Category: depression

sorry about that

Posted on by admin

I know things got a little dark yesterday. Darker than they should after ten days of vacation.

Sometimes, excess food and booze can cause a depressive crash in me. Usually, if I have more than one or two on an evening or weekend, a couple of days later, I can feel the crash. It’s Tuesdays, usually, though Mondays aren’t better. If I don’t overindulge (or indulge at all in the case of alcohol), I usually feel pretty good by Thursday.

Bodies are weird, and even though I love a good beer, wine or cocktail, I’ve started wondering if I shouldn’t abstain for a while and see what it does for my mood, my motivation levels, my depression and my physical health.

Of course, that would run contrary to my self-destruction, but hey, what can you do?

Hasten the inevitable, probably.

Target: 400 words
Written: 365 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Fire Starter Sessions, Danielle Laporte
Comics: Nailbiter Returns 6-9
Music: Jump Back, The Rolling Stones (you know, you forget, sometimes, just how many great songs these guys have and you have to wonder... is the devil real? Did they make that deal? Is that how Keith Richards is still alive?)

back to work

Posted on by admin

No rest for the weary. No breaks for the forlorn.

No quarter given to the depressed.

Life is a cruel motherfucker. Part of me wonders if I died when I was younger and this was my own personal hell, offering me chance after chance for happiness, but then inflicting such insecurity and depression to fuck them all up.

Life gives us joy only so we know the pain of taking it away (thanks, Kelly).

Life shows us joy so we know what we’re losing.

Target: 400 words
Written: 1030 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Fire Starter Sessions, Danielle Laporte
Comics: Nailbiter Returns 2-5
Music: Julian Plenti Is... Skyscraper (love, love, love the atmospheric nature of this album. Skyscraper is definitely getting use in the Mungk playlist)

spent

Posted on by admin

It’s 7:34AM and I feel like I’m already spent.

Granted, my day starts typically at 4:50AM, so I’ve been up almost three hours.

I’ve written a bit, did some yoga and some meditation, thought about the state of world, wondered why the hell so many of these insane right wingers continue to get away with shit that is clearly illegal and no one appears to be even considering charges, wondered if I’m capable of writing humanity changing works, but it won’t matter because climate change and divisive, authoritarian politics will kill us all before it can make an impact, wondered if aliens would find these pages years later and not be able to understand a damn word, showered, maybe thought about sex a little (because I do so roughly every three minutes) and then peed, ate breakfast, made coffee, fed the dogs, let the dogs out, gave the dogs their joint medication, fed the cats, unloaded/loaded the dishwasher, played Wordle and Worldle, a game of Go on a 9×9 board with a 8 stone handicap (because I need it, apparently), then sat down and went over my to-do list, what’s left of it.

And I’ve a whole workday ahead of me.

Shit.

Target: 300 words
Written: 227 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Sex Rx, Lauren Streicher
Comics: Sex Criminals 17-20
Music: Janis Joplin Essentials, Janis Joplin (if you don't dig Janis, what the fuck are you even doing with your life?)

fun fun fun

Posted on by admin

Until the daddy puts the T-Bird away, I think. Or, in this case, the granddaughter.

Man, that kid is something else. Total ham, smart as a whip. Freakin’ adorable.

Starting to go through that “big feelings” stage, where she’s trying to learn how to deal with things beyond the absolute basics.

Really didn’t like the idea of being a “pre-schooler” soon. I hope one day I’ll be successful enough as an author, so she can say, “My Bop-Bop wrote THIS” and then be ashamed by all its darkness.

Wait. Was this a good plan?

Target: 300 words
Written: 689 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Face It, Debbie Harry
Comics: The Necromancer 5-6, The Necromancer: Pilot Season 1
Music: Your New Favourite Band, The Hives (most appropriately named album title ever, possibly)

old schooling it

Posted on by admin

Listen, I get it. This is a 2006 blog in a 2024 world.

People don’t want to hear about your whining, or your ideas on hope and achievement.

I’ve some interest in that stuff, but once you’ve read the basics of things intended to inspire you, and you’ve moved beyond it, because you realize it actually sets unrealistic, non-real world expectations (requiring riches and bitches, as I like to say), for most of us, it makes you feel bad.

Unworthy.

So, it becomes about finding the softer voice, the one that speaks to you without imposing its own views of success. Success isn’t a requirement of happiness. Neither is money or love or great sex with girthy members or gravity-defying breasts, or whatever you’re into.

(Both? Simultaneously? On the same person?)

These are nice to haves.

Right now, I’m writing about the crushing weight of the world, or the way trauma knocks us off our axis and fucks up our magnetic fields, so we’re forever pushed away from the thing we want most.

And it sucks. That sucks.

(Not the writing part – the crushing weight/trauma part).

It sucks that people, like us, like me, like many of you, have to go through this. And sometimes, it doesn’t get better.

I’m not sure what hope I could offer. There will be some good times, but it might not go away. It doesn’t, for a lot of people. Some eighty-year olds still bitch about how their parents messed them up.

A lifetime has passed to get over it. Why are these things still dictating behaviour?

But they do. They still do.

They fuck you up, your mom and dad.

Not my mom and dad – I fucked myself up. I’ll take credit for that.

Target: 300 words
Written: 1143 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yours, Cruelly, Elvira (way better than you'd expect, given, but then, I've always been fond of Elvira - even as a child, she gave me tingles in parts that maybe shouldn't tingle at that age, but then, I was always girl crazy - see above note about gravity and defiance - her humour was equally sexy though - like a dad joke with boobs.  Anyway, it turns out, she's pretty cool, and she's lived a hell of a life.)
Comics: Fight Club 2 8-10, Fight Club 3 1
Music: You Forgot It In People, Broken Social Scene

so begins canon

Posted on by admin

I’ve been poking at it for a while. Haikus and flash fiction are all good, and comic book scripts and thinly veiled political rants are something else, but proof of life, proof of concept, of talent, skill, hard work, dedication, adaptability, open-mindedness, and good old fashioned sex appeal lay in the pudding.

