KeliNorth

Though copyright as it is has issues, this seems very off, as characters are the work, moreso than the settings and even plot - as only one of those three items tends to be unique. I've written books and stories, and the best answer I can give to you is this:

Those characters do not live in your head. They live in mine. I have full control in expressing who and what they are on paper for others to learn more about them. No one else does, no one else can say they did this or that because they don't have any control over my creations, my thoughts, my personal universe. To say someone else can just write with my characters is tantamount to violating an innermost personal space - indeed, it's intruding on one of the most personal forms of control and self-expression possible. You can't just create situations and settings for things that only exist in my mind. I want others to know, so I'll put out a public work. That doesn't mean someone can put something in my world, my character's lives, without my approval. Copyright is just a legal extension of that God-hood I exert over things in my head.

It is just too bad that the current form of copyright is far from ideal, as we've seen. I'm not against fan fic or other expression of still-in-copyright works either, I tend to like them and tend to agree that they do more good than harm, just pointing out that it does matter in some cases, discretion of the author should always be allowed, and just being well-known and popular doesn't magically make that control disappear. Being dead does though, so much of this doesn't really apply to the original topic, but felt I had to make a response to this.

As in people doing these diets years before soylent, not years on said diet. My grammar might not've been clear enough.

EDIT: Specifically I'm thinking of the hundreds (if not thousands by now) of people on T-Nation/Testosterone Nation who've done the 1-month Velocity diet, which is (or was, I haven't been there in years, but that particular diet has been around for at least 5 years+), a protein shake diet with very little solid food. There are years of people doing it for a month and relating their experiences, highlights and downfalls, and I'm sure there are several more experiences in that world that would provide better data points. However, it has the issue of being mostly anecdotal evidence.

I'm not a real fan of chewing food, but having done a similar diet before I prefer it. Turns out that even though me and food don't always get along, after 3 weeks on a liquid diet the cravings for real food for me come back. There are plenty of weightlifters who have done similar full-liquid diets for years before soylent, this data exists but has been largely ignored since it's from a different kind of community. Anyways - 30 days isn't enough, many items take longer to produce issues. Vitamin C comes to mind, it's destroyed by sunlight, copper (copper is good for destroying a few biological agents it seems, birth-control and Vitamin C, oh it's uses - but we need it as well so it'll be there in soylent in trace amounts), and age, but so little is needed to avoid scurvy, and it takes about 3 months from your last consumption of it to produce adverse results, that it wouldn't be an issue... in the short run.

To address your comment about animals: I saw animals that are littered with disease standing above the product. Standing, breathing without masks, talking without masks(which means trace amounts of spit), in standard clothes that've probably been exposed to much. The rat was far less disturbing than seeing the people who were handling the product.

Contrary to the blood-work, there is a issue that presented itself after 30 days. Not a nutrient deficiency, but a chewing one: he mentioned he started chewing gum due to his jaw aching. As far as I know chewing is supposed to help keep the jaw healthy (an expert/dentist has been sorely lacking from these soylent discussions, I imagine they'd have much to say about chewing, jaw, and tooth issues that crop up), and as someone who hasn't done a great job of that in life... I certainly wouldn't want to mess with jaw health anymore.

My Mother has SAD, suffered for years with it in various parts of CA (too much gloom during winter, even though the days were long and sunny spring-autumns), but now lives in a northern mid-west state. We discovered that SAD doesn't affect her as much there for a couple reasons we can only guess at. The sun was out more often even on bone-chilling days, and the snow on the ground reflecting the light was far, far better for her than the gloomy rainy winter days of CA.

It was a nice surprise that a colder/Winter state was better for her particular SAD. Seems very counter-intuitive at first, but sometimes an individual's needs aren't so clear. And I just gotta reiterate... the snow reflecting more light into a home, combined with it adding the whole ambiance of a Winter look (rather than the sight of gloom or leafless plants in a more temperate state during winter) seems to have a real beneficial effect. Of course, individual results will vary, this only works for one particular case, but it's still of interest how SAD works and affects each person.

