Depression is a Lying Bastard Fest

[untonuggan]

It has come to my attention that it is That Time of Year again for most people with SAD in the Northern Hemisphere, and that for many other folks Bad Things and/or Anniversaries seem to be piling up. At times like this, it is hard to remember that Depression is a Lying Bastard and that it *does* get better again.

So! A friend and I came up with the Depression is a Lying Bastard Fest. There are many ways to participate in comments below:

• a gratitude list (because there are still good things in the world) or a list of good things
• something you are proud of (a la the Monday Pride thread)
• a funny poem (limmericks work well here)
• cute things! animals, babies, whatever floats your boat!
• anti-winter and/or anti-depression manifestos! This can be in the form of a poem or a simple declaration of "Fuck you, brain weasels, and your lying ways! I will not believe your lies!"

Feel free to comment on someone's comment if you find it particularly moving, but please keep things positive. Anonymous comments are currently turned on. (Please don't abuse them.)

If this grows and becomes very popular, or if you have more ideas, feel free to spread the Depression is a Lying Bastard Fest to your own journal or comm! Also, I would love it if you linked back here so that we got more participants. ^_^

Comments

[erika]

I hereby offer the "brain weasels are like bad code" analogy up for any other software engineer / giant computer geeks it may help.

(If this does not help you, or you find it offensive, I hope you realize that was not the spirit in which this was intended.)

Credit should also go to nonethefewer for our synchronous spawning of this analogy. I honestly couldn't tell you who thought of it first and I'm willing to bet she couldn't either. That having been said:

All types of brain weasels can be likened to buggy code. When you realize that it's having unwanted, unintended effects in your life, so you try to debug it yourself. After all, you wrote the code your brain runs on, right? ... well, maybe not.

Think about it. As you grew up, your parents, family members, teachers, peers, friends, youth groups, etc all gave you ideas, gave you opinions, gave you advice, demanded that you follow [perhaps arbitrary] rules & commands, gave you homework and often you were told: "listen to X, they are teaching you things." Many of the things they taught you were helpful. Some of the ideas they passed along are not.

Plus, it's not like you could control your literal genetic code, or how that was influenced by your socioeconomic environment, or your psychosocial environment, for that matter. So... you begin to realize, perhaps, this is a bigger endeavor than you thought.

Cruft! Bad ideas! Legacy coding, in other words. It's old, and it's buggy, and you very well might not be able to fix it yourself because this is all legacy code.

Don't be afraid to ask others for bug-fixes and patches. Don't be afraid to consult an expert, like a therapist or a psychiatrist or other psyche-healer or whomever has training in this that you're comfortable bringing it to.

Sometimes when I think of my brain this way, it makes it easier to be compassionate towards myself. "Awww, brain, you're all stuck in a do-while loop," I think. "Have you considered arrays? Pythonic tuples?"

It's okay, brain of mine. You were partially coded way back in 1985; come on, COBOL was cutting edge back then. I'm not getting RID of the programs—nope nope—this is just an upgrade. It'll be as gentle as possible, I promise.

I also like this analogy because ... debugging code is just a thing that has to happen. There's no real value judgment attached: you're not a WORSE programmer because you have to debug your code. In fact, I'd argue that the best programmers debug their code as frequently as required and ask expert advice whenever necessary.

(Plus, it helps me not to smash people's faces in when they say shit like "MOAR WILLPOWER will overcome your clinical depression!" It's like awww, it's like you're secretly a commodore 64, still around! still got your CPU in your keyboard! still demagnetizing tapes because they're stored on top of the tape drive like the manual says to do!)

[green_knight]

Legacy code is such an awesome way of thinking about it. And at the time, it made perfect sense and was the best that you could do, and it did the job. With hindsight, you can do better.

"Moar Willpower will make your legacy code run better" is such an awesomely nonsensical statement that anyone should see through that. It's not practical advice.

[untonuggan]

I *love* this!!!

[pipisafoat]

That is helpful! Many thanks, Fellow Nerd! :D

[lynnoconnacht]

That... is an awesome analogy. XD (Even though some bits pass me by because my brain is hibernating and thus not as good at interpretation.)

[southernmyst]

This is an excellent analogy!

There's no real value judgment attached: you're not a WORSE programmer because you have to debug your code. In fact, I'd argue that the best programmers debug their code as frequently as required and ask expert advice whenever necessary.

So, so true!