One of the weird things about my particular brand of depression is that somewhere in my late 20s/early 30s, in spite of going through some moderate to severe depressive episodes, I became and remained a (mostly) unshakeable optimist — and one of the things that’s been most disconcerting about this latest and worst round of severe depression (which is plainly ebbing, but not all the way gone yet) has been the total disappearance of that optimism. And I’d like to bring it back. So, inspired by the late, great Ian Dury, I’m going to try to make a weekly list of things that have given me moments of pleasure and/or hope in the past week or few days or morning drive to work or whatever. Here’s the first attempt.

1. My classes this semester. I’m finding my advanced cataloging class a little more challenging than expected, but that’s not a bad thing at all: it’s invaluable to find out how much I don’t know, and how much more I want and need to learn. And I get almost giddy in my information architecture class, because the professor is so good, the discussion is lively, and it’s surprising and reassuring to find how much I know already. I might actually be able to get a job in it someday, which is cause for optimism for sure.

2. Getting the new Bettie Serveert record *and* the X “Unheard Music” DVD in the mail this week. The Bettie Serveert record showed up yesterday, so I’m listening to it for the first time now. I’m on track 5, and so far it’s sounding almost as good as Log 22. First impression two tracks in was that it was a little poppier and maybe less adventurous than Log 22, but now I’ve hit a couple of longer, slower songs, including one that had a slightly orchestral feel that reminded me just a little of the Delgados. (I never miss an opportunity to mention the Delgados, who got a brief but audible bit of exposure on “The O.C.” last night. I don’t watch the show, but a friend had alerted me that the Delgados would have a song featured in a scene in last night’s episode. Bill watches it devoutly (he watches a lot of shows that have teenage girls as their main target audience; I’m not sure what this means, but I can’t tease him too much about “The O.C.” because a) I watch reality shows on MTV, not to mention “Joan of Arcadia”, and b) “The O.C.” seems to be pretty well-written and entertaining, based on the glimpses of it I’ve caught), and he called me in when the song — “Everybody Come Down,” a fine choice — came on.)* It’s weird to refer to the Betties — a band that I’ve followed for more than 10 years — as reminding me of the Delgados, a band I only found out about a couple of years ago. But there it is. Up to track 6 now and still sounding excellent.

I also got the new Low record in the mail this week. Haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but My Favorite DJ played another track from it yesterday that I liked a lot, so I think it’s going to be a keeper. Which may mean hell has frozen over, I’m not sure.

3. A new season of “Murphy’s Law” and a new (to the U.S.) mystery series on BBCAmerica that’s one of the best shows I’ve seen in a while. They’re calling it “Night Detective” here; its UK title was “55 Degrees North,” which I guess they thought wouldn’t mean anything to USians. (Though I’m not sure the average Brit knows what latitude various cities are either, but maybe they do; 55 degrees N is Newcastle, among other places, and that’s where the show is set.) There’s only been one episode so far, but it was excellent, both because of the premise (smart, sharp, successful and slightly flash senior London detective is transferred to Newcastle for reasons so far unrevealed, and has to battle to earn respect and recognition in his new post — including the superior officer who seems determined to keep him on nights instead of the day shifts he needs to earn that respect and recognition) and because of the star, a guy named Don Gilet who was apparently in a very successful UK series called “Babyfather” but whom I’d never seen before. He’s perfectly cast, and pretty riveting to watch. (And also quite hot, though that has nothing whatsoever to do with my appreciation of his acting.)

The second season of “Murphy’s Law” started out on an unexpectedly dark note, when spoiler alert
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
,,,
his gorgeous boss, with whom he was just starting a relationship, was killed off in the first few minutes, and if the first episode is any indication, the show may be a little darker and less just darkly funny this season, which would be okay, I guess. The series was created by Colin Bateman, a clever and very funny (darkly funny) mystery novelist turned screenwriter who’s a Northern Irish Prod, as is the lead character in the show, Murphy (played by James Nesbitt, for whom Bateman apparently wrote the part — I think Nesbitt’s a Northern Irish Prod himself, in fact), and it was good but a little unsatisfying in its first season, because Murphy teetered on the edge of self-parody so much of the time. That was necessary sometimes because he’s an undercover cop, but I thought they overdid it at times. Still, it was good enough to keep me interested, and I think I’ll enjoy the new season more.