I once worked for a company that did pre-employment background checks. Before I left the CEO was talking about the next big thing in weeding out undesirables from the workforce: a system that would keep track of every time someone was placed behind bars/arrested, adding that to a database, and notifying potential/present employers that person A either working for them or applying to work for them had been arrested, either at one time or now.

Not charged with a crime, not falsely arrested, just simply placed behind bars. I left before really delving into the legality of it, but it apparently was.

Remember, the bill of rights only applies to the government. A private company doesn't have to care about WHY you were placed in a jail cell or whether you actually are a criminal, just that you were detained by the police at one time.

If every protester who'd been arrested (I'm thinking Occupy from a while ago) was now in a database that prevented them from ever getting a job again even though they've never committed a "real" crime, then being legal sure doesn't seem fine at all.

I should also mention that I've worked for a few companies handling private information about people. The lack of security in the private area is astounding. I'm honestly surprised that massive SSN and other personal info don't leak out of private companies more often, most of the time it's not difficult to walk out with a million DOB/Name/Current Address/SSN/Duplicatable Signature on thumb drive, there's no internal tracking and no encryption most of the time. The private sector is the last place surveillance should be happening, it's really frightening to think what could happen should they mess up.

I was overly broad with that, excuse me. It's much more complicated, but generally you can't exclude someone based on a criminal record alone as you rightly point out, and that's not accounting for other circumstances. So yes, financial will matter (of course, any financial crime means that license will be revoked and that record will be accessible as well), but unrelated crimes are different.

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/arrest_conviction.cfm

The main reason someone gets rejected from criminal reasons, in my experience, is having an old record that's been cleared or expunged, and then answering "No" when the employment application asks a specific wording of "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" - The answer would be yes, and a criminal check would reflect something had happened, but that the record has been expunged due to enough time passing for that particular crime. It sounds convoluted, and it is. Not sure it really should, but I only worked in the industry. Whether or not the industry followed the letter of the law is much, much different.

I used to work for a pre-employment background screening agencies. It's illegal to reject someone based on any criminal history as long as the person has not lied about their background. Unfortunately, it's not illegal (federally, with the EEOC, each state may have their own differences) to discriminate by personality test.

This is definitely something I saw prevalent in the hiring world: if it isn't outright illegal, use it to prevent someone from being hired. In many cases we had clients that'd tiptoe the line and ask if certain reasons would be valid for rejecting a person, and some HR managers were upset when they learned it was against the law to disallow someone who had admitted their criminal history from being hired. So they found another reason.

There is still a massive amount of hiring discrimination. It's just not the "official" reason anymore since that'd be illegal. That job was soulbreaking.

Nope. It gives the body/brain the O2 it needs to survive for a while, but CO2 will still build up, leading to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_acidosis

Probably. So a life-saving measure in extreme circumstances, but certainly not something you can use indefinitely.

What this reiterated was mostly what I've been telling other self-publishers: marketing marketing marketing. Here's a book that gets good reviews and is supposedly (since I haven't read it) written well, yet only sells 1500 copies. Of course, 1500 copies in a very very short while is triple what most books sell in their lifetime, but it's still a very small number when it's by an author whose sold millions and has at times been credited with getting America's youth reading again - even if it was only for a while.

If J.K. Rowling can't sell more than a couple thousand copies of a new book based on it's quality alone, what makes you think you're going to sell any more by going the traditional publisher route under an also-unknown name.

It all comes down to marketing your book. You'll have to do your own marketing with traditional publishing as well, except now you also are in a contract. If your book does badly, your advance will make up for it. If it does well, then you're limited by paying back the advance prior to royalties, and you lose a touch of control.

Anyways, it gives me faith in our self-publishing business and our answers to clients who wonder why they haven't sold 3,000 copies yet. Although our last one is over 10k sales, mostly because they had been marketing the book months in advance of even writing it, and it was the written form of the advice they had been giving for years and building a platform with.

That's what we can learn from this. Build a platform based on you, market the book before it's even been written, build anticipation, and then market even more. I've really enjoyed this "revelation" about J.K., even if I'm not a reader. True, it does have a slightly sour taste due to it being a somewhat PR move, but then again... even Issac Asimov was Paul French when he wanted to write something my 8-year old sister would (and has!) read.

