. . . since the only way to avoid giving into depression and despair is to do something, even something you hate, anything in fact, I force myself to keep bashing away at something, anything.  Flaubert said it was only thanks to work that he was ‘able to stifle the melancholy’ he was born with.  It is a simple choice: work or succumb to melancholia, depression and despair. Like it or not you have to try to do something with your life, you have to keep plugging away. 

Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence