I'm an urban hermit, a hiker, a rationalist, a skeptic, a freethinker, an empiricist, a materialist, a naturalist, a scientist, a bibliophile, an INTJ, a white hat hacker, a secular humanist, a teetotaler, a social-liberal civil-libertarian monarchist, a furry fan, a playtester, a licensed amateur radio operator, an ordained minister of the First Church of Atheism, a card-carrying pirate, the Star Lord, a Lord of the Rose, and a proud member of the Bayesian Conspiracy.

I try to operate by Crocker's Rules.

Some say to remember that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. And some say that every time you call up a memory, you change it. But here's the best I can express what remains of a split-second of thought earlier today:

I was enjoying reading a classic SF novel for the first time, and as my thoughts went over expanding on an idea from one line, I had a combination of seeing that expansion in the form of some Avatar-like glowing blue text, combined with an odd sensation. It took me some time to nail it down, which was a combination of thinking that the expansion was new-to-me, interesting... and what I now realize was the actual emotional sensation of hope.

I'm not sure if I can describe what it's like to realize that I'd literally forgotten what hope feels like. I've cobbled together an intellectual approximation, so that, as a hyperbolic-to-the-unrealistic-extreme example, I can analyse the pros and cons of suicide, taking into account that I know my mind is prone to certain biases, and come to the logical conclusion that even if I don't anticipate anything ever getting anything better, staying alive is most likely the better choice. But that's an entirely different thing than actually /feeling/ "hey, that sounds like something better that just might happen".

Sure, I've now been going over that split-second so many times that by now I mostly only remember remembering it. But I'm still taking it as a /very/ good sign I'm still on an upswing. (Sure, one step back every few steps forward, and there are days as blah as before... but there are days that /aren't/.)

About the only downside is that re-thinking my latest story idea, I'm now realizing how bleak and depressing my outline is; so I'm going to have to change it so much that I might as well be coming up with something from scratch. Which is such a ridiculously contrived "downside" that I'm grinning lopsidedly to myself as I type this.

Of course, given past experience, I may only be peaking before a return to previous depression; I've had such before. But... it may not be. And I'm looking forward to hoping my mental state will improve further.