Exactly, pros do it all the time. Eventually it becomes cool. I never buy into the hype about it looking bad for a few reasons:

I wear glasses. Years ago people thought all glasses looked silly. And they were, with giant thick lenses. Now people buy non-RX glasses to look cool, even.

I saw an animated sci-fi show from around 10 years ago (Denno Coil, Japanese anime) where in order to see the AR/VR world, you wore glasses. Every single kid wore glasses. You had to in order to see the VR/AR. Once something is common, the look factor doesn't matter.

I think we're just seeing people being disappointed that Reality is still decades/centuries/possibly impossible behind Fiction, and Fiction is only pulling further away as Reality gets better computers to render Fiction with.

It's quite logical to practice one of the most important human communication skills at every opportunity possible. Practice makes perfect, and will hone the skill for use in situations where it will lead to direct benefits. If something isn't practiced, it can backfire when employed incorrectly.

It also very much feels like it'd go against the point of being empathetic if the only time it's employed is in beneficial situations.

It's also in very bad taste. Even if things were being brought on purposefully... it just feels wrong to have authorities sort-of bragging about catching law violators.

It feels immature. Law enforcement is supposed to be serious. This kind of thing should only really be a number in a report, not a picture with a comment trying to be funny. It should be objective, neither heavy-handed or lackadaisical.

Ditto. Ditto. For emphasis. Thank you for liking FF7. It's been a fad for the past 5-10 years for people to say "I don't know why everybody likes it, it wasn't that great." They are not correct.

The only game I've played through more times is Ocarina of Time - I rarely replay games, especially very long ones. Especially more than twice. FF7 has been the only exception.

I didn't have a psx, couldn't afford it back then, but I had a PC and got the PC version shortly after it had come out. It was my first FF game.

Stories like to have heroes, give them flaws, mess with them, and then miraculously help them win. The monomyth/hero's journey being the framework.

I don't know if any FF messed with their main character as much as Cloud. Well, they were on a streak after FF6 (Female protagonist who was definitely different from not just other games, but even her fellow party members... man they had good writing) The guy was messed up. Very bad things happened to him. Many times. People died, and not just for shock value.

Some of it has been overhyped, and so the backlash against overhype has caused too many people to rate it lower than it deserves. Others expect too great of things and are disappointed when FF7 doesn't floor them - after all, they are told the title is one of the best RPGs of all time. It is, but it's impossible to look at it nowadays without already having an expectation in mind.

Back then, when we were still young and living off RPGs after school, some fantastic games were made. Some, like FF7 and Xenogears and Chrono Trigger were life-altering. These are the reasons why I want to work as a creator. They are the reasons why I love good entertainment and good writing.

They established the tropes. They get a pass on having the tropes used against them. Man, I always feel like writing a treatise when FF7 crops up. I loved the game, but I was never a full-on fanatic of it. It just deserves some love for it's age.

That echoes what I've discovered in my decades of gaming as well. Across mmos, MP fps', anything with MP, you start seeing patterns. A friend and I are even thinking about writing a book based on our experiences with people online, specifically the larger MMO communitys.

This kid's joking manner isn't even close to a percent of what vile stuff goes on every day, and his was even written in a satirical manner. He just happened to do it in the wrong environment. It's becoming that the wrong environment to say anything in is anywhere online, especially in text form.

I've seen simple misunderstanding's due to the lack of tone and context in text lead people to virtually "murder" each other in a violent rage. Some have even been eerily reminiscent of some real-life news stories, with the only actual difference being a virtual rather than real person. It may sound ridiculous to compare the two since people generally behave differently when behind a slight wall of anonymity, but it was an almost identical circumstance and conversation leading to an explosive impulse leading to one person's death.

The only difference was that in the game, the person respawned. Text is a terrible form of basing any kind of judgement of another person on. It's wrought with problems. This is part of why when we've had to make judicial decisions about people's problems onine (as Guild Leaders) we've always communicated by voice. Text has always caused issues. The legal system taking action over it is a perfectly USA response, it fits with everything I know of my fellow Americans when they (I should say we) misunderstand something.

