Dodging depression.

That time in 1971 when I was getting stoned with a friend, and another friend came by and mentioned that he'd just watched a moon landing.

I remember my shock and alarm at this. I hadn't even been aware it was happening. Me, the science-fiction guy from the time I started reading, who loved the space program. Whose 3rd grade class trooped up to my house to watch John Glenn in orbit.

I think that's when I realized I was in trouble. The dope wasn't good for me, for sure. But more, I was so depressed that things that used to excite me were forgotten.

I was talking to my friend Wes yesterday and mentioned the Facebook post where he was skiing. "I didn't even know you skied."

"Uh, you took me up the Mt. Bachelor the first few times. You were very impatient. You said, 'Just head downhill.'"

"That's not bad advice," I laugh.

I have no memory of this. In fact, that senior year in high school is just one big blur. I was depressed, but the true extent of it didn't hit me until my first year at the U of O, when I spent most of the last term in my dorm room, living on coca cola, cigarettes, and Bob's Burgers.

I choose not to dwell on that decade in my life. But sometimes I get a whiff of that deep despair and numbness and it frightens me a little.

I'm pretty cheerful, generally. If not cheerful, grumpy. But rarely depressed. I've been really lucky. The clinical depression never came back, though that was always a distinct possibility.

This semi-retirement is weird. I'm reminiscing much more often. I'm spending time listening to music. I'm diving into podcasts and Youtube videos.

I feel a little like I did as a teenager. Time seems to stretch. The work-life was one pressure filled 30 year time-capsule which is now in my past.

God, I'm lazy.