I am depressed.
I’ve been depressed and anxious for a couple days, because this is how my brain is, especially as the seasons change toward the tail-end of the year. The angle of the sun early and late in the day becomes more acute, your shadow stretches out in front of you like a wendigo. It’s a harbinger of the gloom that will dominate the clock once fall finishes falling, and the cloud ceiling feels like it’s about seven feet over your head, waiting to crush you.
Once the sun starts getting low and skulky like that I begin to constantly feel like I’m about to tip over backward in a chair, like there’s someone just behind me about to punch me in the back of the neck. It’s unnerving, and constant, and so I’m anxious, and so I’m depressed.
Normally I’d treat this depression with alcohol or coffee, but it’s 9am and my stomach has been off and there’s a point where you Have to Talk to Someone About Thus, Dude, and I’d prefer that not be today.
So I made a new swing for my kids. The old one broke the other day, and I didn’t take it down immediately, and my 8-year-old has subsequently been sort of clinging to the remainder and dangling in a vain attempt to swing, which is pretty pathetic, and also sort of eerie looking, like a sophomore-year interpretive dance of a public hanging.
The new swing is a jankety-ass hack made from some junk from the garage (a length of 2″ PVC, a length of nylon runner I used to use for rock climbing, back in during the Clinton Administration), but I feel somewhat better. The sun was a little higher in the sky by the time I finished, and so I felt less like my shadow was waiting to stab me in the back, so that helped. Also, there’s something to be said for a cylindrical swing seat–it’s more like a trapeze, and easier on my old butt. I’m sure the kids will come up with some new and dangerous way to take advantage of this new design.
Anyway, I want to suggest this same mode of treatment to you, Gentle Readers:
If you are feeling depressed or anxious, and it is not yet at the Point Where You Have to Talk to Your Doctor, Dude, make your kids a new swing out of garage junk. Because here’s the thing: You’ll probably feel at least a little better–on account you will have exercised your rugged individualism or done something physical or reformed the world in your image or tikkun olamed a smidge, or however your worldview best frames voluntary unpaid manual labor in or near the home. But even if you don’t feel a damn bit better after you’re done building your swing, your kids will still get home at the end of the day, and there’ll be a new swing, and they’ll be happy about that.
And that alone will help. And all day you’ll know this one fundamental truth: At the end of the day your kids will be happy because there’s a new swing. And since you’ve increased the net daily happiness in the world, you have also increased the mean happiness enjoyed by any single human, even if only a smidge. By the magic of division, you’re *technically* happier already.
And, shit, by Internet standards, being *technically* happier–like being *technically* more qualified or deserving or right–is even better than being *actually* better. I think you could get round one VC funding on the basis of that math alone.
But whatever. One way or the other, your kids have a new swing–and you’ve got about six hours left in the day that you can use that swing all you want with no one trying to horn in on it.
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