Recently the places I've lived have all had calorie counts on menus. It's very helpful. That way, when presented with a choice between a 400 calorie meal for $10 and a 1200 calorie meal for $10, I know which one will give me more calorie for my buck.

Yes, some of us use it to get more calories, not less. It's just far too helpful to know exactly how many calories you're getting. It's not just for people dieting or wanting to eat less.

Sometimes when trying to make a point or advertise a product the simplest things are missed. In this ad "Try IE" is missing. The ad itself claims "progress" and "not as bad anymore"... but there's no call to action. I could make a fallible argument that the ad itself says IE is worse than all the other browsers - because it never says you should use IE... just that IE isn't so terrible.

It'd be a bad argument, but that's why I really don't like this ad - it's a (mostly) negative ad and emphasizes a negative point (how bad IE is perceived), which is not how you change people's thoughts. This video has many repetitions of IE SUCKS in it. If I were advertising a product, no matter what people thought of it, I wouldn't be flashing "my product sucks" all over the place for the majority of the commercial in order to make the last 5 seconds try and turn that on it's head.

You change preformed thoughts by repeating "my product is now great" over and over, not "my product isn't terrible anymore!"

It takes a significant amount of effort to do this all personally, this is very commendable. I self-publish and work for a company that helps others self-publish by editing/designing and converting their work, and it's always something very involved.

It's not as simple as just clicking convert either. Tables render differently in Epub and kindle, TOC creation can be a veritable mess and table rendering in Epub and Kindle conversions look different if done wrong.

Mobi conversion tools may or may not fix issues that'd appear if the official Kindle KDP tool is used, meaning a converted Mobi may end up looking entirely different than the same file once uploaded to Amazon.

Graphs... I don't even want to think about dealing with those and Kindle, congratulations on doing all of this yourself without screaming. My first couple book conversions were learning experiences, and they were mostly plain text (chapter fiction books) without varying fonts and diagrams.

So, if I had to sum up what I've learned into one idea that'd make the entire process easier, it'd be this:

Write plain text or rich text. Don't format when writing. Do write as non-fancy as possible in your master text. Then when you have to add stuff to it later, you don't discover little surprises that throw everything off.

For example: Don't indent. Kindle auto-indents when converted if indentation hasn't been defined in the style. (The official Kindle will, and only currently, who knows if it'll change in the future, and a Mobi generator generally doesn't.) So using TAB indents throughout a book instead of MS Word's feature will cause a massive headache just when you think you're done.

Since I work on Windows, the tools can be rather simple. Create a document in MS word. Save as a web page (filtered) - to remove some of the junk word creates in html. Edit the html to remove a couple other quirks, set tags for chapters, remove unicode that Kindle won't recognize (some are, some aren't), save, convert, and check what you missed. The less special your document has to look, the easier it'll be.

Again, congratulations, welcome to the world of self-publishing. It can give a nightmare of a headache, but once it's done, the joy of knowing you created something on your own is magical.

No, what it means is that Sgt. Nelson knows how to work with bombs. It doesn't make him a subject matter expert on terrorism or art. Just bombs. And as charged, yes, the subject of the article did have materials needed to make bombs minus the explosives.

Everyone who has a timer/watch/cellphone does, which is the point of why this is so ridiculous. If you arrest everyone who has all the materials necessary to make a bomb minus the explosives, everyone would be arrested.

I like the idea, really, in terms of goals, presentation, and spirit. Unfortunately the second thing my mind goes to with this is the practical stuff: What are the limits and licenses?

The licensing is required, but the limits on it make me wonder about how much use I'd get out of it. I see links to the license on the FAQ: https://creativemarket.com/license - but there's only one type of license offered. It's very artist-friendly, I'll admit, but... that's the only license. The FAQ says that if that's a deal-breaker, to use the contact form. But there's more about that license that's, well, confusing.

It seems about what you'd expect (by which I mean good for a seller, and not as much as I'd hope for as a buyer, but buying IP is always going to be hard to balance, so it's understandable/expected), though there's one that worries me: "All other items may only be used in a single commercial project." This is referencing items that aren't add-ons.

