Still got the blues, although they at least have changed form.

Now, instead of being like an oppressive form of gravity pushing me down and keeping me there, it’s more like a pervasive melancholy that makes me sigh sadly now and then like I am awaiting my Gothic romance novel lover who is off at sea and overdue.

You know, I try to stay positive, but that’s hard to do in this gloomy castle next to the pitiless seas that roll endlessly against the rocky shore.

Hmmm. That was rather fun to write. Maybe I should try my hand at writing super dramatic bodice ripping historical romance novels.

There are worse ways to make a living.

Anyhow, I am still finding it hard to get out of bed. The urge to just stay there so I don’t have to deal with the world at all is strong, and I guess that’s a bad sign.

I honestly can’t tell if my depression is getting better or worse. It’s been such a constant in my life since my parents took me out of university waaaay back in 1992 or 1993 that I can’t perceive myself as something separate from it any more.

I can imagine it not being there as long as I don’t try to imagine how I got there. I can imagine myself full of life and energy and enthusiasm spending the working hours of the day doing creative things like writing, video editing, comment moderating, taking meetings with collaborators, and so on.

That all sounds pretty good to me. As a fantasy.

But if I try to actually imagine myself in that position, all the howling horrors of my depression leap into action and make me feel like I couldn’t take it, I’d be overwhelmed, I’d be terribly terribly exposed and vulnerable and trapped in scenarios where all I would want to do is run away and hide in this dank dark hole of mine, but I wouldn’t be able to.

Meaning I would be TRAPPED! Like a hack performer trapped in a spotlight when all he wants to do is run away from the booing and jeers of the crowd.

And all of that might happen. But I also might get over it.

After all, a lot of things are at their scariest and most unpleasant in the beginning. One of the most common and fatal mistakes of us Failure to Launch types is to judge entire things by just the sucky part at the beginning.

That’s a great way to fuck yourself out of a lot of things you would totally enjoy if you could just resist the urge to run for the hills the second things are less than peachy.

I am sure there is something in the layers of that about being a reactive type who responds to stimuli too strongly and runs themselves ragged.

But those are newborn thoughts not ready to face the world just yet.

I can relate.

And it’s not like I am going to have to jump straight from “current unsatisfying life” right to “busy all day doing grownup stuff”.

I mean, in a way, that would be nice, because it would mean that I am having outrageous success right out of the gate, and that would be most gratifying.

And you know what? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. I’ve had success come easily to my for my whole life, after all.

And I am outrageously gifted. It would make sense!

Very improbable, though. So I would be able to add extra stimulation in the form of actual productive labour slowly, a little at a time.

But first I have to convince my deeper self that it’s safe to go out in the world.

And that ain’t gonna be easy.

More after the break.

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A life of leisure….

…is a myth.

Can’t be done. Is actually logically impossible if you think about it, because leisure is irrevocably defined relative to our labour and therefore if there is no labour, there can be no leisure, and it becomes something else entirely.

Something rather nasty, as it turns out.

It is exactly analogous to rest. You can’t rest forever. Rest is inherently about recovering from doing something, just like leisure.

The dream of unlimited leisure comes from how much we enjoy our leisure when it is a part of our busy lives. In that sense, it is as pure and simple as a child’s dream of having a mountain of candy.

But as many of us learned as children after overindulging after a night of trick-or-treating, too much of a good thing can in fact make you sick of it.

And from it.

It also stems from the “work bad, play good” model of life we all first internalized as “school bad, home good” as children.

This somewhat arbitrary division of life into “the good part” and “the part that sucks” stems from the highly unpleasant way we teach kids and continues on to color our attitudes towards work versus our home life.

To the point where we react like offended wolverines at the very thought of giving up one second of our off-work time for any reason.

Good thing most of us get over that when we have kids.

When leisure is overextended, it turns into decadence, and decadence is always profoundly dangerous, especially spiritually.

Decadence always comes from trying to meet spiritual and/or emotional needs via earthly means. Whether it’s eating because you’re lonely or drinking in bars to escape your depression or engaging in wild, impulsive, dangerous sex with strangers in order to feel alive, you are engaging in the addiction loop of treating the symptoms of the problem by distracting yourself from them rather than addressing them directly.

Often, this is because we don’t even know how to address them. We lack even a meaningful vocabulary for dealing with the needs money, spending, and consumerism simply can’t address.

I mean, a million dollar shopping spree on Rodeo Drive might make you feel better for a day or two, but in the end, you still end up cold and alone in your mansion and the fact that the bed cost more than most people make in a year doesn’t really fucking matter.

But rich people keep trying, and worse, they force their kids to try. All to live up to some crazy idea of “living the good life” and/or “being part of the leisure class”.

But there is no leisure class, people.

Just people driving themselves insane trying to play all day forever.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.