A story

There once was a boy who loved to dig holes, for in these holes he found the secrets of the world. He would dig and dig everyday until he found the bottom of something and the would promptly move on to the next hole.
One day, a storm blew in while he was digging and he grew concerned. As the rain began to fall he feared that the drops would fill up his work and wash it away. Or worse still that he would not escape and would drown.

He was so close to the bottom though that he dug faster towards what lay beneath.If he could make it before the storm grew too bad he would at least have the secret that he had worked so hard to find. But the storm grew worse and his prize elusive. As with all secrets of the world it was buried deep from the reach of people.

When the storm was at its peak he found that the hole, contrary to what he thought would happen, had protected him from the rain and thunder. He was elated to find that this hole had revealed to him two secrets about the world, despite how far he had to dig.

So the boy continued to hunt for the secrets of the world and when a storm would come he would simply dig a deep hole and would hunt until the rain had passed.

Eventually, as boys are want to do, he became a man. Still he hunted the secrets of the world deep under the earth, and still when storms came he found shelter among those secrets.

One day, when he was still a young man, a storm unlike any other came. It was terrible and violent and so the man dug deep into the earth to escape its fury. He dug and dug, but still the storms pounding followed him. Finally he found the bottom, but instead of a secret he could return to the surface, it was instead a glistening cave.

The cave sang and glistened with secrets and lore of the world and did much to drown out the fury of the clouds above. He spent a great while here, exploring and listening and soon he lost track of the time. The storm raged and raged, but he was able to shut it out and saw nothing but the cave.

It came to pass that the man found himself lost in this cave of wonders, but did not care to fix it. He was as happy as he could be underground, and the secrets he found brought him joy and knowledge. Soon after though he began to grow hungry, and to wonder what had happened to his home. As he walked down the corridors nothing seemed familiar. No post or sign pointed him back to the entrance of the cave.

He became frantic and ran through the tunnels looking for a way out.

The storm still raged above and mocked his efforts to be free.

He despaired at the thought of being locked in this darkness forever.

There was a rushing sound ahead of him and he ran headlong to meet it. There he found a waterfall, beautiful and glittering even in the dark. It ran from a hole in the ceiling and fell into a great pond below him. The water of the pond was clear and at the bottom the man saw his shovel that he had lost so long ago.

He dove into the pond and swam to the waterfall, choking on the salty ruinous water. He fought the force of the falling water and scaled the cavern wall towards the hole that had led him here. His skin burned from the water scouring him and his eyes were near blinded by it, but he put one hand in front of the next.

The thought occurred to him that he could let go and just fall back into the pond. The cave below still had many secrets for him to find, but he continued anyway.

He felt the wind first as his head came up out of the hole. It was cold and terrible against his skin and made him wish again for the warmth of the cave.

The man opened his eyes and saw naught but devastation wrought by the storm in his absence. Gone were the lush trees and soft grasses. Even his home was all but washed away.

Despair threatened to consume him as he walked to his battered door. He swung it open on its rusty hinges and was welcomed by a warm fire in his hearth, his desk still sat as he had left it.

He sat at his desk and picked up his pen and began to write.

On Fighting

Any time someone is having a hard time, people always tell you to keep on fighting. This is especially common in dealing with adversity with regards to depression. People try and tell you to buck up, soldier on, and keep on keeping on (whatever the hell that means). 

What they fail to recognize is that people with depression HAVE been soldiering on. They have been fighting themselves every second of every. single. damn. minute. Depending on the severity, every word the hammer out on a keyboard, email they respond to, or time they open their eyes in the morning is a small victory that merits nothing short of a parade. But they don't ask for that because they know it is their own personal demons that they fight, and that they hardly need to fight an outside world that has a hard time sympathizing with a stubbed toe, let alone mental anguish. 

It is a quiet war happening in your office, school, favorite restaurant, church, and anaerobic basket weaving society. Someone there is dealing with it. 

What should you do when dealing with someone else who is depressed? That depends on the person and their level of suffering. And yes, I mean SUFFERING. Agony. All those fun words we like to throw around every time we are a little gassy after a burrito, but actually have real meanings. 

