HAIRSHIRT
Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
|
HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
|
Friday, July 29, 2005Old Man, Look at My Life The depressive mind is not a rational creature. I'll clarify a bit here: I'm not talking about clinical depression. I'm not talking about the kind of depression that leaves the sufferer curled up into a ball, unable to function. I'm talking about the type of person who just tends to get depressed and, if not checked by something, goes through great periods of wallowing. There's a big difference between the two, I think. Clinically depressed people need to get help from a professional, or they stand a chance of being a danger to themselves. Depressives need to lighten up or they're going to annoy everyone around them. I've always had depressive tendencies, and it's really annoying. A tiny thing can set me off and my mind is suddenly filled with reasons why my life sucks and reasons why there's nothing I'll ever be able to do to make it better. Let me give you an example. Yesterday, I was looking at Google News and there was a story about a stuntman on the TV show Smallville who was injured. The injured guy was the main stunt double for star Tom Welling. His name is Christopher Sayour; he's 35 and, in addition to being Welling's stunt double, he's the show's stunt coordinator. The article I read described him as a "veteran stuntman". He's in critical condition after taking a nasty fall on the set. Really awful thing to happen to him. So how the hell, you might ask, does this make me depressed? Is it that I feel incredible empathy for the poor guy's suffering? No. Is it that, as a comic book fan, I worry that the "Superman curse" that seems to have plagued many television and movie actors involved in bringing the Man of Steel to life has struck again and will somehow derail the franchise? Not even a little. Is it the self-indulgent habit of asking questions just so I can answer them? Probably a little, but that's not important right now. The reason this is depressing to me is that the guy's a "veteran stuntman" at age 35. I'm going to be 35 in a few months. I will never be a stuntman. Do I want to be a stuntman? Hell no. I've not had the slightest desire to become a stuntman since a brief two week period when I was really into Lee Majors' brilliant stuntman/bounty-hunter series The Fall Guy in 1981. Even that had less to do with any romanticizing I had of the profession than with Majors' melodious singing of the theme song. So why does the fact that I'll never be a stuntman depress me? It depresses me because, if that was something that I really, really wanted to do with my life, I now couldn't. I'm too fucking old to do it. It's a young man's profession. At 35, you're a "veteran" stuntman, moving into stunt coordinator jobs. So, no matter how much I trained; no matter if I was able to get into really great shape; no matter how strong my desire, there is no way I could do it for a living. And it's just one of many jobs--whether I have any desire to do them or not--that are now closed off to me. I'll never be a cop. I'll never be a professional baseball player. I'll never be an ice dancer. That's the one that really stings. And, again, it's not that I'd ever be the slightest bit interested in being any of these things. It's the fact that I now can't. And every year older I get--hell, every day older I get--I add more jobs to that list. And that'll keep on happening until the only job on the list is the one I'm doing and I'll look at the list and I'll go, "Hey, how the hell did I wind up with nothing on the list but 'Manager of the Newark Mall Orange Julius'?" The depressive mind is not rational. If you want to be depressed, you can't let logic get in your way. Here, by the way, is a picture of me, looking old.
|
|
|||
| . | |||||
