Every once in awhile I get into one of those moods where nothing is right, everything is terrible, and nothing in the world is going to fix it. And by every once in awhile, I mean my whole life is filled with the feeling that everything is wrong, nothing is good, and everything in the world can be thrown at it but it won't help at all. But fortunately for me, I grimace through the terrible tragedy, sublimate it, work around it, ignore it, and I find that you can go ahead and live your life in a perfectly amenable way and it is practically just like you are not even a little broken! Or that you are maybe wrong about the way everything is ashes, ashes. I will graciously concede that possibility.

Sometimes, though, I get overwhelmed by it and nothing helps and I am not sure, entirely, what the point is, trying to make it better. What's the point? The usual daily maintenance things are bad enough: why have I got pants on? I'm going to have to take them off, later. And still later? Put them back on. Dishes get dirty, and you clean them, and then they get dirty again. Floors, toilets, bill paying. Why breathe in, when you're just going to breathe it all back out again? God, what a waste of effort.

That's fine. That's pretty much The Price of Daily Living, the Price We All Pay, the Tragedy With Which We Are Inflicted, as a Species. Some people deal with it better than other people. Some days, I deal with it better than other days. Usually, it's not so much something to deal with, as just they way things are. But when it really gets me, when it really Grinds Me Down is when regular things, fun things and happy things and things that are supposed to make life a sweet fruit become a chore, tiresome, stupid, not worth the effort. That's when things really start to suck.

I like to read. Why can't I finish the book? I have enjoyed television in the past, and now I have no idea where the remote control is, and the idea of cleaning off the TiVo seems a terrible and exhausting one. Baths are warm and soothing! I don't want to take a bath, because then I'd have to adjust the temperature and sit there in the water and wah. Sunshine is so nice! Look at that sun out there, in the sky, warming the earth and growing the flowers and helping to make very important calcium-supporting Vitamin D in our skins. Let's go walk in the sun and have a moment of gratitude for its heat and light and may it not go out for awhile, please. Except I don't want to. What I want to do, instead, apparently, is lie here in bed with the shades drawn and idly surf the same ten websites all the livelong day.

I would really rather be having a nice time slacking off and dicking around and being lazy. In fact, I would give myself a dollar to do that. To be running off to a coffee shop and ignoring all my responsibilities in favor of chatting with the barista and doodling stars in a notebook while I day dream about candy. To be in favor of anything at all, really. Instead, I am useless lump of oatmeal, a lousy sack of pudding. An unproductive fruit cake, except not as delicious.

My last proofreading job finished up on Friday, and there's been a lull, before the next batch starts up, and I indulged the feeling of freedom--I don't have to do anything! I can scratch my butt and loll around and be the happiest person you ever met. I am thinking, though, that as much as I enjoy being lazy, as pleasant the idea, soft my bed, glorious the lack of responsibility seems and initially feels, it is bad for me. Bad. No biscuit. In fact, I will beat you with the biscuit until you cry and promise to knock it off, to push past that sense of entitlement--I worked so hard! Shouldn't I get to lie around if I want?--because it's not good for you. Hello? McFly? Yeah, that's what I though. Maybe tomorrow I'll go one better and eat candy in bed.