Watch this TED talk by writer Andrew Solomon if you have any interest in what depression feels like, viscerally, in the moment.  The “show transcript” button just below the video will bring that up for you as well.

Depression, the secret we share.

“Help! I’m in a nutshell! How did I get into this nutshell? Look at the size of this bloody great big nutshell! What sort of shell has a nut like this?”

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Anyway.  We moved from smack down in the middle of Silicon Everything up into San Francisco, right off the ocean, right off the park.  We’re in the exact same neighborhood, the exact same corner of it that my husband remembered from 90s nostalgia, and isn’t that cool?  The ocean is amazing, the park is restful, the neighborhood full of surfers and aimless drifters and busy busy bees.

I sold a poem this year, which is one of the proudest things I’ve done.  I sent out another one and never heard back, so it’s time to send out more rather than stuff everything back under the proverbial bushel for another twenty years.

I left my retail job at Apple, which precipitated the worst attack of depression/inertia/crap that I’ve felt in the last few years.  It isn’t money, it’s occupation.  I don’t know, contributing, doing, getting out of the house.  When I’m home, everything preys on everything else until I’m like a turtle flipped over on its shell, unable to do anything but flail.

We went to London for our honeymoon, and even though I was so sick the whole time, it was fantastic.  We went to Disneyland a couple of times and basked in excellent customer service and that odd sense of Americana belonging that comes with Disney and having the privilege to afford it and travel to it and all the rest.  We went to Austin and San Antonio too, and LoneStarCon, and BigBadCon here in Oakland.  We didn’t game nearly enough.  I was in a great Lexicon game.  I create and role-play stories with amazing friends.

I started poking at crafts – I’ve been obsessively folding paper and considering all sorts of adjacent paper-related things.  Orgami has proven to be really absorbing – it’s a match between geometry and handiwork, and somehow that’s really satisfying.

I didn’t read enough.  I loved a few movies, like Pacific Rim.   I read a ton of comics.  I am so happy I bought a Spotify subscription.  I whined about not upgrading my phone.  I became completely obsessed with nail polish.  I ate poorly, but walked more than the year before.  I have some sort of dental problem that needs attention.  I bought eyeglasses a few days ago, after not doing so since before my first husband died.  I bought them just before he passed, right?  And even though they’re scratched and nasty, I don’t know.  It’s a thing.  But new glasses are coming, and maybe I’ll see more clearly.

2014 thoughts:  write more, walk more, be kinder to myself.  love more.  be less afraid.