Week 17 - Andrew - Mental Health

LEGO Grand Emporium Review : LEGO 10211

(Review date - April 2012)

This set comes complete with 2182 pieces and 7 mini figures. In 2012, it was available for purchase either online from lego.com, or in store direct from Lego shops. The set is part of the ‘modular’ series. It’s a spectacularly detailed three story department store.

The set is perfect for building sitting slack-jawed and catatonic in your living room. This will allow you to revisit all of the choices in your life, as you click the pieces together. Take a moment, as you put together the detailed facade, to remember how perfect Lego is. Lego taught you to think. Try to piece together your identity as you assemble the grand chandelier that hangs over the central atrium.

This reviewer recommends purchasing this set with friends, friends you haven’t seen in a year. Travel, if you can, to the Lego store in Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara. This is only a 25 minute drive from Menlo Park. To take full advantage of the journey, remain monosyllabic. Ignore the opportunity to be in a part of the world you have never seen - ordinarily something that fills you with joy - and remain preoccupied, caught in an internal feedback loop.

The intricate design of the Emporium includes a revolving door, opening onto a ground floor clothing section. You have the power to select pieces, and assemble them in order. This is a satisfying level of control, the kind of control you cannot exert over your life.

The seven figurines include a window washer, store clerks and even an ice-cream vendor! All of these figurines have found a place in this world. You have not. What are you doing. You love your wife. Why are you like this? You got off a flight from San Francisco this morning. You didn’t bring her a present, but you bought yourself this giant lego set? Really? And now you can’t even speak to her? The window cleaner cheerfully wipes down the top floor glass panes, safe on his platform. He is comfortable with the choices he has made in his life.

The exceptional level of detail even extends to the shop fittings - the cash register, mannequins and brick-built escalator transform this set from a childs toy to a detailed model. It is still a childs toy. You are thirty years old in less than a month, sitting on the floor of your apartment, playing Lego. You are failing in ways you cannot understand at a career that you didn’t even choose.

Once you complete the Grand Emporium, you can collect the other Modular Buildings sets, and assemble them into a street. Alternatively, the set is attractive on its own. As yet another choice, you can take this as the moment that you decide that this is not a way to live. You can decide that nothing is worth this, and start to make changes in your life.

OVERALL SCORE: 8/10
Pros: Great set, very involving, lovely detail, long build time, forces contemplation of long-term anxiety.
Cons: Lots of repetitive structural work, wearing the same clothes for three days, jetlag, silence.

Week 17 - Laura - Mental health

It’s easier to be depressed on a Monday than a Friday.

I don’t feel quite as alone in my unshiny world on Mondays.

Scratch the surface and there’s no comparing us, but the frowns and moans Monday mornings motivate in most people I come across make me feel a little less alone, a little more normal.

I know it’s selfish, but seeing other people going around in the doldrums on Monday, with the weight of the working week to come on their shoulders, in some way makes my load a little easier to carry.

I can pretend we’re all in the same boat.

I know we’re not though.

The good days are the worst. The conventional good days, that is. The ones we've been socially conditioned to think are happy ones. Like the first day of holidays. Like summertime. Like Christmas Day. Like birthdays. Like Fridays.

I hate Fridays.

If Mondays allow me to fool myself I'm just like everyone else, Fridays show me that’s a lie.

I want to join in the collective good mood, I really do. I get the smiles. The working week is over. The weekend is just hours away. Friday for most people is the gateway to about 64 hours of freedom, and the chance for all kinds of fun.

I get the Friday feeling in theory.

I just don’t get it in reality.

It doesn't work out that way for me.

I'm not even sure Friday is covered by a sheen that’s any less grey than Monday to be honest. And even if I believe for a minute that it is, the Friday feeling doesn't stand a chance against the knowledge that any let-up is fleeting, and bad times are just around the corner.

And so Fridays are when I feel most alone, and when the tsunami of bad feelings are most likely to swallow me up.