It ain't easy to be bold in an unknown city

sky, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Yeah, yeah, we all know the Classic Signs of Depression. (Or maybe we don't - I just had to look them up. Interesting. Plus, god damn it, I thought I had lost weight because I am so fine and virtuous and here the Mayo Clinic explains that my pants are fitting better for the same reason that I can't get up in the morning. Well, shit.)

But I have a set of easily recognizable Un-Classic Signs of Depression.

• You realize that the cheap shampoo you switched to is killing your hair, and you keep using it anyway, just to finish the bottle.


• You listen exclusively to The The for a few days straight (Liblif, you were totally right - a little Matt Johnson goes a long way).


• Blog posts slow to a trickle.


• Island or peninsula? Or nook? You obsess over the design for the kitchen renovation, convinced that if you don't make the right decision, you will regret it, maybe not today, but tomorrow, and for the rest of your life.


• You read Vanity Fair magazine - cover to motherfucking cover (except for the big political article, of course). And despite what you're thinking, this is not an activity entirely without value: did you know that the new Indiana Jones movie includes Shia LeBaeiouf, brings back Karen Allen and may be about space aliens? Well I do, because I read Vanity Fair cover to cover Tuesday night.
  


• You sign up for a children's literature reading group that has on its reading list Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron. Blurb:

"Not since The Catcher in the Rye has a novel captured the deep and almost physical ache of adolescent existential sadness as trenchantly as the perfectly titled Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You."

Oh, god.

And one sure sign that depression may be abating:

• Joking about it.