Penelope Trunk: Take more advice. It will help you.

I like the way she writes:

So he tells me that he hates his job.

“How can you hate your job? You are a compliance enforcer, which is perfect for your controlling nature. And you have tons of time to edit my posts during the day.”

“I don’t try at anything I do.”

“Really? I thought the only time you did that was when you worked for me.”

“No. It’s just that you were the only boss who ever noticed.”

“Why don’t you try harder?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been telling myself I have to care, that I should be able to care. I’ve been telling myself not to check out just because I can.”

[...]

That’s my cue. I know that if you want to care and you can’t care it’s probably depression. So I told him to get medication. It turns out that I was not the first person to suggest medication. He had a mother with a mental disorder (example: she left him alone in the house for whole days at a time when he was four). And a lot of people with very poor parenting are chronically depressed.

So he finally took the advice he’d been getting for a while. And he says he is happier. And although he has not expressed that in the editing of my posts, I believe him. Because in five years I have never heard him so upbeat about himself or the future.

And with this, I think I’ll introduce a new link category, for when I just want to share someone else’s writing and point you to them, and I either don’t have much to add, or refuse to make myself say it.

It’s okay for me to do that; this is a blog.

There’s more good stuff in Penelope’s post.