{"id":849,"date":"2010-07-24T00:48:47","date_gmt":"2010-07-24T04:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=849"},"modified":"2010-07-24T01:47:26","modified_gmt":"2010-07-24T05:47:26","slug":"bad-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=849","title":{"rendered":"Bad day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is this depression?&nbsp; I do not think it meets the clinical criteria for Major Depression, and besides, I am fairly suspicious of the validity of those criteria anyway.&nbsp;  I get up, move, approach things I hate (workplace), evade oncoming traffic when crossing the street, maintain vegetative functions, and resume an unsatisfying sleep without too much difficulty, nor a whole lot of drugs, either.<span class=\"tglsz\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <!--\n imgRsz(1936,2046,15,\"\/img\/broken-leaf.jpg\",\"imghalfleft\",\"onclick='tglsz(this.name);'\");dw(\"  \" + this.name + \"  \");\n\/\/ --><\/script> <\/span><\/p>\n<p>I suspect there may be some who feel now an urge to educate me about what depression is, and how it can manifest.&nbsp; Thanks.&nbsp;  I appreciate your concern.&nbsp; But (and I think this may be included in the aforementioned criteria), I don&#8217;t care.<\/p>\n<p>Can I just be alone?&nbsp;  That is not really an option, you know.&nbsp;  Yeah, sure, there are in this and other cultures examples of the hermit, the solitary meditant, the mystic.&nbsp;  But drawing back from the ideal for a moment, and landing squarely in the middle of a dirty kitchen floor, with laundry to be done, a broken bike to fix and bills to pay, then such romantic vapors dissipate quite completely.<\/p>\n<p>And being alone is not really what I want anyway; I just do not want to sacrifice conscious awareness of that which cannot be known, and I do not want to sever connection with that which cannot be found, both of which are prerequisite conditions for almost every ego-based interpersonal transaction.&nbsp; And discounting and discarding such prerequisites tends to make others view one as &#8216;weird&#8217; or in extreme cases, even as insane.&nbsp;  We relate as egos, it is required by friends, lovers, family members.&nbsp;  &#8220;Get in costume will you!&nbsp;  Stop being so lazy!&nbsp;  Stop being such a dolt!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What are you, nuts?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s phony.&nbsp;  And we know it.&nbsp;  But we just shrug as if it doesn&#8217;t matter, and move on.&nbsp; &nbsp; Maybe we think it is the best we can do.&nbsp;  And maybe it is.&nbsp;  That is truly tragic.&nbsp;  What I am and what you are is infinitely more than that psychological entity we call ego.&nbsp;  In reducing ourselves to that level as a prerequisite for relating, we lose almost everything.&nbsp;  Losses of that magnitude might well result in something that might qualify, according to our crass metrics, as depression.<\/p>\n<p>So, it&#8217;s a bad day.&nbsp;  I am stuck between two untenables.&nbsp;  I don&#8217;t want to engage in the artificial pretense, don the mask, and play the game that costs so much\u00e2\u20ac\u201dtoo much for me.&nbsp;  But I am also too afraid to disarm completely, drop the shields, the masks, and once and for all discard the ego.&nbsp;  A good day is when I play the game and everybody buys it, and I don&#8217;t care how much it costs; that is a &#8216;good&#8217; day.&nbsp;  A bad day is when I know the truth, know how much it costs, and know how impenetrably terrified I am.<\/p>\n<p>Today was a bad day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is this depression?&nbsp; I do not think it meets the clinical criteria for Major Depression, and besides, I am fairly suspicious of the validity of those criteria anyway.&nbsp; I get up, move, approach things I hate (workplace), evade oncoming traffic &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=849\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}