Pretending You’re Not Crazy
Let’s hear it for depression! Just think of how boring comics would be if the writers were happy all the time. Granted, as a human being you’d rather be happy than sad, but… nope, you’d just rather be happy than sad. This is a series of mostly one or two page strips detailing his descent into depression, hoping that he has hit bottom and his pharmaceutically assisted climb back up. Ryan seems to think that taking anti-depressants is essentially “losing,” as he can’t find his happiness on his own, but I disagree. Take your happiness where you can find it in this life, provided that you aren’t hurting anybody else. Ta-da! All depression is hereby solved! Subjects in here include realizing that he wasn’t really wishing for death, an epically scatterbrained week, some wisdom on playing “the game,” trying to come to terms with depression without drugs, feeling buried under various forms of media, getting buried in “shoulds,” finding the enemy and realizing that he was out of options, trying to work out a system to get a handle on his life, his “quarter-life crisis” (which he says can happen in your 30’s which, mathematically, makes very little sense), trying to blend in with the regular adults at work, and trying to make anti-depressants funny. You can probably still read some of these up at his website if you’d like more samples, but basically this is a thoughtful, engaging series of strips from somebody who is trying to figure out the same thing as the rest of us: how to live a good and happy life. Or at least a happy life.