4. Starting a new knitting project last night: a hat that lands just on the right side of the line between fun and silly-looking. I hadn’t done any knitting in a couple of weeks, but when I saw this pattern on my pattern-a-day knitting calendar (which has been something of a disappointment overall so far), I realized that I had no desire to finish the hat I was knitting just for practice, my first on circular needles — so last night I frogged it and started the new one. It’s in the purply-blue colorway of eyelash yarn that I had left over from my security-blanket scarf, and I think it’s going to go relatively fast and look pretty cool. Should be done just in time for me not to need a hat for the rest of the season.

5. Managing to miss pretty much all pre- and post-State of the Union punditry and pontificating (as well as the speech itself, of course) by observing a total news blackout Tuesday through Thursday.

6. Realigning my relationship with the online universe, at least temporarily, because I needed to quit letting online snits on my part or others’ get to me, and also in order to concentrate more on work and school. (Taking my job more seriously doesn’t make me like it any better, but it does make me feel less guilty and generally better about myself.) So far, it’s doing good things for my self-esteem, because I really am getting more done, and because avoiding social contact for the most part is sometimes good for me when I need to pull back and stop worrying about how people are perceiving me. I’d like to keep it up for as much of the semester as I can, though we’ll have to see how successful I am at that. I’ll have more to say about this later, I think; for now, I’ll just say that I’m not disavowing the very real friends and friendships I’ve formed online, just saying that I need a break from obsessive e-mailing and e-mail-checking for now, and for the foreseeable future.

7. Finding out that the Gophers beat Michigan quite handily this week — I’d have been happier if I could have actually seen the game, but they’re not exactly getting a lot of national TV exposure this season. This Gophers team isn’t blessed with all that much genuine talent, far as I can tell, so they’re actually kind of overachieving this season — in spite of the mediocre coaching of Dan “Why Haven’t They Fired Me Yet?” Monson — and that makes me happy. Sometime I’ll try to explain why the Gophers mean so much to me and probably always will, but if I did that now, it would get me a little teary-eyed, which would contradict the RTBC theme.

8. Hearing enough of the Earlimart and Reigning Sounds records on the LynxPod to determine that I do like both bands; I hadn’t been quite sure before. The Reigning Sound record (Too Much Guitar) is kind of inconsistent, but overall I like it and want to hear their other records. I’m slightly more enthusiastic about Earlimart, I think; the record that’s on the ‘Pod (can’t remember title right now) is one of their, um, earlier ones, but I’ve also heard songs from their most recent one that I really loved, so I think they could be a band I could actually get excited about, maybe. It’s always cheering to find a band (new or just new to me) that I can get excited about. And I heard a track by the Gentleman Callers, a St. Louis band, on Memphis to Manchester yesterday and was crazy about it, so there’s another one to explore. (I’ve also been seriously digging another recent discovery, a wonderful Irish singer named Cara Dillon — more on her, and on Celtic/UK traditional music, some other time.)

9. Figuring out where the CD version of my Sandy Denny boxed set probably is, even though I haven’t actuallly found it yet, and learning that there’s another Richard Thompson box coming out sometime soon (a 4-disc one that, based on the description I read, will be more representative of his entire career than the previous box, Watching the Dark, was; I didn’t have as many quibbles about that box as some people did, but it did have some major gaps).

So those are the RTBC for today; I can’t say that my mood is particularly cheerful yet, but I’m at least having moments of cheerfulness and finding things to be cheerful about, and that’s progress. I could actually come up with more, but I’ve spent a long time on this post already, and I’ll be contradicting #6 above if I keep at it much longer. There’s work to do, and I’ll feel better when it’s done, so off I go.

*Parentheses within parentheses and a footnote–beat that, Jamie! :-)