If you're 23 or over, you are no fun at all. Go ahead and languish.

Also, it turns out monsters and pitchers are destructible

Apr 22, 2021

Languish Arts

Look. Okay. Fine. Great. If someone can find a word to affix to their condition and that helps them on their journey, that’s wonderful. If it helps to use the word “languishing”, well, by all means. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels like someone needed to write an article and they found someone who got a thesaurus out? The New York Times, a fine paper, just ask them, spotlights the state of being not depressed but not thriving.

The term was coined by a sociologist named Corey Keyes, who was struck that many people who weren’t depressed also weren’t thriving. His research suggests that the people most likely to experience major depression and anxiety disorders in the next decade aren’t the ones with those symptoms today. They’re the people who are languishing right now. And new evidence from pandemic health care workers in Italy shows that those who were languishing in the spring of 2020 were three times more likely than their peers to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Okay. It has an illustrations. Pictures are pretty.

Monsters and Judges

We’re a little a week over from the Maximum Fund Drive over at Maximum Fun. It’s the basis of funding for all the Max Fun shows, including Depresh Mode. It lasts for two weeks. I absolutely will be asking you for money during that period because money is necessary for the show and newsletter and everything related.

But we’ll get to that later.

But when we DO get to it, I’ll also be telling you about special Max Fund Drive bonus content, including a commentary track of my favorite film, Destroy All Monsters with me and Honorable Judge John Hodgman.

But later. Later though.

“Monsters and Judges” totally sounds like an REM album.

Turns out athletes are actual human beings

The great sportswriter Tom Verducci of the now very annoying website Sports Illustrated writes about the growing instances of baseball players leaving for mental health reasons, either temporarily or permanently.

He cites Tampa Bay pitcher Ryan Sherriff.

He walked away from the game he had been playing as a pro for 11 years for low wages; only this year would he be making his top salary, $574,800, at the age of 30.
The next day Angels pitcher Ty Buttrey, 28, quit baseball. Four days later, reliever Chris Devenski, 30, left the Diamondbacks for personal reasons. Seven days after that, Phillies outfielder Adam Haseley, 25, left baseball. Last September shortstop Andrelton Simmons, 31, left the Angels to deal with depression and suicidal thoughts before joining the Twins for the 2021 season. Rockies outfielder Ian Desmond, 35, opted out of last season and this season, forgoing $13.56 million in salary, to be with his family while concerned about racial injustice. Rays pitcher Ryan Thompson, 28, had an emotional breakdown days after pitching in the World Series last year, burdened by how the job of playing baseball had skewed his priorities.

Covid and the cumulative effects of our hyper-connected social media world are cited as possible contributors, combined with the terrible pressure and mental grind of the job. I’ve talked with several athletes and gotten to know a few and it seems to me that baseball and maybe golf present the most opportunities to get completely messed up on their own thoughts.

Here’s something about humor that is actually quite sad

I think the Hidden Brain episode I heard recently about humor and psychology was a repeat but I hadn’t heard it before and I found it really interesting. This is because I think minds are interesting and humor is fascinating.

The researcher in the piece, Jennifer Aaker, says that most four-year-olds laugh more times per day than people at any other age but around age 23 it’s very common to pretty much eliminate a sense of humor from your life, especially in the workplace. People entering the workforce want to convey a sense of gravity and seriousness so they jettison humor, which turns out to be a bad decision. Being able to effectively and appropriately funny turns out to be a great way to put people at ease and get them to feel fondly toward you because it releases oxytocin, the same hormone present in sex and child birth, where bonding matters a lot.

Anyway, give a listen. My only quarrel is the headline “Laughter: The Best Medicine”. It’s not. Penicillin is the best medicine. Maybe the polio vaccine. Maybe the covid vaccine.