Week 10/11: The Sun Also Rises

So I thought it over and decided I had better things to do than sit around feeling shitty about the rough turns life can have for you. Life isn't always sunshine but even rainy stormclouds go away after a while if you can just try to be patient and hold on. My friend B put it best when she wrote me last night and said:

"The thing about depression is that you can't block it out. You have to live with it/in it and deal with it in your own way, second by second until it quiets/retreats/dulls."


It was hot enough that I didn't even really need the jacket.

So a new day it is and onward I go. I'll be ok if I can weather the storm.

It's also just dawned on me that I have to go bed in seven and a half hours. Hmm.

Week 10: [crickets] .... "What should I do / When I can't see my way out?"

I am struggling right now--March hasn't been so good to me. First i failed to complete an entire week's task on Beck and now this week's thank yous... one finished letter and two nearly finished letters is not enough. Let alone the three long overdue and very nearly finished (but "not yet perfect") mixes sit on my proverbial dashboard... and I haven't run in five days. If i had to label a "loser week" so far this year, this is surely it.

Unfortunately right now I'm struggling to get through the most significant depression I've felt in a while. I float through work like a zombie, struggling to do enough just to be ok, and then i get home and sit motionless on the couch or at the kitchen table or on my bed, held captive by my runaway brain waves. Self-esteem is low and sense of self lower. The last few days especially have been rough, and it hasn't helped that the apartment has been empty most of the week due to SXSW and other roommate life requirements. All day long and especially at home I am bombarded by destructive thoughts of sadness and loss and emptiness and despair and they take complete and total control of me, shutting everything down.

How do you block this kind of shit out? This is what I am trying to learn, and what, thus far, I have failed mightily at discovering. When I've got things going right (which admittedly in my life hasn't seemed often enough), everything clicks. But when things get out of hand, or go downhill, my spirit bends and sways and then ultimately collapses, knocked over by the powerful and seizing winds of depression.

Something has happened to my brain also, musically speaking, where I am listening to a handful of fucking songs OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. It's bizarre--never in my life have I wanted to put songs on repeat, but over the past two and a half months there are five specific songs that I've listened to over and over again. These songs, even though two of them are half-joyful, all speak to what's been going on in my life these past few months and I guess they just clicked with me representing different phases of feeling I've had (umm maybe Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief?). Three of them are on the "Anglophilia" mix that will come someday soon, another on a mix I made a few months back. Beck week has inspired my most recent of these obsessions, as evidenced via my Last.FM recent play count of 15 listens (so far) over today and yesterday.

Anyway, as He says, I think/hope that "the cruelest days are almost over now," so hopefully i'll be back on track soon, maybe starting today. Next week though is "just" going to bed early, so outside of the fact that I'm unconvinced that my body knows how to fall asleep before 1 a.m., I think i'll be able to get through it and feel good about myself again (Doorknobs and Shrimp Cracker have promised to remove all electrical devices, including my phone, laptop, and even lamp from my bedroom, save my alarm clock, which honestly I probably won't need if I fall asleep before midnight since my body seems to wake up on its own after five or six hours of sleep.

if you've got any thoughts for me on getting over this kinda shit, hit me up here or at yearofhyperliving AT gmail.com. I'm always interested in the different ways that people deal with things; sometimes hearing another perspective reminds you to how to look at yourself anew and see new answers to old problems.

Week 10, Thank You Letter #1: Grandparents

I am getting behind. Worn down by life and commitments. But here's the week's first thank you letter, finished last night and mailed today.

First I want to say thanks to Kristen C (or is it B now?), for giving me the idea for this week's project. It was a great idea and I'm glad she shared it with me.

I wrote this letter to both of my grandparents, who are two of the most important people in my life.

My grandfather is the sweetest, kindest, most gentle man who would give up anything he had without thinking to help the ones he loves. He took me to my first baseball game, he played catch me, he's driven me all over the place, he gave me a car when my first car died (I killed it, accidentally), he's even watched the dog of former my girlfriend. And none of this aid was provided out of duty or requirement, but love, always and always love, which is as clear in his eyes as is the disgust on his face at the mention of Dan Duquette, runner of the beloved Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens out of town.

And my grandmother, well, she is something else: there are not many people out there in the world like Dot Koeppel. A tough and powerful woman, she is a figure who almost towers over the lives of everyone who crosses paths with her; she is honestly a force to be reckoned with. Most importantly, I think she has taught me to value strength in women and to seek out for friends and lovers strong females who don't think twice about forming their own opinions and speaking their minds. More and more these kind of attitudes are common of women of my generation, which is makes me swell with joy, but they certainly weren't common in my grandmother's or even my mom's time.

My letter to them both just told them all of this and more. I haven't been the best at keeping in touch with them over these past few years since my parents separated and I graduated college, and I feel pretty shameful about it. But I hope to change my behavior so that they begin seeing and hearing more of me, and I thought this note of love and appreciation to them might be a good start.





Also nearly finished one to Isaac Brock, but does anyone have his mailing address? Can send to Sony obviously but any thoughts anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

Week 10, Thank Yous: Not a death wish, but a life wish

Today I am using the folly of Eliot Spitzer to distract you from my own failings.

I like this quote from NYT:

Dr. Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University, said that many politicians are what he calls 'Type T personalities,' with T standing for thrill-seeking. ...[But] it is sometimes speculated that certain politicians, at least subconsciously, want to be caught and have their careers upended. But do they?

"I’ve never seen it," said Dr. Farley. "I don’t believe it’s a factor with these
people. It’s just in their nature to push things. I don’t think they have a
death wish. I think they have a life wish. They just love all aspects of life —
some of it too much."

Spitzer shall be receiving a thank you letter from me tonight. Up until today, I had exactly two "personal effects" adorning my officespace.

One was this Dilbert cartoon, representing my daily feelings:



And the other was this photo of Eliot Spitzer, with the bubble "Bye, Jeffrey" coming from his mouth--a parting gift from another floor as I graduated from floor cubicle to personal (though shared) office:



The creases and wrinkles in the photo admittedly weren't there until today, when I tore the photo down and crumpled it up to throw out, before deciding to re-affix it and photograph for lasting documentation. I will include the photo in my letter to Spitzer thanking him for his year of service but respectfully requesting that he get the fuck out of town and join a private equity firm somewhere where he can just make millions of creepy dollars and live in his own world of fucktastic indulgence.

I have a life wish too, dudes: for the love of "God", can just one single honest politician stand-up for the people? One single person who isn't a worthless hypocrite raging against gays or prostitution or gambling whilst indulging in such "vices" on their own (though, seriously, gambling really IS a terrible vice); dipping their hand in industrial or pharma or cosa nostra $$$ and effecting crooked-minded policy; failing to acknowledge the reality of their experiences growing up American in America (smoking pot, lying occasionally, making mistakes).

I championed this asshole once, even knowing he was probably a huge jerk, because I thought that just maybe his drive for success would be enough to lead him to accomplish some good for the world. Now I see that any good was strictly incidental in the pursuit of Eliot's ever-widening-head. Thanks, Eliot, for reminding me that all heavy-weight politicos are greedy, self-indulgent, untrustworthy scumbag HYPOCRITES, and that it is foolish for me to put any hope in any of them being any different from the rest.

So Eliot, yeah, you lose today, but unfortunately, I've no doubt that you'll eventually win again. Sadly, the rest of us aren't so lucky: in the relative (meaning inherently fucked-up) scale of America, we lose, always.