Friday, May 6, 2016

On the Timeless Nature of Despondency

Some days it is difficult to focus. Some days everything you do or have done seems wrong, or not good enough. Some days all of your actions, past and possible, flutter before your eyelids into a hopeless phantasmagoria.

Some days you just feel down, for no real reason--though you do make up reasons to feel down since you are already down.

And time becomes something strange. It slows down into something soft and mushy, weakening your will, tiring your body, and blurring your thoughts. The day passes. You either get little done or feel like you have done little. Either way, you feel like it doesn't matter and you felt like it didn't matter while you were doing it, so time no longer meant action and achievement. It meant inadequacy.

Somewhere in your head, you know that it isn't so. You know what you have done and what you can do. You know that you believe in good things, that you are not a melancholic sloth. But that doesn't really help because you also know that you're stuck in a little moment of slowness. Your mind just isn't working the way it should--and you know it isn't right but you also know that it will pass.

Tea and chips and chocolate and blankets and, when the time comes, a dose of YouTube all help--in nothing more than helping the moment to pass. But that is enough. Just let the moment pass, let it come and go so that you can move on tomorrow. Because you know that you are not this mood and you don't want it to stay for more than just a moment, its awful, timeless moment of muddiness.


Today was cold and windy--can you tell? I want the sun back.

Here is a completely irrelevant picture of a two and a half month old Zebra named Valentine (at Out of Africa Wildlife Park, of course) to cheer us up:


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