Involving neither work nor imminent death

Another definition of depression: how you feel when you know that those fantasies* that you've been building in your head** to occupy your time*** while on the bus-- or keep yourself from slamming your head on your desk-- will never come true.****

* Like the one about accidentally running into the drummer of your favorite band (who's cute but seems to live in the continual shadow of the lead singer who you are sure is a dillweed) and you give him directions to Powell's, which he appreciates so he invites you to coffee and between sips of vanilla latte laughs at all your jokes so you exchange cell phone numbers and emails and you start up an endless thread of text messages that binds you closer together than any one night stand would ever do.

** You know, the one with a place in the back, near some unused corner of your Occipital lobe, where you keep your plans for the bookstore or bar that you're going open up in a sleepy part of that European city you like so much where you can play your cool playlists that make all the famous comedians who come in regularly bob their heads in time to while asking you how you came up with such cool names for the cats you let wander unfettered through the bookshelves or bar stools.

*** Time that normally is spent composing the comment that you're going to leave in that blog that's both widely-read and beloved by all; the comment that forces the blogger to cede the point in defeat and generates hundreds of reponses declaring that your comment alone has "won the thread".

**** Not even the one where you don't say something unimaginably stupid to that one cute barista. Not even that one.