So you know how fun it is to imagine scary, dangerous things happening to you? As in, how many fun ways can you imagine yourself dying today? Electrocution. Vehicular collision. Lightning. Terrorist joy. Falling on a treadmill. Choking. And so on and so forth?

Well the bad news is you could die anytime or anywhere. There are genocides and plagues and bad television programs lurking around every corner. Or at least some corners somewhere. The good news is that means that you can leave your house without fear! Or at least without any more fear than you should feel inside your house.

Since you could really die under any circumstances, it’s not so much that this or that place is a death trap, it’s a matter of trading risks. Afraid of planes? Don’t forget to be afraid of cars as well! Afraid of poisonous spiders? Why not try parasites on for size?

Ultimately, what makes you safe isn’t thinking about all of the awful things that could happen to you. Rather, it’s determining what you can prepare for versus what you can’t. And it’s knowing that you can handle this or that situation, and what steps you’d need to take in order to do so. Safety is a state of mind. Because theoretically all of existence could change dramatically tomorrow.

The goal is to find ways of reframing and alleviating each fear that occurs to you. Electrocution? Good thing you always keep appliances away from water. Vehicular collision? Jump out of the cars then watch them crash and burn! Lightning? Just keep your iPod close and let those headphones ground you. Of course you can always imagine ways that everything goes wrong despite your best efforts. The point is: keep imagining. Try to continue your nightmare narratives to a slightly less awful conclusion. For instance, instead of your story ending with you choking to death, perhaps someone notices you struggling, helps you out, and then steals your wallet. A happy ending.

So really everywhere is safe. In that theoretically things could go awfully and yet you’d be able to imagine some way to come out of it alive. It’s your fear, and your negativity, and your narratives. Even if you can’t control the outside world, you can redirect the impressions you carry of it within your own mind.

So you know how good you are at coming up with solutions to things? And you know just how to fix your depression, and then everything you need to do to become a fire-baller… something or the other? And if you could just figure out how to start in on your plans, you’d be good to go?

Planning is procrastinating solving. And sometimes, it’s very useful or important to do. Because that way you take the time to fully weigh and consider your options, and determine the best course of action. Yet while it is certainly beneficial to do some thinking before acting, when you do some preliminary thinking, and then some more thinking, and then just keep doing some thinking instead of acting, that can be a bit less productive.

But it’s so fun. To come up with awesome plans and awesome stories about how everything will be awesome. And it’s hard then, when you realize that the world is awful, and will never be as awesome as all the things you thought and planned in your head. Thing about high expectations is that you’re really just setting yourself up for a bit of a dive. And all those plans you make, can become a prison when you’re afraid to take action because it might not fit into the grand scheme. Or you realize that reality just doesn’t measure up to how you thought everything would go.

And those plans become shackles, when you can’t deviate from them. Or when the guidelines you set for yourself become the measure of your success, and those guidelines just keep shifting so that success is just out of reach. Resetting your base zero helps. Still, those plans… sticky things those plans.

When the plans conflict, or when reality sucks, your plans get derailed. Then the process could start all over again with some new plans, or you could figure out a first step and try that. Then you could figure out a second step and try that after. Not to mention you could take a look at all those things you know you’ve secretly been putting off, and either put them off less secretly, or attempt to deal with some of that shit. It is useful to have goals, and a destination in mind for where you’ll end up after managing your depression. Still, it’s helpful to recognize that the path you take to get there is not likely to be as linear as you expected from the outset.

So you can go ahead and plan and plan away. Make all the plans. Make amazing plans. And when they get all fucked because of the bullshit life likes to surprise you with, that’ll be okay. Because you’ll make new plans. And because as long as you can figure out one next step, you can keep moving forward. Anything beyond that is bonus.

So you know how being depressed sucks and yet you still want to maintain it anyway? Because you’re a pain hoarder, you fear change, or just fucking feel like it? Well you can! You can have your misery and eat it too.

Hm. That isn’t quite right. Regardless, you can keep on being miserable, and try to become not so miserable at the exact same time. This is possible because people can be more than one thing at a time, and also because misery is one of those wonderful chronic conditions that can co-exist with just about any other feeling.

You can be angry and miserable. Or happy and miserable. Or amused and miserable. There are so many mixes and matches! There is no need to get rid of your depression in order to be able to experience other conditions at the same time.

Likely you’ve already realized this. Because you’re probably dragging yourself through the motions of life, and find that you’re fully capable of experiencing other arbitrary feelings while you do so.

And even if you stop feeling miserable for a while and your depression abates, there’s no need to miss it. You can just go mess up your life and make yourself miserable all over again. Even if you were to eliminate your depression, you could always find a way to make some more of it. Undoubtedly, it would be fun to try.

So you can go ahead and grow or change or develop or do stuff ever so slightly differently. Because there’s no reason to sacrifice your pain in the process. Keep your pain. And then do whatever you want with it and everything else.

(My ghost writer’s helping me out with this one! Ha ha!)

So you know how people are always saying not to throw babies out with bathwater? As in, when you’re done with the bath, keep the baby.

When you’re having fun in your depression bath, keep having fun. When you’re done with the depression bath, try to avoid committing suicide. Because you’re the baby in this idiom.

Sometimes it’s tempting to give up. To feel like you’ve made no progress. And because it’s fun to say “FUCK IT.”

“FUCK IT. AGAIN.” And when you’re done, fucking it, go back to bathing. Since baths are so fun. And clean! Mostly. When done for that purpose. Like with normal water. Not other liquids. You get it.

Giving up is pointless. Anyone whose into existential nihilism knows that everything is pointless. Including giving up. Try everything while you’re giving up. Being bored means that there’s plenty of time to do so.

So babies… keep them in the bathwater. Until you want to take them out, dry them off, and just cuddle. BABIES!