Does this mean, for example, a purchased WP theme could only be used on one client's site, ever? That's how I'm reading this plus the other terms.

And those packs of between 25 and 500 or so icons, can they only be used in a single client application? It looks like some are add-ons to Photoshop, while others are apparently a non-program specific package, doesn't that mean they have to be used differently per this license since one set of icons is an add-on, the other isn't? I know it's called "SimpleLicense", but licenses are never simple.

And then there's another licensing aspect. The true ownership of the items. The FAQ says that each item won't be checked when uploaded to the market, so the developer can update listings as they please, and to use a contact form for copyright issues.

I'd hope that'd be enough, but I already see one person who looks like they are probably infringing copyright, from what this lay person can see: https://creativemarket.com/Adrien/activity - does this individual has licenses from Braun for his UI product and individual licenses with each car manufacturer listed for the car designs that allows him to create products based off those and resell them with a restrictive license?

A place to report copyright violations in excess of just a contact form is going to be required, sooner or later. But a check to begin with to make sure someone isn't offering an item that already exists... I can see how that'd be an impediment. The texture packs make me wonder for both site and seller, as I wouldn't want to be the person that has to make sure one particular version of the texture "crumpled paper" isn't the same as the other 1000 versions of it.

That all said, it does feel like something that has great potential to succeed. I do some design work, and even with all I noticed, I'd still be tempted to use this site for selling sets of graphics.

Even if it was ethically okay, it's more likely to get you rejected for the job than hired, regardless of the lie. Why? HR isn't doing the checking. I did background checks for years at a major company. Our clients were both big and miniscule - you'd be surprised at how many very small business would be able to afford a reasonably priced non-subscription background screening service. If the degree was off by some years, the client wouldn't hire the person because they lied on their resume. It doesn't matter what the lie is, just that they lied, end of story.

Don't lie on resumes. It's not HR that'll be catching them. It'll be a company that's been instructed to just report back to the client with whether things were true or not. And we caught a lot of both innocent mistakes (off by 1 year or so), as well as outright fabrications.

There's no trying to explain that stuff to HR when you're simply sent a rejection letter by a third-party.

Also, some of our clients were required by the government to account for where they've been for the past 5 or 10 years, and requiring paperwork proving where they were (even if unemployed) for any gaps in those employment. People were embarrassed to admit when they were unemployed and so left it unexplained... again costing them a job. Yes the paperwork explained to them beforehand they had to explain it.

And yes, we'd catch the "small stuff" - calling up a training school to verify someone had gone, and then double-checking government databases to verify the school itself was legitimate, running names and credit checks... and telling people "we don't want to hear your explanation for why your resume is inconsistent. Send us paperwork proving it, and then we'll find out on our own if that paperwork is valid" is all a liar would hear.

I do have to admit catching people in innocent mistakes was heartbreaking, and I'm glad I got out before they started offering the social network checking services. But to say someone's so experienced with lying they think they won't get caught... just means they haven't applied with a company that has a good service provider in the background.

Unfortunately, going from happy to deep depression in a very short period of time (minutes), really does add to the clinical side of things. Even if it may not seem chronic or like "real" depression that other people get, it can be, and any further question about that should really be to a doctor - yeah, it can be difficult, but it'd help.

Yeah, parents you love is a big thing. Fear of dying... well I've known a lot of people a lot, lot more messed up than me. Fear of death is not what kept them going, it would definitely be really low on their list of what kept them alive. Not to undervalue that, but I would think it's not entirely uncommon... I personally think a greater portion of people are afraid of how they die rather than if they die, though I think we'd all prefer to not worry about either for most of our lives.

As for me, what helped was that I'm an extremely rational person at heart with a idealistic streak, so no matter how bad things got I could never convince myself things would never get better. I'm good at reasoning, and my idealism refuses to let me to settle my day without believing that things possibly, regardless of the chance, could get better.

