When A Humor Writer Gets Depressed

In January 2025, when I started this here blog, I was committed to giving it the ol’ college try.

By “college try,” I don’t mean in the millennial sense of getting drunk, making out with a guy down the dormitory hall, and then posting a moody AIM away message the next day (I wAlK a LoNeLy RoAd/in the shower/brb).

No, I mean putting in the work. When I started, I really meant to take Substack seriously, write regularly, and develop a community. I even posted an earnest Note about being a “writer,” which everyone knows is the only real way to actually become a writer.

And for awhile, I did. I loved writing funny missives most weeks, reading other people’s writing, and feeling like I was developing my craft. I got a couple of pieces in McSweeney’s and, in my day job, even published an article in Nature about humor in science.

I fell in love with humor writing.

I thrilled each time I arranged a sentence just so to pack the best punchline.

I chased the catharsis of converting something annoying or painful into a joke.

I became obsessed with the way the best humor pieces peel away like an onion: under the outward absurdity lies is a sharp, sometimes stinging observation about modern life—or my life. (Sure, half my humor sits firmly in the realm of poop-and-pee-jokes– but I maintain that you haven’t lived until you’ve turned the trauma of potty-training your child into a true crime series.)

So, things were going swimmingly.

Until they weren’t.

Sometime last fall I stopped finding things funny.

Nothing terrible happened- just the usual mishmash of kid illnesses (LICE!), work stress, perimenopause, and global chaos.

But over the course of months, my brain, which usually is a constant engine of bizarre observations and ideas, just slowly ground to a halt.

I stopped enjoying any of my hobbies: sailing, running, writing comedy. They all felt pointless. The thrill of starting them and making early gains had worn off. Even my job as a professor and scientist, which I love, started to feel like a hamster wheel.

A looming dread crept in. Was I just going to be doing the same exact thing over and over until I die?

Nothing was awful, but also nothing was great. And any time I started to really stop and think about this emotional miasma of gloom that had pervaded my life, I would chastise myself. I have SO much. So many privileges. Such a beautiful life. How dare I? The best and only thing to do was just keep moving.

Then, in February, I had to put down my beloved pervy 18-year-old cat, Victor Hugo. I had had him since I was a clueless 22-year-old. Rescued on a whim while on a job assignment in Phoenix, he moved with me to Chicago, Ohio, New Haven, and eventually North Carolina. He was was there through grad school, bad boyfriends, bad apartments, the bad decisions, and then eventually good ones, including my marriage, and my kids. He watched me shift from coming home late, drunk and exploding Lean Cuisines in the microwave, to staying up late, writing in stolen moments after babies’ bedtimes.

Victor was the sole witness to my entire adult evolution. The holder of all of my secrets. A living time capsule.

As a lifelong insomniac, he was also my vibrating weighted blanket through the long dark hours of countless nights.

Like all pets, he was a great love made physical, touchable, holdable.

Until he wasn’t.

Losing him was brutal.

I was shocked at how upset I was and for how long. The sharp knife blade of grief sliced open my life. The raw pain scared me and also imparted a deep sense of dread. I thought a lot of my grandmother, age 87, and all she has lost: her parents, her husband, a child, dozens and dozens of friends. The ironic privilege of living a long life is loss. If I felt this way losing a cat, how would I handle all the loss left to come? I spent a lot of time thinking about mortality, the possibility of an afterlife, quantum mechanics. It was a dark and heady February.

And yet, for all my intellectualizing, my grief was also like a slap to the face: it made me realize that I was depressed.

The shock of grief threw into sharp contrast the subtle anhedonia and existential malaise that had quietly grown like a cancer over many months.

Even before my cat died, depression had been leaching me of my zest for life, and worse– my penchant for poop jokes.

To be clear, my depression was mild: thankfully, I was still able to function, exercise, parent, work, etc. But I had lost my jokes.

I had thought that I was not writing humor because I was just too busy. But now I realize that my baseline state is to be writing humor–or at the very least, making dumb jokes inside my own head. And if I’m not, then it’s a serious red flag that something is wrong in my life. Or that my neurotransmitters are playing hooky.

Fortunately, as a millennial woman with many friends who have been down this path, I felt zero shame in immediately making appointments for a therapist and for meds. As someone who has witnessed the suffering of older family members who were not afforded such grace, I am inordinately grateful for how both culture and medicine have changed and smoothed the path to mental health care.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up on Auvelity: a fast-acting anti-depressant that also sounds like it could be featured as part of a ‘fit check by one of the sorority girls on campus.

Auvelity sounds stupid, but to my great relief, it worked fast. I feel much better and am up to my old hijinks, including writing humor (stay tuned for more!).

And in that vein, this was a much darker essay than I normally write, so I’ll leave you with my thoughts on other popular drug names and what they sound like they are for:

SkyRizzi:

An antibiotic-resistant STD.

Klonopin:

What a clown takes prior to performing.

Zepbound.

An Elton John song: Zepbound on a Midnight Train.

Mirena. Skylena. Kyleena.

The names of 3 Gen Z Bravo celebrities, starring on a reality show where contestants fall in love with AI chatbots and have to decide whether to marry them.

Ozempic

What Russian figure skaters use to dope before the Olympics.

Lipitor

Lube for robots.

Do you have any good ones? Drop ‘em in the comments! I’m glad to be back.