Just another day.

Today. Just another day, but at the same time, uhm, not really because today - of all days, today! - I HAVE BEEN SAVED. Someone has finally perfectly translated feelings I often have into intelligible English sentences:

"Have you ever made an effort to voice or give word-shape to your complaints or fears? Have you ever tried to articulate your reasons for stomping along the sidewalk glaring at everyone, or wanting to cry because of a snapped shoelace, or waking up in the middle of the night with a bunch of anxiety squatting on your chest like a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare? When someone asks you “What's wrong?” you try to tell them, and it comes out sounding stupid and petty and doesn't begin to touch the very deep sense of wrongness, you end up talking about the superficial things like the shoelace or how you have a lot of work to do or how you haven't been sleeping well. And that just makes you angrier with yourself, because now you have painted yourself as the sort of person who gets all bent out of shape about shoelaces and work stress. But isn't it easier to articulate the symptoms than the disease? The moral of this story is KEEP IT TO YOURSELF, BUCKO. It's easier for you. It's easier for others, because then they can just say “oh yeah work stress that sucks” and use that as a hook for them to launch into their own tale of woe, which call me cynical but sometimes that feels like what 90% of human conversation is about (everyone else asking, even demanding, that you share your feelings but listening only long enough to explain their own). Of course, the “keep it to yourself” maxim, when it comes to mental suffering, works only for a little while unless one has a safety valve, like a big mountain to look at, or a personal web page (ouch), or the opportunity and energy to go make a lot of extremely loud noise, or a friend who belongs to the other 10%.
I wish so much of my thoughts weren't all tangled up with my moods. I either want to (a) live up to my self-conception of being a logical and thoughtful person, all the time, and not let minor things like Crushing Despair With No Root Cause enter my world, or (b) become a creature solely of mood, and let my overdeveloped self-awareness muscles atrophy. Because when I am being stupid, as above, I know that I am being stupid, and when I am happy I think “Is this me, being happy? Is this what happiness is for me?” and when I am depressed I am never able to fully give in to it, because I totally recognize every little symptom for what it is, and I get all strict and disciplinarian and call myself on my bullshit, and I become irritated with my stupid overdramatic neurochemical system, and I end up just wanting to get over myself already. Which does nothing to fix the depression, but which does add another lovely little layer of self-loathing on top of everything."

Mimi Smartypants, I bow to you. I HAVE FOUND MY SAVIOUR, and it is you. Give it up for Mimi Smartypants everyone. She is one of my favourite bloggers. In fact, whenever Mimi Smartypants fails to update her blog for a few days at a time, I'm so starved of Mimismartypantsness that I have to go through the blog-archive and find something she's written in the past, like some lame, desperate smoker who scans ashtrays for cigarette butts that can be relit. Which is how I came upon the above text (posted back in 2002!) and nearly wept with "I'm not such a freak after all" joy.

A song: Memories (Someone We'll Never Know), the soundtrack to one of the most beautiful scenes from Moon - which you have no excuse not to have seen by now, whoever you are and regardless of how you might feel about sci-fi movies in general.

A video: Kiwi! by Dony Permedi is a cute animation about - how'd you guess? - a kiwi. Which is a type of bird that can't fly. But this particular kiwi is not to be discouraged by this oversight on nature's part. Instead, he/she (I'll stick with 'he' this time, it looks like a 'he' to me) spends what surely must be his entire life nailing trees to the side of a cliff so that, when he decides to jump off it, the kiwi will have created the illusion that he is flying. Visually, this isn't impressive animation but if that story isn't motivational, I'm not sure what is.