Daydreaming about engineering and water witchery

I'm fine, it's the seasonal depression that's hurting me. I'm still able to communicate with reality, but through a thick damp mist. Not drinking, but didn't quit. Smoking it up pretty good these days.

Here's what's going on. 

I'm daydreaming obsessively about gears and welding. I like to believe that my imagination is able to keep realistic physics in mind as I combine parts and build machines in my head. But imagination may not be enough anymore. I got some books on mechanical engineering - an older edition of a textbook that a student would use in an intro class, a book to dumb down the concepts to simple math, and another book that is specifically targeted at designing gear trains, and seeks to explain the more complex equations to "give a richer understanding" of the systems described within. If I can read some of that stuff and buy a MiG welder, maybe I'll make something. 

I'm thinking a lot about plastic recycling, and how the way we're doing it is illogical and inefficient in a way which almost stupefies the mind. I know what I would change and how, but I can't put the full force of my efforts into it right now. There isn't much of me to go around, and I am spread thin before I can even put on my pants. Big ideas, little to show. Desperate for a breakthrough.

I'm learning how to use spreadsheet formulas to sort data and reveal items that I can buy and then sell at a profit. This is what I'm currently most invested in emotionally as well as financially. I'm trying to get good at spreadsheets so I can use that skill to strike it rich. I do mean that I am literally attempting to find a way to "strike it rich" and I think I am plausibly capable of succeeding in that goal. Knowing how to get data from an API would be a big help. I barely know what that means, but I have to figure out how to communicate with a database. Oof. I'm trying to make this spreadsheet into a forked stick which I can wield like the water witch of profitable leads.

I'm not doing so well. I'm not doing so bad. That stuff is what I am doing.