A negative thought for every day of the year.  Available at amazon.com

Excerpts:

• When my mind is operating at its peak, it should depress me to think that this is the best I can do, because it’s not very good at all. When my mind is operating normally, I should be even more depressed. (January 14)

 

• Today, I should think of something about myself that really annoys me, and I should try to change it. Then, when I fail to change it, I can be annoyed by that as well. Then, I can be annoyed about how easily I get annoyed. Then I can get angry. (February 16)

 

• Tonight, I should watch the sun set, and think of the impending darkness as a metaphor for my wasted life: once it was bright, and full of potential, and now it is dark and hopeless and bleak. I should not make the mistake of thinking that the moon and the stars represent slim glimmers of hope, or evidence that there is light on the other side. Even if there is light somewhere I will never walk in it again. (March 25)

 

• Today, life will offer me many lessons. I will learn nothing. (April 18)

 

• It seems, in theory, that I should be able to control at least a few of my bad habits. The problem is that my habits make me depressed, and the depression makes me want to indulge my habits and so I do. There isn’t any solution to this. (May 23)

 

• I have tried very hard to find meaning in what I do, but I have found instead a vast and limitless nothingness. I tried to embrace the nothingness, but it slipped through my grasp, and now there is nothing where the nothingness was. This may sound meaningful, but it isn’t. (June 16)

 

• Life is so much easier today than it was a hundred years ago. People used to have to work on farms from sun-up to sun-down, and still their children would die, and there often wouldn’t be enough to eat. I wouldn’t have lasted three days under such conditions. I have no right to be alive. (July 22)

 

• It’s not just that I’m stupid; it’s that I’m just smart enough to know how stupid I am. I wish I weren’t so stupid. Or that I were stupider. (August 19)

 

• When I am tired, it is easy to believe that my exhaustion is the reason I am depressed and lonely and uninspired. But when I am well-rested, I can realize that these negative feelings are not a result of too little sleep. They are a result of my being a miserable, hopeless, misanthropic wretch. (September 3)

 

• It is better to curse the darkness than to light a candle, because, first of all, how much light is one candle going to shed anyway? And secondly, what is there to see that is so important? Whereas cursing is always satisfying. The next time I find myself in the dark, I will curse heartily. (October 30)

 

• I am so far away from being the person I want to be. I am a terrible person and I am overwhelmed with guilt. I am paralyzed with shame and fear. If I work hard at improving myself each day, I may get a little tiny bit better, but I won’t get much better—I’ll never be great. It’s too late for me. I’ve really blown it. (November 22)

 

• I can’t make people change, and I can’t change myself. I can’t change the political climate, or fix the myriad problems of the world, or make anyone else happy. When I think about these things, I feel impotent and sad. When I don’t think about them, I am running away from the truth. Either way I lose. (December 17)