Aphelion Editorial 049

Hello and welcome!

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who e-mailed me asking after my health. Your good wishes helped keep my spirits up. I begun to be able to eat again, and have regained 5 of the fifteen pounds that I lost last month. I must say that I prefer the loss of the 15 pounds that I managed thru eating better and getting lots of exercise that I managed during my vacation to losing the additional weight VIA botulism. As I said, I've regained my appetite and am doing much better.

Secondly, I'd like to once again apologise for the lateness of this issue. Either I was at work, home sick, or sitting out a thunderstorm almost every day of June. It was almost comic. When I was home, I either had to spend most of my day in the bathroom, or I couldn't use the computer because of thunderstorms. When I was working, I'd have no computer access. I'm sorry, but the real world is rather cruel at times.

And as for what I should rant about this month... Well, I've gotten rather annoyed at my TV dish provider for lack of programming flexibility, the Fox TV Network and the BBC for still not allowing the Paul McGann Dr. Who TV movie to be released in the US on video (&/or DVD) yet, Thor for making me need to buy a replacement VCR for the one shorted out by lightning and for not allowing me on line last month, at the new Spiderman movie for making his web-shooters a mutant power rather than the original mechanical devices tinkered together by Peter Parker's genius, at a "local restaurant" for serving tainted food, but mostly I'm mad at my self for getting depressed over all the downers my life has been throwing me lately. I don't like being depressed, being a writer is as close to mental illness as I'd like to get. I don't need the downswing of a manic/depressive cycle on top of everything else. But how does one go about dragging one's self out of it?

Simple- keep busy. The Great American Solution to Everything- keep busy, do something to take your mind off your problems. Things will get better if you work at them. Don't give yourself time to dwell on what's going wrong, get busy doing something right- and right now.

So I did, and things still went wrong. (I'll get you for this, Murphy!) But I kept at it and things began to turn around. I reached the bottom of the bell curve and survived to begin the next ascent. So now I'm playing catch-up with all the things I missed. I guess the moral of the story is to fight depression rather than submit to it. Find things that make you happy and do them more often. Don't give up, don't give in, claw your way out of the hole as best you can. Friends help, work helps, taking a vacation sometimes helps- but mostly, doing those things that you've come to love is the best medicine.

Thanks for your time.

Dan

THE END

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