Today was better than yesterday. Still not back into fighting trim, but better.

The best thing about today is that I went out. I didn’t go far, just to the strip mall next door, but baby steps.

I had lunch at the A&W. My usual mozza burger, although this time, just to switch things up, I had it with onion rings instead of fries. Any little thing I can do to push back on the carb addiction is a good thing.

And of course, A$W has kickass onion rings. Technically, I replaced 80 percent of the carbs from fries with grease from the onion rings, but what the heck.

It is important, vitally important, that I learn to please myself. To bring pleasure and joy into my life of my own volition and through my own effort. This passivity isn’t going to fix itself, after all. (Irony intended. )

And I can afford it. I am doing quite well, financially speaking, this month. Even after today’s purchases, I still have around $160 left in my wallet, and only a week to go before my next cheque. (They’re big enough to be cheques now. Before, they were just checks. )

I am hoping to still have $100 to my name when the next cheque cometh. That way I can add that to the hundred or so I was already planning to put on my credit card to use for online purchases.

Oh right, purchases. The point of my excursion today was not just to have a greasy but satisfying lunch. The real goal was Safeway, where I bought the same assortment of iced confections as I bought before.

You see, Safeway has this wonderful line of sugar free ice cream treats, and once I finally realized “hey, I can actually afford to buy things like this for myself!”, I bought a batch.

One box each of fudgesicles, ice cream cones (Cornettos for you UK folks), and ice cream sandwiches. Eighteen little desserts in total. And they are not cheap, sadly. Each box of six cost me eight bucks. That’s $1.33 per treat, and seeing as my price point for those kind of things was set when I was a child, that seems like a lot to me. Probably a lot less than you would pay at 7/11 these days, but still.

Totally worth it, though. The first time I did this, I found myself in a much better mood as a result. The power of small pleasures is truly amazing. I used to pooh-pooh the idea of cultivating small pleasures as being lame and boring and sad and tragically unambitious.

But I see the wisdom now. Little pleasures might not blow you to the back of the wall with ecstasy, but they are always there and each one activates the reward center of the brain and thus not only gives us pleasure, it makes us feel like we are good people, that we have been rewarded.

I swear, looking for that feeling of reward is the answer to 90 percent of addiction. When society, the world, and life in general does not give you that feeling of being rewarded and thus being a good member of the tribe, we find other ways of getting it.

Some of these are healthy and good…. and some are unhealthy and self-destructive. When you use anything, whether it’s a drug or a hobby or an obsession, to fill the gaping hole in yourself, self-destruction is the default ending. When you shove things into that hole…. it gets bigger.

I completely understand how it happens, though. Depression is starvation of the soul, and when you are starving you will do whatever it takes to eat again, even if it is going to kill you.

So you definitely cannot afford to put all your eggs in one pleasure basket. No pleasure, no matter how wonderful, no matter how much of a godsend it seems, no matter how brightly it shines in the darkness of your soul, can be the be-all and end-all for all your needs.

And if you try to force it to be, you will destroy it… but it will take you down with it.

I seem to have wandered off into philosophy, as usual. Where was I… oh right, buying the ice cream type treats. The fact that I made my little excursion completely on my own initiative is also keenly important.

I wanted something, so I went and got it. It sounds so simple but it means so much compared to my history of parasitic passivity. I didn’t have to go to Safeway today. There would have been no consequences to staying home instead. But I went anyhow, because despite not having to go, I wanted to go, and every time I invest effort into getting what I want is a small victory against my depressive lassitude.

And it really is an investment. You put effort in to get pleasure out. I invested the effort it took (both physical and emotional) to make the trip, and that investment will pay off in eighteen pleasant desserts.

Joy will not come to you. You have to go and get it. Depression makes you so conservative that you are unwilling to invest any effort whatsoever in things which do not have a guaranteed huge payout right away.

But it’s not really about effort and reward. It’s about finding a way to live life that works for you. If you are happier in motion, stay in motion. Do whatever work is required to stay happy. Do not assume that the ideal life would be one in which you didn’t have to move at all.

That is a dream of infancy. Only infants get to have everything they need and desire brought to them while others do all the work of life and leave them with no decisions to make, no effort to invest, no work to do, just have everything taken care of by others.

It is most definitely not the dream of an adult.

Adults want to live.