I do not daylog.

My life is not interesting enough, especially not at the moment. I have just finished school, and I am looking for a job to finance further studies. I live in an apartment that I and my family just moved to, so I spend my days installing kitchen appliances and computers, wiring the house, getting furniture in and out, looking for a job, and sleeping too much. Occasionally I look out the window and see rain and wet concrete. If I were to daylog, every entry would be identical.

However.

Today I have some writing that needs to be written. The daylogs provide a somewhat appropriate forum for this writing. However, it is far from ideally suited for it, but the writing seems not to care and seeps through my fingers, for there is really no place where it is a lesser misfit.

The thoughts I must type were triggered by the tragic news (if only those words were not so worn out!) we received today of Hermetic. Sadly, I am relatively new here (at the time of writing, I have been here for some four months), and in the dust whirled up around the boots of the army of noders, I guess Hermetic's path never really crossed mine, and I did not get to know him. Having read his writings after receiving today's news, I can but deeply regret this.

I beg pardon of those near him to be so presumptuous as to create an image of Hermetic that may be a distortion of reality and will most certainly be a simplification of it, but I feel compelled to state that it seems we have lost a dedicated noder who would put an implicit quality insurance on every piece of information or thought. More importantly, perhaps, the world seems to have lost another person who, in his own unique way, filed under the group of people who are too nice for reality to treat them well. Yes, there are many people like this in the world, most of them overlooked as I am ashamed to say I overlooked Hermetic, or in a more active manner. Still, there are too few people like this. Way too few. (It should be noted that yours truly is not one of them.)

The coming part of this inevitable writing is much more personal, and should not be associated with Hermetic. It is only related to him in that the news of the loss, what I read about and by him, and certain recent and not-so-recent events in my own life and in the lives of people that are or have been close to me led me to think certain thoughts, that are not to be related, much less equated to the actual circumstances here. Again, I know I am taking the risk of offending or hurting people, venting my uninformed assumptions here, but the importance of the following is inherent and not related to the events that contributed to its coming into being.

Life is a damn hard thing to live with. Life is by far the single most difficult thing that will happen to any human being, because it includes all the misery one will experience and every single scratch and wear and tear that one will be subjected to. Most people cannot cope with this themselves. Quoth Aristotle: "Without good friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods."

Your friends need you. You need your friends. Both statements are valid even when you feel like they are not. They are always valid to a greater extent than you will grasp. Keep this in your mind roughly in the same place you keep the concept of infinity, only more accessible. Do not attempt to work out your own problems. Your friends will be glad to help you. They will feel good that they have done something to help you; so asking for help is in fact doing them a favor. And yes, your business is their business, if they are your close friends.

Needless to say, having very few friends is dangerous, as one might lose friends in a number of ways, some more painful than others, and having too many can lead to superficiality.

Friends are also, to most people, an important part in battling the effects of the hardships posed by life and sometimes even the natural chemicals in their own body. I sincerely believe that in many, yet far from all, good friends can cure depression.

Staying on that topic, I should say that I also believe there is no single way to cure depression, no universal remedy. I believe I have seen enough depression (and yes, I mean depression and not just moodiness or teen angst) in family, friends, acquaintances, lovers lost, and myself. In some cases, professional help is the way to go. Counseling and medication is a common and sometimes very effective way to go. Medication alone has been claimed to work for some, but is a very dangerous option, in the extent that it should even be considered an option. Some find that their friends are better counselors. Personally, just the thought of paying a stranger to listen to my problems and figure out how I should deal with them seems absurd. I prefer to open up to someone I know cares genuinely.

Another method that is sometimes effective is pattern-breaking. Do things differently, or do a different thing altogether, just for one time. Just the feeling that one can do something different can be enough to give a feeling of control that is sometimes lacking. Physical exercise is a subset of this. I am personally a long-distance runner (not a good one, mind you), and to me, running is therapy. I got through some of the hardest months of my life by daily sessions at the gym in the afternoon to relieve stress and tension that would make my whole body shiver at day. However, this too can be dangerous, and coupled with eating disorders can lead to really nasty results. Be careful, but be open-minded.

Depression kills. In my country alone, 2,000 people in a population of about 8,500,000 chose to end their own lives every year at the beginning of the last decade. It is a serious disease. It is caused by chemical reactions, and is not the sign of the affected having done anything wrong. It is not something to be ashamed of. It needs to be dealt with, and like any disease, the prognosis is better the earlier it is dealt with. The method should vary from person to person, but if you or someone you know are/is affected by it, make sure that something is being done to deal with it.

I am sadly aware of how futile this is, and the fact that given the same advice myself, I would take perhaps half of it. Still, I must point it out if there is even a trace of hope that it can make a difference somewhere, somehow, for someone.

Once again I would like to remind the patient reader who has come this far that the above, except where it is explicitly stated, is unrelated to today's tragic news. If I have hurt or offended anybody, I will eagerly do what I can to meet your wishes. This was written in the hope of making a positive impact, but if I find that it has the opposite effect, I will not hesitate to modify or remove it entirely. Please /msg me your thoughts.

Finally, I would like to send my condolences to those close to Hermetic, and to those of you who, like me, were not so fortunate, go read some of his writeups, and see why he was an extraordinary person, and then node some good stuff in the honor of his memory. Thank you.