I have lots of suicidal thoughts at festival time. I could do with some extra support from you guys during this time please...also my therapist is on holiday over the entire festival period.
The situation (health side):
I have ME/CFS which is a chronic energy problem where I need a lot of rest, and if I concentrate for too long I have crashes and need to rest more. The crashes can be so bad that I can't hold a conversation or leave the house for days. Working is generally hard on good days, because it takes a lot of effort for me to concentrate and to stay wakeful, and I'm more emotionally sensitive. I feel the sort of tired like it's the end of a long difficult day, but all the time.
I'm also having to be aware that if I get too much into work, then I overwork and then I crash, so I have to walk a tightrope between getting as much work done as healthily possible and not doing too much that I end up feeling more unwell. I'm learning how to get better at this tightrope walking.
And on the mental health side - I'm not in an episode of depression right now, though I fear this could be the beginning of one if I don't use all the tools in my mental health toolbox right now. (Posting on here is one!) I've experienced two major bouts of depression since I was 19, and I experience anxiety on and off too though normally not as badly as depression. I'm in psychotherapy, I'm on citalopram 10mg (ultra slowly tapering off so I'm going to stay on 10mg for now) and I've done CBT in the past.
The situation (work side):
I'm 28 and have no formal business training. I started a design festival for my professional network and it took off, and I just followed it. I'm a pretty earnest, altruistic person. I've put in a lot of love into this festival, but haven't earned very much from it at all. Last year was the only year it was funded enough for me to get paid for my work - otherwise it's all been voluntary. And a huge amount of work - months, part time, for me and several others.
8 people are on the team this year, and there will be probably 8 more volunteers for during the festival period. Probably 1000 people will come to the 30ish events we'll put on. I learnt how to manage people, lead a community, and do all the other event-related stuff on the job. It's a bloody mammoth endeavour. The community that attend love it... the organisations that put on events can be a bit snotty sometimes, but are mostly lovely. The volunteers are lovely.
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My current worries
1. We don't have enough money this year, so it's affecting a lot of things, and currently it's especially affecting the stress levels of my project manager.
2. My project manager was tetchy at me yesterday - it's the first time I've seen her like that. She was inflexible in her thinking, and saw all the negatives without coming up with ideas. It made me concerned about her, and I really want to support her to be happy.
3. I said something passive aggressively to her when she pushed me too far about something. She wanted me to do something that could bring in more money (a slim chance) which I was afraid to do - call up someone that refused to sponsor us and ask again.
When I'm feeling hopeless, I don't speak in a way that helps situations. I felt hopeless. I knew that if I called them, feeling like that, I'd mess up the relationship long term. I tried to explain that to her but I don't think she understood, and she pushed me more. That's when I was snappy.
I feel inadequate as it is as a leader at the moment - leaders are meant to be positive and inspiring, and I felt bad about feeling hopeless. Here, again, was another situation where being hopeless made me again inadequate as a leader. Feeling bad about it wasn't going to help. I tried to explain to her that I needed to get into a better mood to call, before I snapped. I still don't feel hopeful about that organisation helping.
4. I need to apologise for being passive aggressive - it wasn't awful, but I still want to own up to it. I want to find out why she was unhappy yesterday and what else I can do to help - maybe I did something else wrong that I don't know about. I've been through a journey of processing the situation to be able to get to the point I can see more clearly what happened. Tomorrow I will feel ok to talk to her about it, because I've thought about it.
5. There's a shedload of stuff to do about getting the programme online and we're extremely behind. With my health and a brand new assistant, it is pretty amazing the volume of work we're handling, but we're under resourced so badly and it makes the work just not as good as I want it to be. I wish we had an extra person, but nobody skilled enough and reliable wants to work for free. Unsurprisingly.
6. I can't sleep so I'm likely to crash. And I've really overworked this week because we're so behind... everyone's working harder. For me it's dangerous.
7. Logistical problem with storing stuff at my grandma's, and being probably not well enough to travel.
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Ok that's the worries of the day out. Stay tuned for more worries as they come! Ha.
If you have any ideas about how I could do things differently, or if you notice some negative thinking that you could usefully point out so I can think about things more usefully, please let me know. Sometimes I need help prioritising what's important. Words of encouragement or sympathy are also very welcome
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for you during this time. 
