Mood Boost

My plan for this week was originally to write about knowing your genre--something that is super important for a person like me who writes across different genres with specific tropes and expectations attached to them.

But at some point on Saturday, I hit a serious downswing.

The thing with depression, even depression that's typically reasonably well-managed, is that sometimes it just slams you. Nothing happens; there's no inciting incident that sets off a spiral. Sometimes you're just standing in the middle of a snack aisle at Target and all of your energy is suddenly gone and the notion that you should bury yourself under the covers and never move again seems like the best possible use of time--and even if it's not, what does it matter? It's not like what you do is important in the long run anyway.

I haven't worked on anything in almost a week. I've spent too much time sleeping. There are plenty of things that I have to do--some things that, under normal circumstances, I'd be jazzed to do--but I can't do them. Getting out of bed was Herculean. Now I have to do more?

And so your weekly blog post ends up being late because the effort of actually taking the laptop out of the bag is too much, and the ceiling's not gonna stare at itself, and you know there's not going to be a way to get out of work on Monday, so you might as well just try to save up whatever mana you can so that you can make it through work and then go back to bed. And, of course, the fact that the post is late makes you want to do it even less.

So I'm not going to talk about genre knowledge this week. Maybe, hopefully, I'll be able to next week.

Instead, I'm going to share some songs that I use as pick me ups when I feel, for lack of a better word, blue. And, for my purposes, I'm using the Drowsy Chaperone definition of blue:

"A little anxious for no particular reason. A little sad that I should feel self-conscious at this age. A little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness."

It's not completely accurate, but it offers a little insight.

This doesn't have much to do with writing, beyond that I sometimes use these songs to pick me up when I feel this way. And one of the songs is on the playlist I made for project 2016 (you can find part of that playlist here, if you're interested).

Thanks for hanging in there with me. See you next week.