What do you do when you have one of those weeks -- or days -- where you just seem to get hit from all sides?

I've found this past week to be very depressing. Any week in which I have to sit through a three-hour Bellevue Council meeting is off to a rocky start in the first place, but this has definitely been a week when many of us would have been better off avoiding the television news all together.

From local to national to international, it's been a week filled with tragedy -- everything from suicides to fires to animal abuse to Charlie Sheen to tsunamis and earthquakes. In a way, we need to be glad that the bad news still manages to affect us -- it seems worse, somehow, to be so cold that nothing gets to you anymore. But I could have used a little less "getting to" when I sat on the couch with my best bud Arthur the other night and saw pictures of the Great Danes found in Armstrong County.

I once read a book about animal welfare activism that recognized that so many people who work or volunteer in that field end up quitting because of the emotional pain they experience. It urged people to turn that pain and despair into positive action, channel the negative emotion into something that will balance the bad with good.

That sounds like a plan, and may explain why so many of us respond so quickly to the tragedies around us.

Every now and then, though, we all probably need to just decompress. I do that in a couple ways. A few hours spent playing video games will detach me from reality enough to pick up my spirits again. Reading is another one of my outlets, the trashier the book the better! I usually have a couple books going at a time -- one on philosophy or some other deep subject, the other for pure entertainment or escapism.

Some people clean their houses. I wish I had adopted that method of decompression, but, much to my mother's chagrin, such is not the case. In fact, I'm planning on using this depressing week as a reason why I don't have to paint my bathroom this weekend.

And that makes me feel better already!