back then

I thought briefly today about going back and seeing what the first entry on this blog was like, but I don't really want to. My life is completely different now than it was then, while my circumstances have changed very little. The difference, of course, is me. I've made changes that caused the world to suck less while remaining exactly the same. How weird is that?

The results, at this point in time:

I've lost 45 pounds since Feb. 4, 2008.
I exercise every day.
I'm taking happy pills (more like not depressed pills, but that doesn't sound as good).
I started making changes in the way I treat people at work, so that I actually have conversations with people. I tell them things, they say things back. I don't know why it would have been so mysterious to me before how NOT doing this would cause me to feel isolated and unappreciated. What was there to appreciate back in January?

This is, of course, not the first time that I have grown to feel revulsion for how I was once upon a time. How long, I wonder, before the me I am today becomes a subject of my loathing and repudiation? At least I've put some delay into the process so that it's not right freaking now every instant.

depressed or just unhappy?

So I get depressed. I guess. I've never actually talked to a doctor about it or anything, but sometimes (more than others), I just can't freakin stand it anymore. Depression is a sickness, I've been told, and I know that's true of chronic depression, but maybe, I keep saying to myself, maybe sometimes it looks like depression, but a person is just not happy. I keep telling myself there's a difference, and it goes like this:

Depression is feeling crappy and sad all the time, whether you have a reason to feel that way or not. It's an inappropriate feeling of sadness. Unhappiness is a legitimate feeling of sadness. If your dog dies and you feel depressed, that's not a disease, that's normal. No pills for you. If you're happy about something one day, and you hate that same thing and it drags you down the next, that's some sick shit and you could perhaps benefit from medication.

Now in my opinion, most of the depression people are popping pills for right now is actually not pathological. People live lives that are inherently unsatisfying, but that they're told are the ideal, the be-all-end-all of American existence, The Dream. So even though they hate it and it makes them act like assholes at work, on the road, in public places, and at home, they keep doing it. I keep doing it. And it makes everyone unhappy.

So the choice becomes whether to continue with the practical-yet-soul-crushing process of doing stuff you hate, but with the addition of some pills that make you happier about it, or to actually change. The problem: even when you try to change things in a way that will make people's lives easier, they don't recognize or appreciate it. I will expound more on this topic in later posts. Suffice it to say, it is the core of my dissatisfaction with my professional life.