MELANCHOLERA

I'm not sure. Are there thoughts roiling in this head? For a reason I can't quite pinpoint I've got the melancholies. However, everything is the same. My job is busy, tiring, and overwhelming. My husband is hardworking and loving. My house is clean. My yoga is daily. It isn't a fat day.

But there are the little off things that just might be what's tipping the scales. A weighty conference call for work. One contact lens seemingly the wrong prescription. An inability to decide what to do for master bedroom bedding. A husband that snores. Frames full of my own design work leaning against walls throughout the house, unhung and going on their third week of waiting for wall space. A work project that's going to require research and creativity at once. A yorkie that I adore but want to throttle because she's totally house trained and still surreptitiously pees in the house. Bits and pieces of Not Quite Right.

Thing is, there are always bits and pieces of Not Quite Right; that's what life's made of, yes? Even the best of days have loose ends, but on those days the loose ends don't seem to matter. Maybe they matter right now.

Perhaps I'm trying to give this lugubriousness meaning by attributing it to loose ends that are easily rectified, making the gloom something I can fix. Granted, one particular loose end took the cake this week, but whenever I go thorough a similar experience it doesn't seem to affect me. I'm not thrilled about this go 'round being an exception. My motivation is nil. My ambition is dead. My apathy is thriving.

I'm glad that right now the feeling I've got is just a gentle melancholy. Earlier this week I was tossed about in a bout of Fire and Brimstone. I hated everything. Everyone. When at a lunch meeting with a coworker I was pining for a machine gun to eradicate the loud volleyball team at a nearby table. Normally, I'd just shake my head or roll my eyes. This time I was out for blood.

No, I'm not like a duck, letting it all roll of my back without a quack, but I'm usually much better at living than I am right now.

Feeling all hateful like this encourages me to dwell on epiphanies that I'd commonly grimace at and let pass or purge through writing out. Instead they run rampant in my head . . . It occurs to me that most people with wildly popular design blogs are actually ugly in person. It occurs to me that desperately seeking meaning in every moment of every day defeats the whole idea of happy happenstance. It occurs to me that people who boast a lot need electroshock therapy for their dearth of self-esteem. It occurs to me that I'm smarter than you are. And cuter. It occurs to me that I just don't care.

I do a lot of driving and that means that I've acquired a certain superhuman patience with the roads. I don't freak out about construction. I don't get riled up when someone cuts me off. I know that it's the nature of the beast, and I put up with it--calmly. Not this week. People who made dumb driving decisions are fortunate that they were in their own car, shut off from me; otherwise, they'd have been assaulted with a string of obscenities and insults that would tear a hole through the most confident of individuals.

I'm simply not myself.