Some days slight nausea is the best choice from a menu of worse options.  Today, for example, I prefer it to the Full-Blown Existential Dread.   I pondered the Bang Your Head Against the Wall entree, thought for a moment of asking if I could get it a la carte, but thought better of it.

Slight nausea it is, though I’m wondering idly how much you tip for this sort of thing.

The air is not moving in here.  No sign of movement out there either.  The trees are motionless, not a leaf twitches.  The back of my t-shirt is damp.   Playing guitar as tasteless to me as it is to talented friends who, reckoning themselves failures because they never became stars, play only when drunk.  

The idea of getting drunk  — dry as the idea of playing.  The idea of writing– same thing.

What I’d like to do, but, of course, one can’t, is spin a cocoon and hang out in there, sleeping deeply, until it’s time to float and fly. 

Coming up with the odd one liner is no substitute for being of good cheer.   The odd one-liner may cause a good guffaw, but that laugh passes quickly and, in the larger scheme of things, does not make up for an abiding lack of cheerfulness.

Remarking that someone’s redeeming qualities are becoming more and more elusive may be a clever way of understating the obvious, but it’s no substitute for a day’s work.

That’s why they call it work.  

Be of good cheer.

The only essential ingredient for doing the impossible, outside of talent, work, dedication, perseverance, luck and strategic support, is faith that you can do it.  

Lose that spark of sometimes unreasonable hope for success and the world is right– what you are trying to do is impossible, a million reasons it was doomed from the start.  Tongues will cluck, sad looks pass behind your back.  Life will go on, just not for your dream.

Depression, it emerges, is like riding a bike.  Don’t do it for 25 years, find yourself in the right situation and, bingo:  no training wheels needed.