Cerebral Activity Beats Antidepressants: Bad Day Blaaahg

First I woke up this morning in my default mood--quiet, eupeptic, apt to laugh easily.

Then I took in a few facts of my life that I don't usually write about because they're so familiar.

Fact: it rained all day yesterday. The roof, which was loosened by the cyclone in April, has never actually been mended; I slept in the office room because I still don't have lights--or, on a cold night like last night, heat--in my bedroom. The office room is in the newer part of the house where the attic didn't flood and short out the electricity because there is no finished attic, so rain just leaks inside. Although there are four buckets arranged on the floor in the office room, enough water managed to splash out of them that the floor was still wet. Fact: setting my feet on a wet floor early in the morning has a very dampening effect on my mood.

Fact: there weren't any encouraging phone messages about interesting jobs this morning, either, because there is no phone. I have no idea how the cyclone may have affected the phone wiring in my house. People weren't calling about jobs, so the phone had been disconnected to save money before the cyclone hit.

Fact: I have a little over $2 in liquid assets, until whenever I do a job or sell something. I was planning to use this money to buy today's lunch. Then I used up the last of a personal hygiene product I use before putting on clothes every day. Do I eat today, or smell normal tomorrow? I'm still deciding.

Fact: nobody, not even the Empress of Frugal, can live this way for long. I don't know exactly how many more days I can eat a cheap junky meal, or none, before going diabetic. I know that, without being diabetic, I went into and out of ketoacetosis from "starvation" a few times last winter. I could have died; people younger and stronger than I am, who weren't diabetic, have died from ketoacetosis. It's a quick, painless, nonviolent way to go, and if people don't appreciate what I'm doing in this world enough to pay me enough to prevent it, I choose to let it happen when it happens.

I do not want "help" just to go on breathing a little longer. I've had an awesome, adventurous life. I'm not particularly interested in dragging through a miserable, pitiable anticlimax to the first half of my lifespan. I've loved and lost some incredible people, and the idea of joining them in the hereafter as an active, healthy, independent person who can still be mistaken for a "perky brunette student" (at least at a distance) appeals to me a lot more than the idea of hanging on to this world as a useless welfare cheat.

For now, I can still get out of bed and start writing, on an empty stomach. Ah...although there weren't any paid job orders on the phone this morning, the computer at least offers a mental challenge. A living writer I've quoted on this blog wants to be interviewed. We were acquaintances, 27 years ago, but not close friends, so what questions am I going to ask her? I focus on solving this problem, and distract myself from the facts of my depression-free, but extremely discouraging life as a prematurely retired poverty-stricken widow.

The interview will be a separate post, later. Let's finish this one now, because I don't intend to go on writing about this topic.

If anybody who knows me in real life reads this post, I know what the obligatory reaction will be. "Oh, but we'll miss you..." Sit on it. Bite your tongue. If your emotional feelings do not produce corresponding behaviors, specifically the behaviors of thanking me and paying me for specific things I do, they're not worth talking or writing about.

I'm still healthy. I'm still eupeptic. I'm not even diabetic yet. I got out of bed, turned the hot-air fan on the wet patch on the floor, fed the cats, and walked to the computer center on an empty stomach. If you start paying me--for jobs in real life, or for writing on the Internet--there's no reason to anticipate that I'll die, or become ill, or even show more grey hair than I already have, during the next year or two.

So, if you care, say it now. With cash.