a reader writes
Your blog is starting to sound like you need a hobby, something to keep your mind off your mind. Either that or a part time job. Chaining chairs to tables comes to mind.
to which I respond:
We are able to maintain ourselves on this earth only by being harnessed to the machines we have invented. That weavers in particular, together with scholars and writers with whom they had much in common, tended to suffer from melancholy and all the evils associated with it, is understandable given the nature of their work, which forced them to sit bent over, day after day, straining to keep their eye on the complex patterns they created. It is difficult to imagine the depths of despair into which those can be driven who, even after the end of the working day, are engrossed in their intricate designs and who are pursued, into their dreams, by the feeling that they have got hold of the wrong thread.
—W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn