Some people think that you can’t function properly while working through a severe, sudden, unexpected bout of depression. Some people, I always say, are crazy! (Haha – get it?!? It’s funny because Americans are experiencing record levels of depression and everybody’s advice about how to fix it is universally bad and unhelpful!) There are a bunch of cool ways to bust yourself out of your rut and get your head back in the “I Care About Life” game!

Here are some fun and exciting ways you, too, can Have Fun….. With Depression!

101 Fun Games To Play When You’re Depressed! 

– Crying for no reason! This one is the most fun when it happens unexpectedly! Give yourself extra bonus points if you also hate yourself when your face turns red and blotchy!

– Being sad for no reason! You win! There is literally no reason why you’re sad! You just are! 1000 Star Points to You!

– Indulge in Self-Care! This one is fun because if you just really focus on you, you’ll instantly feel better! Buy some slippers or whatever! Hashtag #self-care hashtag #blessed! Even if the last thing you want to do is think about yourself because right now, all you can do is think about yourself, and ooohf, you’re terrible!

– Take a bubble bath! Look at your dumb stupid ugly saggy body…. underwater!

– Make some tea! Are you still sad? Of course you are, you piece of crap!

– Eat something! But not too much of something! Because you shouldn’t use food as an unhealthy crutch to make yourself feel better! Also eat something healthy, so you don’t gain weight. Also eat something cheap, because you don’t want to spend unnecessary money on food. Did you know that you could afford to be a homeowner if you didn’t order avocado toast at Starbucks that one time? So eat something both cheap and healthy. It’s a banana! You hate bananas! Surprise!

– Drink something! Water is good for you! Fruit juice has calories! Seltzer is just expensive burp water! Add a lime, you bougie dumpster fire!

– Cut back on booze! This is actually good advice except for when you stop drinking and you’re still, maddeningly enough, sad for no reason whatsoever!

– Reminding yourself that some people are victims of systemic poverty and brain tumors and mass shootings and you are none of those people so there’s REALLY no reason why your brain still feels sad and empty and alone and tells you that you’re a stupid fucking piece of shit!  This one is self-explanatory — and so fun!

– Drive somewhere in silence!  You forgot to turn the music on, you stupid dumb-dumb! It’s okay because driving in an empty vortex of silence is almost as good as listening to a podcast you don’t care about or a song you’re barely registering!

– Sleep too much! Getting enough rest is critical to your self-care! Except for when you sleep for twelve hours and then why bother even putting real clothes on today, what’s even the point?! 😉

– Stay up all night reading the news on your phone! Did you know about the dysfunction in Washington? Me, too! So many people are dying and so many people are afraid and so many people are living through serious fear and trauma, emotions that I can’t even comprehend in my own self-pitying shitsack of privilege, let alone do anything to help anybody in a tangible, concrete way! Once upon a time I felt outraged and angry and motivated to act when I learned that horrible things were happening, and now, there’s just so many terrible things happening all the time that I feel numb a lot!

– Leave the laundry on the floor! No one cares! Floor pants for life!

–Play a level of Candy Crush! It’s a stupid, pointless game for idiots! Beat yourself up mentally when you can’t advance through the gumdrop forest or whatever shit it’s asking you to do!

– Check your email! Look at the email you should have replied to weeks ago! Don’t answer it, of course — what sensible, rational-thinking person would want to create a small sense of accomplishment for completing even the most menial of tasks?

– Check your bank balance! Equate the number with your own personal and moral failings!

-Contemplate major changes in your career! Riddle me this: Are you bad at your job because you’re unhappy, or are you unhappy because you no longer care about your job? No, actually; answer the riddle!! (Answer: Unknowable! But tangentially related to the correlation between unstable creative-economy work and massive anxiety about financial success, healthcare, etc; see also: connection between creative brains and mental illness!)

– Look at jobs on the internet that you’re not qualified for! Mentally try on other jobs for size. You would be an amazing children’s librarian! Go teach English to kids someplace! Go back to study graphic design! Or don’t! You’d probably be terrible at it anyway!

