days of tumblr

i said good day, sir

I am in a good mood!  I feel like a lot happened today, though maybe nothing did?  Hard to say.  I’m just going to make a list of what happened, because I need to clear my brain.  You know how it is.

-Graduation was a year ago.  My friends in the class of 2010 graduated today and pointed out that my name is in the brochure.  Um.

-I left my cell phone at work over the weekend and my grandfather had called about me sending over my resume so he can pass it to someone whose son-in-law is a VP at AAK.  As someone whose parents have almost no social capital (“family friend” has always struck me funny, my family has no friends), it’s nice to finally be doing some old-fashioned nepotistic networking.  Probably nothing will come of it, but it’s just nice.

-Incidentally my dad has been trying to get me to give him my resume and I’ve steadfastly refused, because knowing my dad (oft-made comparison, by me, but oft nonetheless, is that he is like a liberal Glenn Beck), he would mail it directly to our congressman, senators, and Rahm Emanuel.  I finally cracked him and he admitted he was planning to write to Oprah Winfrey on my behalf. *I am not kidding in the least. *I love my dad.

-I am reading the best book right now, The Giant’s House.  It’s so good I want to read it again so I can record my favorite quotes and find matching pictures for them a la Slaughterhouse 90210.  I am on a crazy reading binge right now and I’m really liking it.  I’ve only really been reading on the train, but for a while there I wasn’t riding the train much, or couldn’t read when I did, so it’s nice, really nice, to be reading a book good enough to make me look forward to the train.

-Jobs!  I’m trying to get this job at the place where I once interned and I sent an email to the Director of HR today.  Boy it was scary!  I think I deserve an interview, don’t I?

-Jobs!  At 6:30, I got a phone call from a 212 number and it was a woman who’d heard about me from someone I once met and assumed had forgotten me, and this woman, the first one, invited me for an interview.  Just like that!  An unposted job!

-I went to the live Cultural Gabfest, and though I am always a little grossed out when I go to events and encounter the other attendees (college-educated, yipster, you girls would be so much prettier without the geek glasses, etc.), it was mostly very fun.  I ran into this girl who was a year ahead of me in college and texted my friend about it.  My friend texted back something about Bob Saget’s twitter.  I spotted this other girl who I’m 95% sure is a famous Tumblr-er who I kind of hate for no reason, and texted another friend about it.  My friend texted back “stab her.”  It was great!

[I realize I sound like the pendulum has swung and I’m now manic.  I don’t think I am.  Just enjoying the novelty of a good mood.]

-I want to write an essay for This Recording about Now & Then and how, even though it’s just a girl power ripoff of Stand By Me, it’s still the best.

-I bought a new skirt at The Gap.  Sometimes when I’m shopping and I really love something, I say to myself, “I can’t have that skirt exist in the world and me not own it.  I simply can’t.”  As someone who’s super into florals, I am having quite a season.

This isn’t in order or well-written but whatever, livejournal-blr.

Thinking about things I do that depress me, and reading Tumblr is actually a big one.  Well I’m not positive about the nature of the causality, actually, but suffice it to say that reading Tumblr makes me feel bad some/a lot of the time.  Maybe because it’s a “social” site that I really only lurk on, so everytime I “like” a post, I feel creepy and bad about my lack of social capital here, and how that’s my choice.  I also feel bad about my Google reader and the amount of time I spend on the internet in general.  I am thinking about things I can do that I won’t feel bad about.  One of the most common pieces of advice for dealing with depression is to start exercising.  Start “working on mah fitness” as noted physical trainer Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino (?) once semi-memorably said.

