To ease the stress on my creaking old body parts, this morning, for the first time in a long time, I chose to go running along the secluded dirt path that runs along the southern edge of Golden Gate Park from its midpoint to the Ocean. This was where I first started running about three years ago. At that time, I was so unused to it that I could barely manage twenty minutes. It seems like a lifetime ago. I lived in a different apartment, and had a different job - in Berkeley - a job that let me telecommute three times a week. So every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon, I'd take off for a run in the park.

I truly love to run. It lifts my spirits, and gives me guaranteed time to myself where I've nothing to do except think and dream. Way back when I first started running in Golden Gate Park, I remember that my thinking would often be occupied with finding a new job, preferably in the booming dot-com milieu. Well, I eventually found a new job and now, of course, I'm thinking once again, frequently, about finding a new job. That is, when I'm not thinking about film-making.

Today, the park was green and fresh, and the grass by the trail side was dappled by the occasional sunlight breaking through the trees. It was like my mood over the last week. For the first time in a while, I started to feel breaks in the canopy of depression that has dogged me all year.

The coming and going of my depression is largely a mystery to me, but this week I like to partly ascribe my improvement to three developments. First, I managed to get my work project under control again. Second, I'm starting to get excited about some of my new film projects. Finally, who can argue with the weather? Springtime seems to be busting out all over the place, and there's that subtle cadence to the streetnoise that you associate with open Summertime windows, and warm evenings (not that we ever get warm evenings in San Francisco).