Things I do when I'm feeling depressed

Singing along to: Iron & Wine, Dearest Forsaken

• Contemplate arranging all my books by color. It's OCD made visually arresting: seriously, look at these pictures and tell me that doesn't look awesome. I haven't actually done it yet, but I promise you'll know if I hit rock bottom, because I will have rearranged my bookshelves in accordance with my good friend Roy G. Biv.


• Read Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." That poem is like a seventeenth-century version of "Let's Get It On", and you know what? If I were his coy mistress, it totally would have convinced me.


• Look at job postings. Which, I'm sure you can imagine, does wonders for my mental health.


• Re-read Henry David Thoreau's spectacular essay "Where I Lived and What I Lived For," from Walden. (You can go ahead and read it here, but you should also just go ahead and find yourself a copy of Walden.) Maybe it's the hippie in me, but I've always had a weakness for the Transcendentalists, and that particular essay never fails to resonate.


• Listen to a lot of Iron & Wine. Oh. Wait. I do that all the time, happy, sad, or in between? Never mind.