#7. It's Not Just Good--It's Great Depression
For starters, I’m FINE. In fact, I’m doing good!
Anyway, I have the depressions. I've had them for the better part of fifteen years, but they didn't get really bad until about four years ago. For whatever reason (I actually have a theory) my depression went downhill four years ago. I am perfectly healthy in the morning and throughout my day, but I am bedridden from about 3:00pm on.
I'm used to it. Every year or so my doctor tries a new treatment and it works for a while, and then it stops. In the most recent incarnation, my meds were changed in September and I was doing so good that I wrote an entire book (mostly from bed)!
But things aren’t always as good.
This last week was particularly bad--not necessarily worse than a regular bout of depression, but it had just seemed to be going on and on and on. So I posted about it on Facebook. And I thought that I was being insightful, but apparently my friends thought it was a cry for help, because several of them reached out to me and asked if I was in any danger.
Now, again, I'm fine. I have not had any suicidal ideation in almost seven years.
The thing that I think is remarkable and lovely is that so many people were not only paying close attention to me, but also cared enough to say something, and also felt comfortable saying something. And I don't mean that in a "I'm glad I got attention" way, but in a "people are really wonderful" way.
I have been mentally ill for going on sixteen years, and I would not have made it through any of it without a strong support system. Studies have shown that isolation is one of the leading risk factors for suicide, and I think that the onus is on all of us to reach out to people who might not be openly suffering, but just who... we haven't heard much from in a while.
I discovered long ago that it was easier to suffer in public than to suffer in silence, and maybe I OVER share. But there are a lot of people who just kind of drift into the background and disappear. Those are the ones that we need to be more aware of.
There are very good non-profits out there to help with this, including the Foundation for Social Connection, or LBFE. But what I'd encourage you to do this week is to scroll through your phone, find someone that you haven't heard from in a while, and shoot them a text. Just tell them that you're thinking of them, and ask how they're doing.
And, of course, if you're the one who's suffering, don't hesitate to dial 988 for the Suicide Hotline. Trust me--I've been there. I've had to call it. And it helps.
And I promise that it can get better.
Hey, if you just want to talk to someone, send me an email at robisonwells@gmail.com. I will reply.
Fun and Interesting Things Going On
#1. Have you heard that we may have found signs of life??? On a planet with the very sci-fi name of K2-18 B, which is some 120 light years away, there is dimethyl sulfide. And the thing about dimethyl sulfide that is so neat is that, on Earth, it is mainly created by plankton. Yes, there are other ways it can form, but it's an awfully good marker that life MIGHT be there. In this article in Scientific American: "'On Earth, it’s considered really a clean, unambiguous biosignature,' says Nora Hänni, a chemist at the University of Bern in Switzerland."
But before we get too excited, that article also goes on to say that it's certainly not hard proof of anything. And, as Hank Green pointed out, life with the complexity of plankton has existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, but intelligent life has only existed for the tiniest, smallest, microscopic fraction of that time.
So maybe plankton, maybe?? But probably not Jawas or Klingons.
#2. In 3 months, the tallest bridge in the world will be complete. The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge in China will be 2051 feet over the canyon floor, which is a really, really long way. That is almost two Empire State Buildings stacked up tall.
This suspension bridge is needed, however, because getting across that canyon is a really big pain in the butt, and people need to cross it every day. They say that it will cut a 70 minute car trip down to a 2 minute car trip.
(The next tallest bridge is also in China, also crossing that same canyon, about 120 miles away.
#3. When I lived in New Mexico, I made it a point to visit as many archaeological sites as possible--and there were a lot. And in college I even went on a summer semester dig and survey in Southern Utah. And it was remarkable to find so much as an arrowhead from the Ancestral Puebloans, who lived a thousand years ago.
Which makes this find in San Esteban Rockshelter near Marfa, Texas, to be all the more wonderful. Archaeologists found what they call a hunting kit, made up of "a throwing spear, a boomerang, and several wooden poisoned-tipped darts and stone projectiles". And it was just laying there, at the back of a cave, like someone just laid it out and walked away and no one disturbed it for, get this, 6500 years! Yes, this is an incredibly ancient group of artifacts.
#4. What you are looking at, which you have never seen before, is a Colossal Squid, which was caught on camera for the first time ever. A Colossal Squid can grow up to 23 feet long (this one is only a baby). You have no doubt heard of its cousin, the Giant Squid, which is much longer--at 45 feet--but the Colossal Squid is much chunkier. It weighs 1000 pounds versus the Giant's 600.
These things live in the Antarctic, and, as you can see, are bioluminescent. They're also one of the many, many reasons why I never go in the ocean.
Distractions and Diversions
SciShow ought to go up in the science part of the newsletter, but this one is going down here, because according to SciShow, nobody really knows where chocolate comes from! I mean, we know where it is now. We even know that cacao existed in a cultivated form 6000 years ago in South America. But just like corn used to be grass, and bananas used to be... weird, we don't know who turned cacao from its wild form into is agriculture form. We don't know who or when. It may have happened spontaneously in a lot of different places!
Sideprojects presents to us 5 Ancient Mysteries We Still Haven't Solved. These are the kind of things that you'd really think we've figured out, but we haven't. Like: Zoroaster. He founded a massive religion. But where did he come from? We don't know! Genghis Khan conquered, well, everything, but where is he buried? No one knows!
My dad pointed this one out to me this week. We think that scare tactics are used on us now to talk about pollution, but the modern day has absolutely nothing on Geoffrey Holder channeling the Grim Reaper to tell people that we all killed the planet.
Anyway, that's all for this week. If you want to learn more about me, you can read this. And if you want to talk to me about your mental health, I am always a listening ear.
