Snippets #6: how to make yourself depressed in under 10 minutes...

Step 1: start going through your stuff looking for things to pack or clear out.
Step 2: find the box you've stowed all of your old keepsakes in for the last 20 years or so.
Step 3: start going through it all with a ruthless intensity, reading over all the old essays you wrote, the birthday cards, the faxed greetings, the letters kept from people who's faces you can't remember and context you can no longer recall, the first love letter you ever received, all of the concert tickets and cinema stubs and photos and awards, the stories you wrote, the blog entries handwritten on cards and sick-bags on aeroplanes, the annuals and reminders of exploits and adventures that happened so long ago that you have to think to remember what the relevance or significance of it all was.
Step 4: as you go, throw everything you think you can throw away into a pile and watch it spill and fall across the floor in drifts of off-white paper, faded by age and neglect.
Step 5: get sentimental and go back through the pile and put half of it back in the fucking box.
Step 6: look down at the condensed paper and plastic that represents the years that came before and start despairing as to what you're going to do with it all since you simply can't throw it the hell away.
Step 7: start beating your head against the wall.
Step 8: go back to Step 7...