As for material changes... it's a bit personal but what the hey: I was in a dead-end job and played online video games a bunch, had a few pretty good online buddies I knew. Things were getting bad, one of them complains that their roommate was moving out soon and they didn't know how they'd get by without one helping out, and I was desperate. I was willing to drive 3000 miles just to get out of my job and take a risk on the other side of the country.

Told my mom, and she didn't like the sound of moving in with someone I didn't really know. However she and her husband (who didn't rent/own, they lived by "sitting" other peoples houses while doing web development and barely scraped by) also happened at the same time upon a situation where they were going to watch someone's house for 6 months, only 2700 miles away, and I might as well come with them.

Oh boy, no, things didn't go as planned. I quit my job, and a few days before I was to leave there... they called me and told me the client had misrepresented their house, it was more of a garbage dump than a place to sleep.

And yet, somehow another place was found, other people in the same area had rooms in their big expensive house they could put us in for 5 months, and after that web work picked up and we ended up another 2000 miles away in yet a different direction, in cars that we had no clue would make it.

Yeah, it's kind of unbelievable. That's why I say: you don't know what the future holds. Sometimes it's crap for a very long time, and doesn't seem like it'll ever end.

And then, suddenly without warning, it improves. Yeah, it's still not fantastic. But it's so much more manageable. And if you had suggested to me I'd be driving across the country twice in the span of a couple months, and that'd save me from going off the deep end due to a job that was chipping away at my life, making the doctor say: "Because your so young, I'd like to wait a couple weeks and then take your blood pressure again before officially stating your in stage-1 hypertension," I wouldn't have believed it.

Don't get me wrong: a lot of bad things happen. And I have to look at some of them and go: you know, I could have forseen this, because I took a particular gamble in life hoping for a good outcome on bad odds. This too was a gamble.

If you ask me as to what I would do specifically in the past, if I could do it over again though, to improve my situation, I'd say: learn sooner in life that working for anyone other than yourself is stressful, and find a way to make money in life working for yourself. Failing that, at least be the kind of person that can enjoy working for others.

Oh, and my career path, the one thing I'd do more than anything else, is now something that I thought I was absolutely terrible, horrible at in school. And I was a A/B student. That's why I want to end again with: find something you love. Even if you can't (yet) feed yourself doing it, find something to love and work at it.

I guess I can think of one more thing: don't worry about timetables. There are things that would take years to learn and get around to doing, when the immediate concern is the money and accomplishment needed today. I thought that day after day for a while. And then one, two, three years later I sat there going: wait what? I could have finished learning/doing THAT by now, and there's been no progress when there could have been. So don't worry that something is going to take 3,5, or more years to start paying off. Because you'll still be there in 3,5+ years later, thinking that it'd still take 3,5+ years.

I find it amazing that when I finally, after lurking for a very long time, decide to create an account to have posting privileges, I see a post asking how you fight depression. Especially after a two-day spree of wondering what in life matters.

I've asked myself this a few times in life. And, sadly, I'm actually probably the only person in my family who doesn't need medication, my depressions always come from reflections on mistakes I chose in the past and still pay for, as well as wondering how the future will improve.

And compared to one year ago, it has vastly improved. It's gone from an insane amount of stress to much, much less. It's gone from having no point in life to some. And unfortunately, then I discovered that I was still getting depressed over what the future would hold. That's after giving up a job that was killing me, mind you.

Oh boy, shyness, man, I know your pain. Awkward and "other problems" - I know you may think other people can't relate, but there are people with the same problems. I haven't yet discovered a unique problem. Of course, that doesn't matter.

Manic depression is real. Some people need medication for it. Other times, I don't know, maybe life really does get you down. I'll be honest with you. There was a time in my life when I drove fast. Really, really fast. Because I believed suicide was wrong. But if I drove fast, and an accident happened, that was different.

I'm glad an accident never happened. Even though I've spent the last couple days depressed. I'm not a programmer or engineer, which is why I never created an account before now, though I've lurked for a long while watching people I initially thought (but have since revised, somewhat) discuss technical stuff. Yes, I've cried over how hopeless things seem, recently. And I've been stuck in that boring job, alone, expenses just managing to inch that close to expenses, credit finally reaching it's limit, and living day to day with the realization that each day is only wake, work, entertainment, sleep, repeat.

