Nuvaworth -- Self-Esteem Everyday For A Month

Like a shark ever-moving through the water, lest he stops to take a pee and dies, the serious matters of self-esteem and pride must also press on.

We buck ourselves up -- giving ourselves positive strokes of praise, affirmation, and laud -- only to take a nap and wake up in a cold sweat with doubts or to sleep through the night and wake up delirious with self loathing. So everyday is a day of starting over.

But I had an idea, kind of like my idea yesterday, of the spinner that matches a problem with an answer. But this one -- and I haven't worked out the details yet -- tries to administer a longer lasting dose of affirmation, or doses timed as each day comes around. So you're not suddenly beset with a down moment and lose all your progress. Then having lost your progress, you give up.

I got the idea from the Nuvaring commercial, which is some sort of device (not shown in the ad) that is inserted ... uh ... somewhere in the female body ... uh ... somehow, I don't know how, precisely ... I don't think they say how ... there must be a handle involved, some kind of pushing device, a pump, a placement gun, maybe something like a putty tube, more likely a tube with a cartridge on the end of it ... they didn't say if you had to go in to have it done ... although that would be a good cottage industry for midwife types ... let's leave the details for the imagination.

However it's done, the idea is what counts. Instead of daily pills that you have to take, that then are effective for that day alone and are suddenly ineffective at the stroke of midnight, at which time all carriages turn back into pumpkins, you have the device inserted once a month and you forget it (except, of course, for all the side effects that are possible.) Perhaps there are various salves and creams, something to counteract the side effects and keep your partner reassured that he's not going to be stepping into a bear trap. We hope.

The basic idea is one of convenience, also one that promises longevity. So, I hope you can see how the Nuvaworth (the details aren't worked out) might be good for our psychological ailments, getting that daily burst of self-esteem affirmation, building us up for the long, depressing day ahead.

The Nuvaworth couldn't be a chemical thing. I suppose it could be, but I don't have any doctoring skills. But antidepressants isn't what I'm talking about when it comes to the "Drive for Pride," or any chemical masking. I'm talking about getting the self-esteem through psychological means alone. In which case, the Nuvaworth would need to be some sort of mental boost that lasts for longer than what you would get day by day.

It could be you would need to do a lot of reading, say, on the last day of the month. Then perhaps we'd have some psychological tricks, similar to mneumonics, maybe a bell or gong, by which you freeze dry the contents of the affirmations, storing them in imagined mental chambers. Then perhaps through the means of self-hypnosis (timed with a tone or song from a cell phone), the affirmations are released into your mental stream without any conscious effort on your part. I'm not leaving out the possibility of something embedded in your pillow, but please don't hold me to that.

Anyway, the idea is out there. The Nuvaworth -- Self-esteem everyday for a month. Don't go to bed or get up without it. It's a million dollar idea. Especially if we could get it covered by the health care reform legislation. But it's going to be tricky politically, since the Republicans would just as soon you suffer.