A case of the meh

 

Believe me, I've had the Blues. The Blues make you smoke a lot, slouch in a chair with a beer and tear-stained photographs, playing "your song" over and over. This is not that.

I've even had the Blahs, which is the achy vagueness that keeps you in your robe all day. You hold the remote and a pint of ice cream, but you do get out of bed for god's sake -- you're not Depressed (not that there's anything wrong with that...). Depression is what's left when Desperation runs out, and I would say it was a Bitch if it were meaner. That's the Reds. Who was it who got the Mean Reds? I just had to stop and look that up for you just now -- it was Holly Golightly. I stopped and web-searched for you. That's how you know I am not Apathetic.

Ironically, Apathy manages to carry with it a certain requirement of conviction -- like how Atheism requires you to think about there being no God more than most theists think about God. I do not have the passion to be so Dispassionate. I am simply.... meh.

If you actually are sick, your Blahs become Listlessness, and I can not imagine being without Lists....

Is that Mellow? Mellow seems so Contented (however drug-induced) and that doesn't fit either. Because I am a little bit Restless..... but not Jumpy.

I have a feeling there is a Cartesian plane here if I think on it long enough. Which is how I know I am not Bored.

Remember being a kid: "Moo-o-ommm.... I'm bor-r-r-r-r-red...." "Why don't you clean your room, then?" yiccch. 20 minutes later I had launched a newspaper, and was working the Back Porch Beat to write-up what the dog was doing. The teachers used to call that Unchallenged. Kids who doodled through World History were promoted, not medicated. "If you're finished with your Question Set, pick something out of the Self Study Jar." or...whatever. As the kids say...

Ennui is so... continental. I don't know if Americans can stand still long enough to succumb. And then they hate themselves.   

In The Phantom Tollbooth, Milo ends up in the Doldrums.

"As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done."

"You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo.

"We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help."

"You see," continued another in a more conciliatory tone, "it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?"

Where I come from, we call these The Mullygrubs. but only girls get them. Boys disappear to a vacant lot and draw in the dirt with a stick.

Melancholy would be entertaining, if I had a lute. But then I would pronounce it Melan-COAL-ya to annoy everyone and amuse myself. And think people who are amusing themselves can not be called melancholic. Maybe just cholic. That's it -- I have COLIC! How great would that be, to just scream and wail all night long, and run the shower at 3 am, then say to your neighbors in the morning (all exasperated)

"Whew...it's colic." (shrug- what can you do?)

It's meh.  Just… meh. Too much to do, no motivation to do it, few consequences of not doing it -- or major consequences that I realize don't bother me much if they happen.

(Overwhelmed – Stressed) / Motivated = Meh