And yet, I've seen things change. And man, I'd never believe it. I'm in my current situation, a much better one I should add, because I told someone that I couldn't stand my life, couldn't deal with what was happening. Fortunately, it was someone that somehow, at that exact time, had a situation open up that they could bring me in on. I was lucky. I don't know how much longer I could have held out. But I wasn't reaching out to others.

And you know what? Looking to others online (I did it too) can alleviate some of the pain, but I know that as much as these answers comfort you, remind you that others ARE in the exact same situation, or have been, everyone is different, situations are different, and nobody, NOBODY, ever really understands what YOU are going through. Even if it may seem trivial, even if you personally know it may seem and even be trivial, it doesn't mean other people understand.

I don't understand. I've had my own problems. Millions of other people have had problems. Lots of people somehow live. Some people do end up dying.

And though this may be hackernews, and though there it may not be something you believe, in the worst of times here's what's kept me from doing anything more than that speeding I thankfully left in the past: I do believe in God, and that although things are bad, he'd be SAD (yes, emotionally depressed, God himself would be) if I decided to take my own life, as would my mother, and I'd never have a chance with that girl that really, I didn't actually have a chance with. Yeah, they aren't all reasons other people would look up to, but it's real.

And you know what: I'm still here. Still crying at knowing things may not get better than they currently are. But I can't deny they are better than they were, even if I still haven't solved my problems.

I won't lie: life can get worse. And yes, it can get better. But it might get worse. The question isn't if you can look forward and see where the good will come from. It's about whether you can reject the bad, no matter how long it lasts, and tell the world that yes, you're better than it. That no matter how it smacks you down, you're a better person than how it wants you to be.

You may be stuck in a terrible job, stuck in a situation you can't handle, and not know anyone. I sympathize. I may even understand - but I can't state that for a certainty because really, I don't know you. I know millions have similar situations. But not one person would I dare to say I really understand, it'd be too cruel.

But I do know life should be lived. As I said, it may get worse. But, it may get better. Here's the answer: we really don't know what the future holds. It's uncertain. But here's what I do know: we aren't dealt a life that's already certain. Fate doesn't exist. Life can get better. It can get worse. But here's the thing: we don't know when it'll get worse. But we can absolutely work and struggle and make it better.

Man, I know it's tough. And sometimes, you cling to things you can, as small as they may be. As long as you live, please, believe me, they are worth holding onto. You don't know what the future holds. Your fears, my fears, some exist, some will exist, and some will only be imagination and nothing more.

I can't tell you how to fight depression, because that's your battle. I can admit that I have a family member that is definitely, clinically depressed. And I know from how they act when they haven't taken their medication. Right now, they, who a few years ago were so depressed they deceived their parents about taking medication at all and wouldn't for months at a time, is now leading an incredibly happy life they couldn't even imagine being possible during that time. It was completely unexpected.

They still need to take medication to fight the real, clinical depression. But that doesn't change the fact their life did in fact change in a way they couldn't expect, couldn't foresee, couldn't even fathom as a regular person, let along a depressed person.

I know it's not much to go on. But enough people die constantly. I know it's hard: that much I do know, really. There are groups that can sympathize. And as hard, as incredibly painful and humiliating it can be to talk to others about something so person, so painful, without the wall of anonymity, it does in fact help. The first step is hardest. Medication does help. It's hard to believe sometimes, even if you don't believe you're one of the "really really depressed ones," but watching someone go from suicidal to having a new outlook on life because they corrected a real deficiency in their brain is incredible.

And here I stand, still someone suffering. But I do know better. I do think it's wrong. And there are still people I love. There are still things I hold onto. And, I still have, no matter how small or how much of a sliver it is, hope.

That's how I fight depression. I don't always win the battles. But so far, I'm here typing. Never stop the fight. I'm sorry, but I can't say the fight will end. But never stop the fight. And find something you love - that's important too. No matter what it is, love something. Can't believe that I picked this day to register, and saw this post somehow. You never know what the future holds. But you can influence it.