– Look at master’s degree programs you can’t afford! You’re still in debt from undergrad! Plus you don’t even know what you want to study! Find more excuses for yourself to only halfheartedly explore potentially awesome, life-changing options that would honestly be great for you, before writing them off as too difficult to achieve!

– Write about it!  But whatever you do, don’t publish what you write! It’s the kind of thing that will make people worry, which is absolutely the worst thing that could happen, because you’ve been through this before, and you always come out the other side, and you always feel horrifically guilty for making other people worry about you, because you’re a Strong Independent Lady ™ and you don’t need anybody’s help from anyone, ever. You got this. It’s under control. (It’s not! But it’s controlled, which is different. You are Sad Olivia Pope! “It’s handled,” you whisper, halfheartedly). Mentally wonder if you’re writing something that could maybe make others feel less alone, or help them in some way? But also definitely listen to depression when it tells you that you’re a selfish person and a shitty writer – you probably totally are!

– Try being social! This one is fun if you’ve forgotten how to be good at engaging in human socialization because your brain is running a constant play-by-play of “DO YOU REMEMBER HOW TO BE NORMAL YOU PROBABLY DON’T YOU PIECE OF GARBAGE,” so all the words that come out of your mouth are weird and wrong! Go home and mentally revisit everything you’ve said in case it was weird and wrong, which it probably was!

– Thank your partner for putting up with you! You know you’re not a lot of fun to be around right now, and you feel guilty about that because you don’t want to be a burden!

– Read some self-help books about getting your motivation and your creative life back on track! Holy shit you hate everyone!

-Wonder if there are external factors in your life that are just unmet needs making you miserable, and maybe you’re not unhappy for no reason whatsoever, but rather part of a larger pattern of Americans struggling to figure out why things that used to make them happy make them sad or empty, why things that used to be easy to handle just suddenly aren’t, why their fears surrounding job security and health insurance and retirement and childcare and Regular Adult Stuff are suddenly more all-consuming than ever, and whether or not this could be connected to larger economic and sociopolitical shifts in the way we value workers and employees. LOL no you probably just suck.

-Write the rest of this list! What even is this, like, 22? Who made up 101 as the number? Probably some bing-bong idiot who shouldn’t write stuff ever again!

– Re-read Allie Brosh. Because honestly, this post  and then this post  are like five years old and still some of the best reading I’ve ever encountered on the subject. She really gets at the heart of why it’s so maddening and frustrating, especially when you can’t even feel emotions like “maddening” or “frustrating” in the same way anymore.

– Reassure yourself that this is temporary. Because it is. It always has been. I will come out the other side of this thing, because that it what has always happened, and I’m strong enough to push past it, or I’ve been lucky enough to have something seemingly random in my life be the catalyst to snap me out of it, or some combination of the two. Ultimately, despite my brain telling me that I’m a stupid piece of crap who doesn’t get to have nice things, my brain also knows somewhere in there that that part of my brain is lying. I am also a fucking awesome person who is great at teaching and laughing and writing and creating stuff and making Photoshop jokes and cooking great foods and who loves others fiercely, who can be selfless in her caretaking of others, and for the most part, loves herself.

– Smile and be non-weird to other people when they mention that they relate to this post. Instead of being a weirdo about it, which is usually what I do when this happens, because it’s hard to be vulnerable in public about something that feels like such a personal shortcoming. Which is also dumb, because I’ve written before about pushing through anxiety and depression, and damn if there aren’t tons of people just like me, pushing through it just as stupidly and uncertainly and flail-y as I am.

When I’m in dark spells like this where I can’t quite figure out why everything is so hard, there’s always some dumb thing that I try to focus on as a metaphor, and easily the dumbest I’ve ever come up with is this GIF of a Wacky Wavy Inflatable Arm Tube Man (or Woman or Nonbinary Arm Tube Waver, tbh; gender is a construct) and for some unknown reason that only my (lying, complex, weird, messed-up) brain can explain….. it is deeply, deeply, deeply stupid…….. and also sort of right. Look at that. Getting tossed from side to side. Can barely stand up. Vague smile on her face regardless of outcome. Windy and full of bird poop, probably. And yet…. can’t knock that red, cheerful, dazzling, taking-up-space motherfucker down. She’ll be back.

And so will I.