So, I've been reading the Jack Aubery and Stephen Maturin books

You know, the "Master and Commander" series by Patrick O'Brian.

So far, I've read Master and Commander, Post Captain, HMS Surprise, The Marturius Command, Desolation Island, and listened to The Fortune of War as a book-on-tape, because none of the local library networks had it in in book form, and I didn't feel like waiting a week for it to be returned.

But I may have missed something, because I believe it was slightly abridged. And because I'd never listened to a book on tape before, so my mind may have wandered.

I was wondering if any other fans of the series could clear something up for me:
( Spoilers for _The Fortune of War_ )

What I would say to my ten-year-old, or twelve-year-old, or sixteen-year-old self.

"Hi. I'm you're thirty-one year old self. You're going to screw up a lot in life, and also do a lot of good things. You already know everything that you SHOULD do, and you're not going to do most of it, because you're clinically depressed. And you're already being treated for clinical depression as well as you can be. So, frankly, you're fucked until medical science advances. Which it will. Oh yeah, we swear a lot more now that we used to when we were your age.

"The things you can do now are to get a lot more exercise and try to make sure to get plenty of sunlight. I know you know that you should do these things -- Mom keeps telling you that. Well, she's right. And you won't listen to me any more than you listen to her. So there's really no point in me telling you. But I am, anyway. You know all this. You should probably actually do your homework. You should probably actually get involved in drama club, or other clubs. You should probably do SOMETHING other than just sit in your room doing nothing at all, but you don't, because you're clinically depressed. If that magically went away, I could give you all sorts of suggestions of neat things to do, but they're exactly the same suggestions that you already give to yourself and can't follow because you're depressed. You know how you're always down on yourself for not being able to follow through because you've got no willpower, and that's a moral failing? That's not a lack of willpower, that's clinical depression. However, you tend to be slightly more productive, if even more unhappy, when you decide to treat it as a moral failing instead of a medical condition. So I've got no good advice for you.

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