(Or Jello wrestling mud pit, if we’re talking that last thing).

The point is, there’s no me, as I want me to be, without books. Reading is only halfway to completion. It’s the act of creation (which is really just exploration and discovery, connection and understanding), that’s the thing that fills the cup.

(Or Jello mud wrestling pit).

The bottom line is, me as I am now? I’m not happy with that person. That person sucks. That person writes split-sentence haikus and pretentious shit about hats.

(I love them both dearly).

This person that I want to be? He gets dark. He gets into it. He understands subtext and trauma and helplessness in the face of adversity.

He knows how to crush you – your soul anyway.

(He’d likely lose in the Jello pit).

I want to make you uncomfortable; to remember that happy endings are not the only endings, and neither are grand tragedies.

Sometimes, it’s the little tragedies that wreck us whole.

Target: 300 words
Written: 794 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Getting Things Done, David Allen
Comics: Southern Bastards 9-12
Music: Yo! Bum Rush The Show, Public Enemy

improvement?

Posted on by admin

I may have improved that dreadful third draft of Get Back Again. I hope I did. It still looks like it needs a lot of work, but hey, gotta manuscript sometime, right?

Fuck it.

I’ll be the first to admit I have no idea what I’m doing, most of the time. I’m lost, alone and largely confused.

Unskilled.

I never learned to buckle down.

I never learned to commit.

I never learned follow through.

It’s enough to make a man want to weep, but fuck it. I’m not the weeping type, except when it comes to memories of the people and animals I’ve loved that are no longer with us. I weep for the fact that they won’t ever be anything other than a memory ever again (a truism for all), and for the fact that the memory of me might not be worth the recall.

I want to make a mark, a slash across the sky, a rift in space-time that cannot be ignored, that lights up the night sky with things of wonder and beauty that no one can deny.

But instead, I’m writing about angry ghosts who can’t accept that their outmoded style of governance is on the outs.

And it’s far past time for something better.

Target: 300 words
Written: 2135 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: Getting Things Done, David Allen
Comics: Southern Bastards 1-4 (I wish I would create atmosphere like these guys - damn well done.  You can practically smell the barbecue.)
Music: Yes, Virginia, The Dresden Dolls

determined to make it better

Posted on by admin

Or to *wink, wink* get back again to the spirit of the thing.

Bad people lamenting how they can’t go back to the way things used to be, and good people moving forward, content in improvements, however small, so long as the monster’s out of the room.

My monster is a motherfucker. We don’t get along.

And it’s rarely out of the room. The monster inside your head cannot be expunged.

Maybe exorcised?

Is depression simply demonic possession by another name? Only instead of shooting pea soup and stealing souls, it’s content with the slow crumbling of the soul it already has?

Jesus, dark. 

Target: 200 words
Written: 518 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher
Comics: Fanboys Vs. Zombies 17-20
Music: Yer Favourites, Tragically Hip (gave me my #VeryCanadianMoment as I slid around in the snow on the way to my free health care with Bobcaygeon and Nautical Disaster blasting over the speakers.  If I'd been apologizing to someone with a hockey bag and a two-four in the back, I'd have broken the Canadian stereotype meter permanently.  Before you ask, I was already wearing a toque).

regress

Posted on by admin

There’s always the chance of regression. One gets too lost in one’s regrets or some wrong that’s been done to us (more often than not either petty or legitimately wrong, but no longer truly a factor in our lives, save us making it one), and boom, suddenly, you’re that insecure, angry, neurotic, obnoxious loser all over again.

We work so hard to move on, only to be anchored in cement by the shame of our past.

No matter how we try to move forward as a society or individuals, there’s always someone who wants us back where we started, in to the familiar, the old, the no-longer-the-best-way, because they fear change or the thought of improvement.

Then, there’s the others of us, so desperate to get away from the old, to rocket ourselves into the future, that we forget sometimes – things may work the old way; I doubt a single person in this world feels more present or happier with our hectic, crazy making technology – there’s something to be said for being disconnected, lost to time on the edge of a lake with a bonfire and some friends. Present, instead of captured on a screen.

Wherever we are, we want to be somewhere else.

Target: 200 words
Written: 323 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: Start With Why, Simon Sinek
Comics: The Legacy Of Luther Strode 5-6 (what a series.  "Do better."  I feel that in my gut.)
Music: Year Of The Crow, State Radio (easily one of the most underrated bands I've ever heard.  I could listen to this album on repeat for days)

frustration

Posted on by admin

I don’t know what it is about today, but focus is not my friend. Everything seems off, except the music this morning. Like I’m out of phase with reality.

Fogged up.

I hate this feeling, because it brings out that angry, sad, spoiled brat that couldn’t hack it and hates everything about life, and thinks the universe is out to get him.

Depression can be a real bitch, and it doesn’t always show itself in tears or an unwillingness to get out of bed.

Mine’s often seething anger, obsessive distraction or simply laying on the floor unable or unwilling to move.

I like that part.

It’s relaxing, even if it is just an accumulation of anxious memories from the past.

Oh, and cool. Just noticed. Hives.

The good news is I’m a pacifist and know everything returns to the Tao.

The bad news is the frustration of life’s constant little fuck-yous never seems to truly go away.

Spend too much time looking at your past and it seeps into you. It becomes you.

I think I need to sever.

Target: 200 words
Written: 264 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: Start With Why, Simon Sinek
Comics: The Legacy Of Luther Strode 1-4
Music: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco