Feeling fairly up today. The dark shadow of depression lurks eternally, of course, but right now it seems content to lurk grumpily in a corner with its best friend, anxiety.

Honestly, it’s like they are the same person.

Should I have capitalized them because I characterized them? Nah.

Yesterday, as you know, I went to Costco with Joe. And while I really should have eaten lunch before leaving the house, and the resulting blood sugar crash fucked me up good for at least twelve hours, some good did come of it.

First of all, I saved a lot of money by buying a 1100 mg bag of Hostess Munchie Mix.

I had never seen such a huge sized bag of something I like. It’s hard to describe the feeling a fat person gets when they see a larger size of something they like than they have ever seen before, but it’s practically spiritual.

My eyes must have been as big as a kid’s on Xmas morning when they see that bike shaped present when I saw it. I was truly in awe. It was SO BIG.

And then I read the price and it was on sale for only $4.50 or so, and I was like “SOLD!” because that is exactly how much I would pay for a beg 1/5 the size at 7-11.

I might not have gone for it if it had been a single thing instead of a mix. No matter how much I like something, I would probably be sick of it before I finished a back that mondo huge. And that might well happen here, too.

I mean, to this day I can’t hack Jolly Ranchers, and that’s because I made a similar mistake at a Costco in the USA when I lived in Silly Con Valley.

And I used to love them! I’ve always liked hard candy (always nice to have something to suck on) and when JR’s came out, they were the hard candy that tasted a lot more like actual fruit than the usual crap.

I was an instant fan.

But then we got a big bag of them from Costco, with Dhugal telling me that it was a dumb idea because I would be sick of them long before we finished the bag, and he was, of course, totally right.

I barely even made a dent in the thing.

So I could be setting myself up with something similar with the Munchie Mix, but I don’t really care. There are lots of things to eat in this big ol crazy world, and if I ruin one for myself, I can always go on to something else.

And honestly, it would be worth it for the epiphanous moment I had when seeing it anyhow. It was amazing.

I also got a 36-can case of Diet Coke in order to help myself cut down on the stuff.

That might seem counterintuitive, to put it mildly, but hear me out.

See, I have had a 2L bottle a day Diet Coke habit for a while now. This would be consumed in roughly 1L portions as a beverage to go with a meal.  I would drink it from my big 1.8L 7-11 cup.

The other 800 ml would be ice.

But lately I have been wondering whether these large caffiene infusions are causing my high background anxiety levels and this feeling of being hunted and haunted and generally not at all happy and calm that I have been having for a while.

That’s what tends to happen when you give a stimulant to a depressive. In theory, it would give us the energy and stimulation to get up and go get the exercise we need to break us out of our funk and make us happy again.

And if you believe that, I have some real estate on Mars I want to sell you.

To be a depressive is to have one’s motivational system clogged with bad brain chemicals. This imbues us with incredible inertia and cannot be overcome by adding energy to the mixture because all that does is get blocked by the clogs and ending up getting backed up into our default repository for excess energies, anxiety.

It’s less black and white than that, of course, but you get the basic idea.

So the only time it really makes sense to add a stimulant to my system is when I am about to do something that can make use of that excess energy… like blogging.

So having some Diet Coke while I blog makes sense.

Other times, not so much. As much fun as I have in Skyrim, playimng it does not exactly put a lot of strain on my brain or my body and so adding energy is kind of dumb.

Which brings us back to my Diet Coke habit. By getting the cans and limiting myself to one 355 ml can per meal, I can cut my 2L a day habit down to 1065 ml a day habit, and that’s if I have a can with every meal, which I probably will not.

And the thing is, I know I will not feel the loss, because for me at least, there seems to be something magical about a can of pop that makes it seem like a big drink, more than enough to accompany a meal.

I think the magic must be that drinking from a can restricts your rate of intake compared to drinking from a glass, and that makes it seem like more.

Whatever the mechanism, I love it, and so I should be able to cut back on the stuff and maybe be a less anxious person.

Then I can go back to being depressed! Which is just as bad, but a lot less work.

Seriously, though, if this works, I might try to wean myself off of the caffiene entirely and move into drinking something healthy like fruit juice with my meals.

That way, I still get my flavour fix, and healthy nutrients and hydration as well.

Well, after writing that exciting update, I need a nap.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.