This is one of those great doors that marijuana swung open for me lately.

For the past four months I've been alone, without friends, in a small town where the opportunities for distraction are limited to going to church and getting drunk. I don't like either of those things, and weed was nowhere to be found, so in a desperate attempt to keep my mind occupied I took on activity after activity, trying to escape boredom and depression. Sculpting, sketching, gaming, blogging, exercising, cleaning, cooking - one by one they either became boring, or were rendered undoable by outside circumstances. I was stressed, depressed, and wound up like a spring.

Three weeks ago I landed some rather kind bud and started smoking a bowl a day. Suddenly I wasn't held to any particular timeline in which I had to strive to accomplish something. When I smoke, I can just do what I like - I'm not worried about accomplishing anything, or feeling like I'm missing something - I just do what I want to do. Am I hungry? Go eat something. Am I tired? Go to sleep. Watch some television - it is okay. Just do what makes you and those around you happy.

"One of the nice things about looking at a bear is that you know it spends 100 per cent of every minute of every day being a bear. It doesn't strive to become a better bear. It doesn't go to sleep thinking, "I wasn't really a very good bear today". They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment".
- Stephen Fry