Day of the Rains, 71st of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Elektra): Doctor's appointment today. I'm fine, just a routine follow-up exam for the hypertension experienced back in 2023. As part of the procedure, the nurse who took my vitals asked, "Do you experience any depression?" 

Are you fucking kidding me? If you're not depressed, you're not following the news very closely. You're not looking at the stock market or the balance in your IRA or 401(k) account. You're not aware that Mumps, after gutting or attempting to gut the civil service, is now looking at your Social Security and Medicare to cut next. You're not paying attention to the way amerika's turned its back to our former ally in Ukraine and have signaled to Russia it can do "whatever the hell they want" with the rest of Europe, if not the world. You haven't seen the end of representative democracy, a free press, and civil rights here. You haven't yet realized that "liberty" now means "privilege" for wealthy, white, patriarchal plutocrats.

"Yes, you fucking bet I'm fucking depressed!," I should have told her, but instead, in the interest of just moving things along, I said "no" and left it at that. Who's got time to explain all that other shit? I came back home and sat my 90 minutes of alternating-day meditation.

I'm waiting for my lab results to come back and tell me whether I'm healthy or not.