I can't find a good way to write this out. Paragraph form just isn't working for me right now.

• I find that doing small, detailed work--like drafting or building models--keeps me distracted. I've dealt with myself long enough that I know I can usually hang on until my depression passes by engaging in some project full of multiple small tasks.
  
• I just finished one of these projects, a scale model of the Finnish barque Pamir. It's sitting on the top of the bookshelf nearest the stamp table in our dining room.
  
• I started reading this month's Outside Magazine this afternoon. There's an article in it about William Stark, written by his son, Peter Stark.
  
• The first column of the article informs me that Bill Stark sailed around the Horn on the Pamir. His book about this adventure is due out in November.
  
• What are the odds that I would set a model of the Pamir on the shelf, only to pick up a magazine with an article about someone who actually sailed on the Pamir?
  
• However, the Pamir aside, Peter's article is mostly how someone like his father, a diehard adventurer with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for life, ends up killing himself one morning in Aspen.
  
• Faced with such a small yet immensely intriguing coincidence of the boat, I felt like I should do something with it: Read the article, figure out what Bill Stark was thinking when he jumped to his death, figure out how to avoid ending up in the same place.
  
• But I'm nothing like him. Nothing like him at all. Not a manic depressive, not an old man facing the fact he can no longer climb mountains, not an adventurous-type person to begin with.
  
• Peter makes a stab at relating manic-depressive behavior with extreme sports, like climbing Everest, but I can't see myself as that type of person.
  
• I'm the type that builds models of ships, Bill Stark was the kind who sailed the ships. Big difference.
  
• So, although I wanted to see some sort of divine intervention going on here, wanted to read some big meaning into that little plastic boat sitting on the shelf, I can't.
  
• And that means I still have to find my own answers.
  
• Damn.