How to tell when you're having a feeling
Robert S. Pasick’s Awakening From the Deep Sleep addresses the complications that arise from the relatively repressive way our culture teaches men to manage their emotions. It was one of the most self-helpful books I’ve read in my life for the single lesson that I took from it: “How to tell when you’re having a feeling”; very practical, step-by-step instructions on how to locate, identify, and analyze your emotions as they happen to you.
I’ve augmented Pasick’s techniques somewhat, based on my own experience. For example, when I spend hours searching the internet for violent viral videos - clips of ignominious persons (usually teens) engaging in idiotic, probably criminal, acts that result in injury (usually to themselves) - that is how I know that I am depressed.
I was depressed this past long weekend; unable to even write in my weblog about why I was depressed. I watched videos of car accidents and teenagers jumping off things and breaking their legs. I didn’t watch that one where the skateboarder attempts to jump from one building to the next, falls, and cracks his head open. I’m talking open, where a piece of his head falls off, and his buddy zooms in on the broken piece, with a little wad of pink brain tissue stuck to it, lying on the asphalt.
When my computer tells me that I’ve spent over two hours watching these things, I know that I am depressed.
This is all just introduction to my story about why I was depressed for most of this past Victoria Day long weekend. It relates to the house and is posted separately.
I’ve augmented Pasick’s techniques somewhat, based on my own experience. For example, when I spend hours searching the internet for violent viral videos - clips of ignominious persons (usually teens) engaging in idiotic, probably criminal, acts that result in injury (usually to themselves) - that is how I know that I am depressed.
I was depressed this past long weekend; unable to even write in my weblog about why I was depressed. I watched videos of car accidents and teenagers jumping off things and breaking their legs. I didn’t watch that one where the skateboarder attempts to jump from one building to the next, falls, and cracks his head open. I’m talking open, where a piece of his head falls off, and his buddy zooms in on the broken piece, with a little wad of pink brain tissue stuck to it, lying on the asphalt.
When my computer tells me that I’ve spent over two hours watching these things, I know that I am depressed.
This is all just introduction to my story about why I was depressed for most of this past Victoria Day long weekend. It relates to the house and is posted separately.