One of the problems with suffering from occasional bouts of severe depression is that you can miss the longer, quieter bouts of mild depression -- since, after all, you don't feel that bad. Sure, you're sleeping badly, your appetite is gone, you don't feel like doing anything except hiding under the covers, you find eight excuses not to leave the house, you are irritable, you aren't getting anything done, your blog posts and emails and twitter dwindles down and even when you do post you just feel boring and blah and, yeah, you just feel blah and...

And yeah, that. In this particular case some of this is tied up with my creativity, which seems to be kinda gone at the moment; I'm even struggling to write Tor.com posts (this week's post honestly shouldn't have been hard to write, and yet). Some of this is tied up in other factors. So.

I can't do much about the other factors, but today is a focusing on Small Things To Improve Me day -- taking advantage of the cool weather to head to Goodwill and get some stuff out of here, as part of the "get those areas organized" plan that roselemberg has been encouraging me to do, then maybe heading to the used bookstore to turn in some books and, um, possibly filling in the space just vacated by the Goodwill stuff (look, books are good) or dropping by the library.

I've also been more or less trying, since December, to follow my primary physician's advice and increase the amount of magnesium in my diet, which for me, since I'm not supposed to be eating much from the bread group (a usual source of magnesium for people) means increasing spinach (which annoyingly enough is on my "unlimited" list on my Mayo Clinic diet, a diet that would be a lot more fun if they put "chocolate" on the "unlimited list" instead of "sparingly.") and almonds and other magnesium rich foods. Getting almonds meant getting over my AUUGH ALMONDS COST WHAT reaction, but I reminded myself that actually I have been doing pretty well with my financial food budget so yes, I can splurge on the damn almonds.

It might be my imagination, but I think the magnesium may be helping a bit (that, or my body is shrieking in joy, spinach! She's giving us enough spinach at last!) And since today is a Small Things To Improve Me, I think I shall also hunt down almonds covered in dark chocolate. What?