This past weekend and earlier week, I had a severe Depressive crash which is why there was no blog post on Tuesday.  I had to take a mental health day.

I use a capital D to distinguish it from a general malaise, feeling, or mood.  While one’s mood and emotional state is more serious than people often give credit too, what I’m discussing here is a clinically-recognized disease for which I am on medication and seeking therapy for.  I share this because there’s still (and likely will always be) a stigma attached to mental illness, especially the more amorphous and subtle kinds like Depression.

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This morning looked very different from what I had hoped.  But here we are.

For those of you as disillusioned, as ashamed, as horrified, as I, I urge you to get some rest and conserve your strength.  We have long days ahead of us and exhaustion is as real a threat as apathy.

A setback is not a defeat, and a loss today is not a loss tomorrow.

Hate, racism, sexism, bigotry, and fear will not win out.

So we went to buy a Christmas tree this weekend.

My girlfriend and I headed a block down the road to the nearest tree seller set up in a pharmacy parking lot. Because nothing says quality arboreal decorations like a trailer parked in the back of a Rite-Aid parking lot. We got down there to a small set-up of a few dozen trees that were, as near as I could tell, identical. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a white pine and a white spruce or a spruce pine or whatever else the other options are. Hell, I’m lucky to tell the difference between a deciduous and an evergreen. Meanwhile, my girlfriend was wondering through, debating between Canaan fir and a Douglas fir and a Scotch pine.

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This past Thursday was Thanksgiving (at least, here in the United States). It’s a holiday of dubious origin, predicated on some very shaky historical tales, but whatever it’s beginnings, it’s now a day when the majority of the country shuts down and spends time with family and friends. Granted, the very next day is a mass sacrifice to consumerism but whatever.

I spent much of Wednesday night through Sunday off my computers and, in general, off-line. I checked Facebook a few times, sent a tweet or two, but aside from texting and calling loved ones, I really did very little digitally.

Oh, what a wonderful time.

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