Hats off to Moe at Occam’s Toothbrush again. I found this, Dispatches from a Real War on Terror and it provided some thoughtful reading.

I can almost promise this is how the world will look if there is another 9/11. I find our responses to date down right reasonable and restrained. One more attack and the world will see us pissed off. Believe me, you don’t want to see the US pissed off.

Yesterday Moe Freedman at Occam’s Toothbrush gave me a glowing thumbs up. I’m outside of his usual forte, but I won him over anyways. If you haven’t read him, please click on the link in my blogroll and check him out.

I have been an enthusiastic player of wargames for years. I would spend hours pouring over the statistics and charts of weapon systems, studying how they would interact with other systems, devising tactics and counter tactics. And I was good. In some games I was almost unbeatable.

Even with MechWarrior, before a match I would invest 2-3 hours in developing several battle forces, analyzing each force for strengths and weaknesses. Last night, I was ready to skip the entire thing. I just didn’t feel up to it. But my son looks forward to these events, so I picked him up and off we went. I just threw a force together and lost both games. Even when I was winning, my failure to properly use my forces led to my losing more than my opponent actually defeating me.

Depression steals enjoyment. Even the things that you love to do becomes too much of a bother to actually expend the effort. You would rather spend time staring at a blank wall for hours than doing constructive things. The depression makes you sad. Your inability to do things you once loved compounds the situation, heaping sadness upon sadness. All you can dwell on is the sadness, so anything you can do to get away from the sadness is the best you can hope for.

I have to brute force my way out of my sickness like John Nash (A Beautiful Mind ). I have tried about three-quarters of the anti-depressants currently on the market, and they have either drove me into a manic frenzy, done nothing or given me severe side-effects. I am documenting my struggles not only to provide insight to you, my readers, but to help me combat this thief.

I think I’m down to a 6 on the depression scale. Things seem just a little greyer lately. Yesterday, I was actually awake at 7:45 in the morning, but I couldn’t get out until 9:30. I remember being a hard charger. While I didn’t leap out of bed, I made it out in good order, got ready and got to work. Yesterday I might as well been trying to move a mountain with a teaspoon. To lie there, helpless, makes me angry. But it wasn’t enough to get me going.

Another thing is food. I no longer enjoy eating. To me, food is simply fuel to keep me going. I don’t enjoy the taste, I don’t savor the company if I am out eating with my family or friends, as long as it isn’t nasty, it’s just “okay.” I have all of the excitement of eating as I do taking a dump. They are both the same to me, merely something that must be done.