Some guide lines: 

1. Remember that they ARE NOT SAD! 

   People who are depressed are tired, weary, in pain. Sadness is a symptom, not a cause. It is the difference between the weather and the climate. Local weather trends are symptomatic of over all climate patterns, but are not a freak storm does not a climate make. Which brings me to point number...

2. Sometimes, people who are depressed, can seem happy and normal most of the time. 

  That is why some people are surprised when they find out someone is depressed. Never tell them they  were so happy yesterday, today, earlier, all the time.' They know how happy they have been. Depression is an intimate and vulnerable state. Many people who suffer from it have very happy looking defense mechanisms. It is to keep people from saying a lot of the things on this list and brings us to..

3. When they ask for space, give it. 

  Like I said, depression is an intimate and vulnerable state to find yourself in. If someone is depressed and they ask you for space/time/distance/silence, give it. It can take a few minutes to clear out the fog that depression puts in your head and severely skews your emotional responses. This means that when you push people, they can feel trapped, cornered and respond very.. poorly. This can range from open hostility and rage, to an enforced silence that could be permanent (towards you) if you are not careful. 

IMPORTANT: If someone with depression asks you for space, DO NOT MAKE IT ABOUT YOU BY TAKING IT PERSONALLY. Of all the terrible things you can do, this can make things spiral out of control the fastest. 

I will have more on how to deal with depressed people later, but these three things can be damned hard on their own. Try them out and see what you think.

On the Value of Experience

Experience is one of those buzzwords that comes up anytime someone decides to examine someone else's credentials. But what is it really? What makes "5 years of related experience" a testable and reliable metric for making sure someone is qualified for a position?

The short answer is easy: it isn't a good metric at all, but it is a really easy (if stupid, which I will mention discuss in a moment) to weed out candidates that are unlikely to fit. The only real problem with this system is that it assumes being near something is what makes experience. This is fundamentally erroneous since it implies that just by being in Spain I will become Spanish through some sort of cultural osmosis. To a degree this will occur, but how many of us have friends who have returned from abroad decked out in the local dress and speaking a smattering of the language, but unable to tell you much more than that about the local color?

Most of us, I am sure.

This is also true in the work place. Many times people complain about managers who know less about whats going in in the department as a whole than the people on the floor. This is to a certain extent true since if the manager knew every single little detail he would be a micromanaging tyrant, but we often run up against management that has no idea what is going on and the people on the floor are expected to fill them in before the big meeting. The problem becomes that if both of us leave that company and apply at Big Bob's Mayo Warehouse to the same management position, he will get it due to his "5 years of experience managing department X"

This superficial view of experience is downright dangerous at times when it comes to electing our leadership. Just look at the 2008 election when people were crowing from the rooftops about Obama only spending a couple of years as a junior Senator and community organizer before becoming President. Yet these same people paraded out for us Sarah Palin, a woman who they championed because of her "experience as governor of Alaska". She was the boss who had no idea what was happening on the floor, but our culture's obsession with superficial experience attempted to put her one heartbeat away from running our country in one of its most dire situations in the last few decades.

All in all wanting experience is a good thing and is something we should look for, but the catch is that we have to know what we are looking for. It isn't enough to just have someone who was in a position but didn't actually do anything or learn anything. The perfect example of this is the renaming of positions so that they sound more important that they really are. "Specialist" is the new "Assistant", "Technician" is the new entry level. With all of this flash and showmanship flying around, it can be difficult to find out what is real amidst all of the sound and fanfare.

But really it is this simple: When someone puts their best foot forward, make sure it is really there and that it is attached to a leg for them to stand on.

What.... in the hell...

I am left torn between awe and despair when I watch these videos:

JAPANESE BUG FIGHTS!

Spoiler Alert: This is the shit nightmares are made of. Seriously, this is MMA on a primal level.

I haven't the faintest idea what the announcers are saying, and honestly I am not sure I want to. These kinds of events are a kind of gold mine for us writer types: Bizarre, real, and absolutely insane. Perfect places to throw plucky heroes, would be spies, and incompetent henchfolk.

So, grab something to eat, sit back, and... watch.

Just watch.

UPDATE: CRAWFISH ARE NOT BUGS.