Guys,
(Apologies for my BEAUTIFUL IMAGES, philistines!)
What a shitty couple of days it has been for me (and you too, it seems). I've just been feeling so down - I can't sleep, I can't eat, today I could barely even talk ffs, the physical and mental pain is almost intolerable. Still, I like to think of myself as the captain of this little ship - and not just because all of my fantasies are nautical-themed - and it won't do for the captain to be all down in the dumps, or "scuppers," or "starboards." The SS Mental Health is not exactly the most seaworthy vessel to begin with - she takes on water like a motherfucker and we need to constantly bail her out or we're all going to drown. Also, we forgot the sails, we tossed the oars overboard, we're out of marine diesel, the rudder fell off, the ship's on fire, and we get attacked by the occasional whale. Also we ran out of food and rum six months ago. If you can look past the small amounts of sinking/exploding, though, she's a proud ship and it's an honor to take the helm and steer this thread right into those icebergs.
So three things happened to cheer me up a little bit, so I thought I'd share, as promised.
1) I listened to a bunch of angsty 90s music, which always makes me feel better. I was particularly inspired by the opening line from Bush's 1994 hit, "
Machinehead," as follows:
Unnnhhhhgghhhhyayayaya
which is basically poetry.
2) I found my lucky pencil!
I've had the same Pentel Technica-X since 2000, I think. It has traveled the world with me. It has rusted a tad, as you can see, but the action is still like working the bolt on a rifle. It's absolutely flawless.
I found it in my backpack which is odd, as I'm pretty sure I've dumped the contents out 40 or 50 times in a fruitless search for my beloved pencil. I'm not sure what the fuck it was doing just sitting there, but I'm not complaining.
I associate that pencil with a very happy time in my life, working for my college mentor, a man second in importance only to my father. He passed away a few years ago and I really wish he were here to give me some advice. He was a great man and I was really bummed when I lost my silly pencil 'cause, I dunno, I'm sentimental like that, and my trusty pencil made me think of all the work I did in his lab. I'm glad it's back!
3) Flo posted those awesome pictures of her notebook and I decided to start keeping a journal again.
I was trying to find a blank notebook to use (I keep a ton of notebooks around, but my office is a mess, so they're all buried under stuff) and I found where I had stashed my journal collection! So...I write a lot.
The earliest one I have is from 2001, when I traveled to Portugal (shoutout to dani_dc!). I made sporadic entries, many of which foretell my eventual mental health problems.
I picked it up in 2002, right after I was diagnosed with depression, recorded here:
That notebook is a mix of occasional updates on my life, along with random chemistry notes, lists of things for school and the like.
I wrote almost every day from 2005-2012. I used little pocket notebooks for years, but I realized that, if I wanted to keep these things, I needed something sturdier. I had moleskines before hipsters ruined them, then used a variety of similar black notebooks. I also carry more writing utensils - from wooden pencils to fountain pens - then any human being would ever possibly need, just because I enjoy the physical act of writing.
Here's a pretty typical entry from 2005:
I mostly wrote about what I was up to - what I was reading, what games I was playing, how the depression was going, stuff I did with my friends. It's not the most riveting reading, to be honest, but it's interesting to
me to see what I was up to 8 years ago.
Inspired by my mum, I eventually started writing down the books I read in a separate notebook:
It's fun to look at little patterns - I did a string of sailing books in 2007 (a few more show up in 2009), I read a lot of comics in the first part of 2009. I haven't recorded my reading for the past year or so, which I really regret.
Doodling and journaling is a good way to pass the time:
Complaining is a constant theme in all of my journals. I kind of got it out of my system a bit so I bitched much less in my interactions with others.
I eventually started doing more essay-like, self-reflection stuff. It's funny how long it took me to open up a bit more in my journals:
The more honest you can be, the better, but I still worry about people reading my stuffs. I carried my journal in my bag so I could jot stuff down throughout the day, so it wasn't inconceivable that I'd lose it or something. I should probably keep it somewhere safer and try to delve a little deeper into this mess that I call a mind.
Which brings me to...
This beauty. My Lego Moleskine!
It's not as nice as Flo's, but I followed her lead and put a little reminder to myself inside the cover. If you get to know me, you'll soon realize that I am
extremely hard on myself, like, okay, sometimes to a slightly ridiculous degree. I figure I can be open and honest with myself without beating myself up too much. (And thanks to Trin and co. for repeatedly pointing out that I am way too hard on myself!)
I can't tell you how glad I am that I have some record of my life over the past decade. It often feels like life isn't going anywhere, that every day is exactly the same. But when life really did not seem to be going anywhere, at least I could make a little record, some little monument to the fact that I was here and I survived another day. And looking back, holy crap has a lot happened! I have a record of all these events and what I thought at the time. That last part is key, because I did not think about things the same way in 2005 as I do in 2013 and that's so important to have that reminder of growth and change. It hasn't all been great, but it certainly hasn't all been awful. And whatever it is or was, I'm the product of all of it. I was there and now I'm here, and if I really look at it, I think maybe I'm actually an OK guy, and maybe things will be alright.
Smooth sailing, guys!