Obviously this is my depressed state of mind speaking, but I hate exercising.  I plan to start doing so eventually because I’m getting fat but it would be nice not to be, and I’m overdue to begin anew the cycle of losing a few pounds and then gaining back twice that much.  (Also LOL I want to move to New York and you’re not allowed to be fat there.)  But I don’t enjoy exercising.  Mentally, it’s just more stuff I don’t want to deal with: feeling self-conscious at the gym.  Being trapped with my own thoughts while being miserable on the treadmill.  Never underestimate the things I will do to avoid being alone with my thoughts, guys.  I know that’s an odd thing for someone who spends every waking hour worrying to say, but seriously, the idea of running around the park while listening to music and “reflecting” is BAD NEWS to me, not nearly enough to distract me from thinking “shitwhatamIdoinglifeispain!”  The simple solution to this is that I should try an exercise program that isn’t so solitary.  Well, no thank you.  I don’t want to.  Remember that time I tried spinning?   Please don’t make me do that again.  But doing things you don’t want to do can be good for you!  I hate having these tiresome aguments with myself/other people.  I would like to be the kind of person that does yoga (and, ok, is lithe and chub-free in my yoga pants), but when I think about how awkward that first class would be, that “Oh, well I can sort of…touch my toes?” moment, the lightbulb above my head that will go off and remind me that I never was able to do a proper cartwheel despite years of dance classes so taking up something involving gymnastics is obviously not going to suit me… you know, shut it down.

I’m wrestling with basic questions.  What do people do to enjoy their lives?  Why am I even on this earth?  I mean me, specifically.  I understand that life can be pretty fun/meaningful for some people who are happy and enjoy their friends and family, but lately I’ve just been angry at my parents for having me.  (I’m 22 years old, so this is a very mature and constructive line of thought.)  We’ll call this a rebuilding period.  Not for nothing but I think I’ve reached the stage of my depression (yeah, I’ve been here before) where I’m open to picking up self-help and inspirational books and having “aha!” moments.  This is not a bad first step.  Just give in.

Progress report, quarter…4 I believe?

My new psychologist, who I haven’t really committed to yet, made some good points tonight. They were probably also super obvious, but I am apparently in remedial therapy after four years of this stuff, so super obvious is still necessary.  I was talking about how much I hate my temp job and how I can’t wait until it ends, and he seemed appalled that I didn’t want to find a new one right away.  At first I was all, “oh, this guy doesn’t understand meeeee,” but then he made the point that me wanting to stay home/do nothing all day is (obviously) not an impulse I should allow myself to indulge.  This is somewhat hilarious to me, this insight, because for the last few weeks and for basically my whole life, my main goal in life has sort of always been to spend as much time as possible watching tv/reading magazines/reading blogs/BEING ALONE.  And it’s so obvious that this stuff, the stuff I “like to do,” i.e. ways to withdraw from the world, only makes me more depressed.  And in my lunacy, I’m like, “Ohhh, well I’m so depressed, don’t I deserve to get to stay home and do nothing like I want to, at least?  As some perverse tradeoff for how badly I feel?”  But no, when all you want to do is be alone and watch Hulu and never talk to anyone but maybe have your Dad get you fast food at certain intervals, that’s exactly what you can’t do.  Super obvious.  I am an idiot for clinging to this idea that I can just do nothing and be alone, and yet, I’m still sort of clinging to it.  I said to my doctor (who might hate me) that I resent how much harder I have to work than everyone else to maintain a low-grade happiness, and he made the good point that people with Diabetes have to watch what they eat, so unfortunately I have to put more effort into “putting myself out there” or whatever.  It’s true.  But it still pisses me off!  It would just be so much easier if I could do nothing and speak to no one all day, and I’m depressed dammit, isn’t now the worst possible time to try to force myself out into the world?  I interact with the world.  It’s minimal, but I do it.  And I think it’s minimal and nonbeneficial enough that I would rather just not do it.  My doctor also seemed perterbed when I pulled out the standard “I hate my life” line.  But I do!  Nothing could be truer than me saying that.  And yet, his reaction was sort of like, “what is this, you hate your life?!!?” like some kind of grandpa.  Exactly what I said, dude, I hate my life.  He said he can tell that I’m depressed and I think about things like a depressed person.  I’m glad to be diagnosed in this way—good, I’m depressed, here’s a problem, let’s fix it—but I also don’t feel very validated.  “That’s just the depression talking” is a maddening thing to say, because me and the depression are one in the same.  He also tried to convince me that I should be saving up to move out.  It’s true, I guess, but I’m still stuck to the idea that I should get a job first and then move out.  That I would be that much worse off in I were all alone in New York.  After all, I wouldn’t even have a therapist there.

I wish I had someone to talk about this stuff with.