I’ve decided that I am going to go through all the videos I have uploaded to YouTube both to remind myself that I am awesome (no really, I am!) and to find the ones I want to repost to Facebook and hence share with new people, like my sisters.

It is somewhat slow going, as my videos are not exactly short (problem) and even when it is me talking, I still can’t sit still and watch them quietly. Turns out I can’t even binge-watch myself.

Speaking of binge-watching, I’m up to the 12th episode of the first season of My Little Pony : Friendship Is Magic. I am watching two episodes per meal, which is as close to binge-watching as I get. It would go a lot faster if I was the kind of person that can just watch a ton of episodes of something in a row, but I know damned well that I can’t.

If I tried, I would just get sick of whatever it was I was watching. Little errors and similarities would build up in my mind and, worst case scenario, I would end up permanently “off” something I once enjoyed.

So no, no rapid brony-izing for me. At this rate, it will take me around a month to complete my journey. Fair enough.

The show is awesome, of course. To me, its beauty is that it does exactly what dozens of other shows like it have done, but it does it so much better.

The characters are genuinely lovable, and have consistent, believable personalities. The animation is colorful, expressive, and smooth. The humour is genuinely funny, with perfectly timed comedy beats that express the comedy (and charm) with grace and density. The editorial voice is light but firm, just the sort of thing to keep a show on an even keel and have all the plot points come off so smoothly that it makes it all seem effortless.

I don’t even mind that the show makes the moral of each episode really clear with the whole “Twilight Sparkle writes a letter to Princess Celestia telling her what she has learned about friendship at the end of each episode” thing. The show is, after all, intended for kids, and kids need that kind of guidance. There is nothing wrong with fables.

And I love how the show strikes just the right balance between realism and fantasy. The world of Equestria is a wonderful, magical place that any kid would want to live in, and definitely a nicer place to be than our own mundane, complicated world. Mission accomplished there. And yet, it’s not a sunwashed saccharine plastic paradise either. It’s not unrealistically perfect. Friends fight, things don’t work out right, the days are not filled with nothing but peace love and harmony.

Because honestly, a too=perfect fantasy world would completely fail to teach kids anything. What kids (and adults) need to learn is how to cope with difficult, stressful situations, and therefore your world has to leave room for difficult, stressful situations. The idea is to take the audience through them in a safe way, and thus give them the kind of ersatz life experience that is the goal of all great art.

But enough pony talk. (Don’t get me started… oh right, you didn’t. )

When I go over my videos, it’s nearly always a very positive experience for me, because guess what? I find them fascinating. Turns out, everything I talk about in them is exactly the sort of thing I find really interesting.

I mean, what are the odds?

Seriously though, other than occasionally wishing I was wearing a shirt in some of them, I enjoy them, and they are good for the ego. And my ego needs all the shoring up it can get given its rapid decay rare due to depression. The talky ones are very interesting, and the funny ones are funny, and it really reminds me that I am a talented dude and that I should not feel bad about my abilities just because depression gets in the way of their use sometimes.

Things will happen when they happen, and beating myself up over everything I am not doing and all the tools I have around me that I never use only further guarantees that I won’t use them because the guilt makes me avoid them.

It’s amazing how nimbly depression can find ways of fueling itself. Well, the thing about being psychologically unstable is that it’s remarkably stable.

You can defeat yourself every single time.

In a couple of hours, I will be leaving to go to Ray’s birthday party, and to be quite honest, I really don’t feel like it, I am having a sleepy day, and all I want to do is go back to sleep and catch up on my Z’s.

The problem is that the part is at 6 pm, which is way earlier than we usually get going around here. Usually we are not even at the restaurant until 8. On a normal Sunday, I would have four hours or more in which to take a nap and then take a shower and get ready to go out.

But no, I will have, at best, an hour and a half for naptime and then half an hour for a shower and such. My naps are usually longer than an hour and a half, so I would have to set an alarm if I wanted to be awake on time.

And that sucks. I have spent so much time with a loose, lazy schedule that any little change seems like a massive imposition. All I really wanna do is go to sleep for three hours and then wake up and do my thang.

But that is just plain not in the cards today, so when I am done here, I will attempt one of my power naps where I don’t exactly sleep like normal but it performs the important, immediate functions of sleep.

Wish me luck on that, it’s just as likely to fail as to succeed.

Talk to you again tomorrow, folks!