For some, it is the will to power that shapes a life. For others, the desire to love or perhaps the sex drive. For me, it is the will to entertain. The reason I hate depression is that I am not very entertaining when I am depressed. As I recover, the desire to revive the Bobologue stirs within me.
Here's a synopsis of what I've been up to for 2 years. Items made the cut based not on how important they are, but whether I have a witty one-liner to go with it.
| JUN 2002 -- | I graduate and turn 40. See Graduation Diary. | ||||
| I videotape my first Bar Mitzvah. Maybe I should consider Judaism -- I look good in a Yamulkah. The 13-year old girls there are dressed more provocatively than most 30-somethings I know. Some are more stacked than most 30-somethings I know. | |||||
| At church, we do three monologues, from three stages of Moses' life. I do middle-aged Moses, raising sheep in Midian. Doesn't know what God is up to, or where all his youthful passion has gone. Everyone tells me I did a good job, and all I can think of is the old Buck Owens song: "They're gonna put me in the movies/They're gonna make a big star out of me/It's a story about a man who's sad and lonely/And all I gotta do is act naturally." | |||||
| Memo to World Cup players: after you whack somebody, holding your arms up in that "I never touched him" posture doesn't make you look innocent. | |||||
| I start taking swing dance lessons at Caltech, a practice that continues to this day. | |||||
| JUL 2002 -- | I'm not real crazy about watching the All-Star game, but I really have no choice -- otherwise it's three days without *any* baseball. | ||||
| Kaiser turns me down for health insurance. For the reason, they cite "psychosis". I don't know if they mean theirs or mine. | |||||
| I spend most of July without a car and without internet access. It's easy getting along without a car. | |||||
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"Championships are not won in July." -- Dodger Manager Jim Tracy "No, but they can sure be lost in July." -- Dodger Fan Bob Nolty | |||||
| Sometimes I think the less depressed I am, the more unhappy I am. When depression is out of the way, I have time to think about what's wrong with my life. | |||||
| AUG 2002 -- | IT'S A SMALL DENOMININATION AFTER ALL: I'm excited when I notice the Mennonite mission magazine has a cover story on missional churches -- I want to see examples of churches that are doing it better than my church. Then I find one of the four churches featured in the article is my church. And there, on page 7, is my picture. | ||||
| SHE: (paraphrased) "So when you were uninsured and submitted your application for the guaranteed-issue insurance program, we didn't figure out that what you wanted was for us to process the application and give you an answer. Good thing you called a month later to ask about the status. Now that we know you want us to actually process your application, we'll start tomorrow." | |||||
| SEP 2002 -- | I watch The Searchers (1956), considered by many to be the greatest Western ever made. From this, I conclude that I just don't like Westerns. Of course there are some beautiful shots of Monument Valley, but that's somewhat mitigated by the script insisting that it is cotton-farming land in Texas, when it is obviously neither. | ||||
| We form a car co-op: five of us sharing three cars. We have a calendar page on Yahoo where we check cars out. | |||||
| Living with a rock band is not as fun as Monkees episodes would have you believe. I make plans to move out. | |||||
| NOV 2002 -- | And to the Republicans for which it stands. | ||||
| I move into a nice new house 60 feet from my previous house. One of my housemates, however, is aural-retentive. I have to start paying more attention to all the noises I make when video editing, or just living. | |||||
| After six months without health insurance or anti- depressants, I hit bottom. Every so often I lose the will to function and just sit down wherever I am and stare into space for a while. | |||||
| DEC 2002 -- | I get a high-powered broker who figures out how to get me insurance. Rick (my business partner) and I form an insurance group of two. Groups are harder (legally) to turn down than individuals. I get a psychiatrist. I get drugs. I get better. | ||||
| JAN 2003 -- | Driving to Caltech about midnight to pick up my mail, I notice a lonely postdoc trudging in a depressed way back to the lab to check a result. I feel a twinge of jealousy. | ||||
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| FEB 2003 -- | I visit Hanoi. Unfortunately, my notes for a travelogue are lost. | ||||
| MAR 2003 -- | I have a bad day. | ||||
| APR 2003 -- |
Step 1) Live in a house for 7 months. Step 2) Buy a rosemary seedling at a nursery. Step 3) 4 days later notice a pre-existing mature rosemary bush 6 feet from your door. | ||||
| Memo to Snapple: In what sense is high fructose corn syrup "All Natural"? Are you just saying it's made out of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen? | |||||
| Stop her before she knights again! Who's next to join Sir Mick -- Sir Johnny Rotten? Sir Mr. Bean? | |||||
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| JUN 2003 -- | On a Navy trip to San Antonio, I volunteer twice to give up my seat and wind up with $600 in travel vouchers on Delta. I'm going to Cambodia! | ||||
| JUL -- FEB | I am (under the care of my psychiatrist) trying different anti-depressants to find something effective without side effects. Many of them don't work. Life is OK, but due to depression few things from this period strike me as entertaining enough to mention. Things stabilize in February, with 50 mg of Zoloft per day. | ||||
| NOV 2003 -- | Hey Arnold, why don't you try respecting women and groping Nazis? | ||||
| MAR 2004 -- | I give up sweets for Lent. Not so much a spiritual quest as a biological experiment -- I want to see if it accounts for my needing 10-13 hours of sleep per day. I don't find it difficult, but I do find it very boring. | ||||
| [[[Ironically, I had done the same experiment 2 years ago and forgotten about it. I recently came across it in an old bobologue. Conclusion: my hyperconsumption of sugar is not affecting my sleep significantly, but may be destroying my memory.]]] | |||||
| APR 2004 -- | I see old friends Sandy and Paul in Wheaton. Many great aspects to the weekend, but the two most anecdotal involve the 4-year-old Corinne: | ||||
| CORINNE: I want to go to fairy school. MATT (the 8-year-old): You can't! There's no such thing as fairy school! Mom, tell her! SANDY: Well, Corinne, if there were a fairy school, what do you think you would do there? CORINNE: Whatever the teacher told me to. | |||||
| Christmas Song sung by Corinne, as the nativity scene figures on the floor looked up at the Barbie sticker on the window: "Barbie looks down from heaven/USA USA USA/And smiles on the baby Jesus/USA USA USA" | |||||
| After Chicago I fly to Seattle in the middle seat of a row of three with a cumulative weight of 650 pounds. I'm not saying each of these guys need two seats, but they need at least a seat and a quarter, which leaves me cowering in half a seat in the middle. Not only do I have a thigh riding in on me on either side, but their round backs put their massive shoulders about two inches in front of me, restraining me like a harness at Magic Mountain. | |||||
| Seattle is more gorgeous than I was prepared for, but begs the question: If a glacier flows across the Pacific Northwest, does it make a Sound? While there, I go see Casablanca at the Nordic Heritage Museum. Why there? Because Ingrid Bergman is Swedish, silly. | |||||
| MAY 2004 -- | Cambodia. See my travelogue. Since returning, my sleep has been irregular due to jet lag. And other stuff has been irregular due to bacteria. | ||||
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