"... but I'm never depressed, just unable to convince myself to take any other path than the easiest one (e.g. fast food instead of home cooking, Short stories instead of novels, video games instead of hobby coding, organizing my computer rather than cleaning my house, etc.)"
That sounds a lot like depression to me. Depression isn't always sad or melancholy, sometimes it's just like you said.
That's a very patronizing response. When I say that depression often manifests as an unmotivated mental state, rather than the overt sadness or melancholy one might assume, I'm speaking from personal experience. As someone who has been medicated for it, I'm the last person who needs to be told that depression is a "serious illness".
Sorry, if I have been a bit harsh. It's just when people all the
time tell how depressed they are, but they're just in a pretty
normal bad mood, which vanishes the next day.
If you're then trying to explain people what a depression is, how it feels,
then they associate it with their "depressed" days.
If someone can't work for a few days, or even a week,
just hangs around watching tv, playing video games
or reading, and after this time is again able to work,
then this isn't a depression, but just the need for a rest.
I have been suffering of depressions, and it's nothing like an unmotivated
mental state. By equalizing it, you're trivializing depressions. They're real
mental pain, they're about loosing any enjoyment.
> If someone can't work for a few days, or even a week, just hangs around watching tv, playing video games or reading, and after this time is again able to work, then this isn't a depression, but just the need for a rest.
This isn't really what I was talking about, though. It's more being unable to work for months at a time, barely managing to push oneself to scrape by, and then having months of easy, limitless energy. Neither period is predictable—I don't become any more akrasic when I do difficult or stressful work, and no amount of pronounced, conscious "relaxing" (avoiding all stressors, doing only fun things, etc.) will give me energy back any more quickly.
A lot of mental illnesses work that way: there's a pattern of behavior that in and of itself isn't that uncommon, except it's to such a degree that it impairs one's ability to live a healthy life.
Everyone has ups and downs. Not everybody has a mood disorder.
That sounds a lot like depression to me. Depression isn't always sad or melancholy, sometimes it's just like you said.