Originally Posted by: Lordathestrings[font=trebuchet ms]Nailed it in one!

I suspect there's a link between being an artistic type and susceptibility to depression. You can learn to turn that sullen intensity of emotion into a positive form of expression. The old lemons into lemonade thing.[/font]

I think you guys both are exactly on point- it's a way to take a bad situation but use it to fuel the creative fire. I would say (and I don't want to get too into psychological archetypes here, but...) that there is a particular personality type that is artistic and is prone to being more emotive and which can be susceptable (did I spell that right?! I can never spell that word!) to depression. If we ran a myers-briggs personality survey of the users here, i'd bet we'd see some interesting and predictable results. I'll spare everyone the psychobabble - I'm not even qualified to babble in psychological terms! ;)