How not to be depressed–maybe

OK. Here I am. I am not depressed. Absolutely not. I think the key is this: you actually make the bed when you roll out of it, then go to the second floor, get dressed, avoid the scales and the mirror, brush your teeth, comb your hair, and go downstairs.

Give yourself a deadline for sitting and staring, but do sit and stare, because Flannery O’Connor said, “The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.” You simply add sitting to the equation. I ask you, how can one stare without sitting? Standing and staring is for gape-jawed morons.

Then you go to watch Jon Stewart during S&S. That’s called multi-tasking. What a concept. And Jon Stewart is a rerun. Then it’s just like the Misfit said in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find“: “Shut up, Bobby Lee. It’s no real pleasure in life.” Not without Jon Stewart it ain’t. Who knows where he is. You didn’t get the memo. Rosh Hashana was last week. No call for him to be gone this week. There will be letters.

And then you haul all you stuff downstairs so you can sit in front of the laptop here instead of the desktop there. You got your computer, your mouse, your flash drive, your ink pens, your grade book, two text books, two books you have to read today, another book commenting on those two books, two tablets, your jet pack, a power strip, your phone, a 5 Hour Energy (because you’re damn well going to need it), your Kindle, and assorted power cords.

The second time you drop the mouse it flies apart and you have to find the parts which requires getting on your knees to reach under the couch, where you’d stay if you had any sense. But you don’t. You get up and put 37 CDs in the CD player to distract you from the sad, bad papers you’re fixing to grade.

Then your freaking computer will not recognize your finger print or your face and you can’t remember your damned password. You don’t do what you want to do, because pitching computers off the front porch invites scrutiny, and if there’s one thing a person who’s wound just a tad too tight doesn’t need, it’s scrutiny. So, what do you do?

Well, first you cry. If that doesn’t help, you get your fat fanny of the couch and go find the little book where you keep your passwords. Right there in black and white—and blue and white, and red and white, and a couple in crayon—are your passwords for Ebay, YouTube, Tumblr, Word Press, iTunes, eMusic, Blackboard, Lotus Notes, AARP, Amazon, American Express, and Face Book. No computer. Well, hell. Now what?

Now you go to Walmart. There are bound to people there who are having an even worse day than you are because, well, they’re at Walmart.