When depression passes, and it always does, it's like a rusty old train disappearing into the distance.  While severe clinical depression doesn't always pass, and can do severe damage to the person suffering from it, what rolls in on my tracks from time to time is garden variety funk.

When I'm on the train, I look  backwards and try to figure out where it came from (did I eat something that caused it?  did somebody say something that set it off?  am I a self-centered pathetic person?).

Is it--we who feel such antipathy for Trump ask each other--the Trump effect?  Does depression come from a sense of powerlessness in a climate of lies and bullying and negative news?  ("Don't rock the boat or you'll lose your votes" seems to be the motto of many in power who must be privately aghast but unwilling to speak out.)

I was talking this week to a younger friend who said that she wakes up every morning since the election with a sense of dread, despondency, and depression.  Limiting our news viewing seems to help.

When depression passes, new energy comes in--and I have enough things to do that I know I'll never live long enough to do them all.

In my next life, I think I'd like to be an artist or decorator.  Nothing stirs my juices at the moment like changing things around in my house and discovering new patterns just moving things from room to room.  Photography, journal-making, travel, good books and movies, and writing--these are constant sources of pleasure.

I've  often mentioned Janna Malamud Smith's book, The Absorbing Errand--the premise being that we should all have things to do that absorb our attention so much that we're less free to worry about other people, ourselves, or even the state of the country.  When we're absorbed in an errand that totally engages our creative energy, depression finds it hard to find a place to land.