For some reason, I am having an atypical response

Friends, relatives, colleagues, and occasional readers (does that cover everyone? don't tell me, I don't want to know), as I may have mentioned, I am heavily depressed. Between the losses of loved ones in 2010 and 2011, the stress put upon Lydia (about which I could do nothing, and which has now been confirmed as effectively reducing her lifespan by 3 to 5 years), the various long-term effects of the Cheney-Bush recession upon our financial stability and income, and a whole list of things which, taken in sum don't really add a lot to the equation, but one or more of which could have been the fabled final straw ............... 2012 has a lot of responsibility in terms of being better.

I rejoice that some of the people who were equally injured in the past two years are starting to make recoveries and move into the next phase of their lives.I wish I had been able to do this when I was younger. Mostly, my track record is to cocoon up, suppress as much as I can, and then make a whole series of very bad, yet virtually irrevocable, decisions.

So this time, I have spent a lot of time sharing my feelings with very kind people (I truly do have a wealth of friends -- some of whom are also relatives), and mapping out a small list of things I want to accomplish over the next year. Even if all of these fall apart, nothing is going to banjax what time I have left. Possibly this is a sign of maturity. More likely, I'm just choosing a slightly diverging path, but it might be enough to work.

Adventures in magic

Arthur C. Clarke is quoted/paraphrased as suggesting that any sufficiently advanced science is, to the average person, indistinguishable from magic. For most of this year, I have been directly involved with machines that aim radiation at various parts of my body, follow existing pathways (and carving some where none have heretofore existed) to find and (mostly) repair various faults, and a whole host of otherwise normal people who understand all of this stuff.

Personally, the "simple" act of pushing a needle into an arm or elsewhere, placing the point in the middle of an unseen blood vessel, and removing, replacing, or augmenting extant fluids seems more than a little magical. I can't explain it, it strikes me as entirely counter-intuitive, but when the practitioners do it, it works.

I know people who fear anything they can't explain. They are either so bright that they grasp some negative intent missed by the rest of thus, or they have been "educated" in a system where the purpose is to narrow the students' horizons and reinforce the prejudices of their parents/religion/community. Like the machines and most of modern medicine, I don't understand how they work. About all I can summon up is a great pity for them and a greater pity for their children