A few weeks ago, I read a few articles on the inevitability of depression as middle age draws closer. Did you see those stories? They were everywhere, but no need to scramble around for any; they all read pretty much exactly like this one, from US News and World Reports.

I focused on this particularly un-uplifting passage: "The researchers cautioned that cheerful people tend to live longer than unhappy people — a fact that might have skewed the overall finding. But they also suggested that evidence of a happiness curve might simply reflect a midlife choice to give up long-held but no longer tenable aspirations, followed by a senior's sense of gratitude for having successfully endured while others did not.

Giving up your dreams plus gratitude you're not dead yet, and those are supposed to be the good parts

Oh well. The real point of the articles, if not the study itself, was meant to be "Feel better about not feeling so great — it's normal!" And I do know from my sex education work that normalizing, the mere act of telling people how many others there are in their cohort, can be surprisingly therapeutic.

Happy New Year! Okay it's a little late, but let's hope for a good one this time.

I'm not much of a fan of the usual type of resolution (I quit smoking when I was good and ready, and I'll lose this post-baby weight the same way) because they are generally just another tool with which to bash ourselves over the head and really, haven't we got a boxful of those already?

There's a certain appeal, though, to the art of light-hearted self improvement. The stakes are low — if you promise to buy yourself a cute vibrator and you never get around to it, so what? It's not like your insurance is going to go up. In that spirit, here is a list of sexual self-improvers for the new year. Do them or don't, we'll never know!

1) If you've been faking it, cut that right out.

Just quit it. If you're tired of the action, why not just say "We can stop now?" And if you feel the need to prop up a sagging ego (not your own), maybe it's time to wonder why you don't feel comfortable just telling the truth, or to start going out with someone who doesn't require that sort of bolstering.

2) Try something new: As simple as leaving the light on or as complicated as joining a special interest club and buying a whole new wardrobe.

3) Learn about something new even if you're not sure you want to try it.

A great deal of our "Ew, gross, nobody should ever do that" reaction to unusual practices comes more from their novelty than from any real inherent heinousness. That, and from our tendency to assume the worst. So much of so-called kinky sex is not only utterly harmless but rather endearingly nerdly in practice, but there's no way to know this without risking at least a little exposure. Web-surfing is safe!

4) Buy a toy.

The idea of menstrual suppression offends some women ("what's wrong with women's bodies the way they were meant to be?") and frightens others ("Doesn't that cause cancer?") but women's health professionals are generally pretty blasé about it and many practice it themselves.

The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, which ought to know, offers a number of fact sheets explaining why it isn't likely to be bad for you (women have been skipping the placebo week and thus their periods for as long as there have been pills to take or skip, to no demonstrated ill effect) and how indeed it might even be good for you.

There's no question that "the experts" have an established pattern of being very very sure one week that something will save your life, only to announce the next that that very something will kill us all in short order, but there is a good deal of science on this.

In response to the question of endometrial cancer raised by several of the women I talked to, Laura, who is not only a woman, but a doctor as well, responded: "The endometrial cancer risk happens with unopposed estrogen — estrogen causes the lining to differentiate (make channels and stuff so it can support a pregnancy if necessary) which is a risk for cancer because there are all those cells dividing away.

With progesterone in the mix as well, that doesn't happen. This is why only women who've had a hysterectomy should get estrogen-only HRT; if you have a uterus you need progesterone as well. Since OCPs [oral contraceptive pills] have the two hormones in combination, there's no reason to think that they'd raise risks for endometrial cancer (and the safety is borne out by data)."

"The whole gang is going swimming..." the old ads proclaimed, over a black-and-white "before" sketch of poor Janie, in her pleated skirt and saddle shoes, gazing moodily out the window, stuck at home once again because it's one of those days.

Of course, even the tampon ads promised Janie deliverance from a life of periodic fun-lessness, but how many of us have ever felt so confident, as the ads would have it, that we would frolic on the beach in a snow-white one-piece, like Janie there in the "after" picture?

My own Aunt Flo has had a habit of stowing aboard on every vacation, demonstrating a special affinity for camping trips (bleeding + no change of clothes + no shower = unhappy camper me) and, of course, romantic liaisons of all sorts.

So while I personally probably won't be seeking a 'scrip, I've been watching the advent of the new "few periods" (Seasonale) or "no periods" (Lybrel) birth control pills with some interest. If I spent a lot of time lying around in the nude looking tiny and perfect like my friend Rachel, who only vacations in spots where people speak French and wear no pants ("I'll take BCP packs back-to-back to suppress it every once in a while," she says, "Especially if I'm going to the beach.

Who wants to be lying around completely naked but for a little string hanging out of you? ") you better believe I'd be suppressing that old bitch like nobody's business. She's tagged along on nearly every date I've ever had. Stay home already, Bitchy. Take up crocheting or something.

The new pills, which are pretty much the old pills minus the one week of blanks and plus a good deal of rhetoric about freedom and autonomy, are catching on, and, I'm assuming, will continue to do so until we are able to look back upon the bad old days of monthly no-fun days with a mixture of astonishment and scorn.