Reach for the Light!
I go through periodic slumps (maybe I’m dysthymic?) and periodic stretches of frenzied activity (hypomania, anybody?). Right now, I’m in a slump that has lasted for the past two or three months. The symptoms are all there: my house is a disaster, I’m behind in all my homework, and I’ve been eating everything in sight and avoiding exercise and social interaction. I don’t have the attention span for reading new books, watching new movies or sitting through any kind of TV. I haven’t been cooking, and I haven’t been writing.
But there’s hope. I’ve started doing my homework, and turning it in more or less on time (I know! shades of freshman year, anyone?); I’ve started being proactive and energetic at work again; and I’m starting to feel the urge to write, and cook, and exercise. Battlestar Galactica is back(!!!!!), and I watched the whole episode in one sitting. I sat through an hour of television! It’s a breakthrough, people.
Over the past couple of weeks, as I’ve started meandering back to the surface of things from the mucky depths I had subsided to, I’ve started feeling an itch to read. But I couldn’t read new books—I craved familiar, unthreatening tastes: Anne McCaffrey, Weis & Hickman, Susan Cooper, Robin McKinley. And let me tell you, it is really sad when you go back to your long-remembered teen favorites and discover how hollow and unsatisfying they are. McCaffrey is an awful writer. Weis & Hickman are funny, but they can’t do serious believably, and they have an odd idea of what real human relationships are like. Susan Cooper’s apocalyptic novels are much too Britain-centric. Shattered illusions like these are the cost of growing up, I suspect.
But Robin McKinley’s Sunshine will never pall. It’s axiomatic.
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April 9th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Okay, good. I was worried that you were going to trash on Robin McKinley and thereby ruin her forever for me. Whew.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
No, never. Well, okay, I might rag a little on her Dragonhaven semi-trainwreck. But Sunshine is cinnamon-roll-laden, bloodsucking genius. Two of my imaginary boyfriends are in that book, as well as my imaginary favorite eatery and my imaginary favorite landlady. It’s like a dark, demon/vampire/were-chicken-populated slice of heaven.
April 25th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Oh no. You’re describing me. I have no desire to work on any of the papers that are due. My brother came over to my house today. He was polite and instead of saying “I can’t believe what a cluttered mess your house is” refrained and merely said, “You apartment has…character.” I have been forcing myself out of the house because I realized that maybe I should spend some time with people my own age. The good thing is I don’t have a kitchen so I have very little food in the house so I haven’t succumbed to the eating everything in sight.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Yeah, having food in the house is a real problem for me. Unfortunately, the fitness program I joined a couple weeks ago requires me to eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables at all hours of the day, so I pretty much have to keep my cupboards and refrigerator stocked. And yet I’m somehow supposed to eat wisely and maturely and not go through all of my Triscuits and apples and eggs in one day? How is this possible?