One of my friends once asked (possibly phrased as a suggestion) why I don't write when I'm happy. I gave a pretty confident reply that the two things were simply incompatible, citing Tolstoy's opening sentence from Anna Karenina. That is, it would be [even more] boring to read my posts if I was feeling great - what could I possibly have to say?
.. as I'm writing this in a coffee shop I'm becoming increasingly irritated by fellow patrons and their flashy flashes. Fools!
..Ok. I am still somewhat happy, well, at least not unhappy. Not yet. Though this music is loud beyond necessity, also stupid.
Tra la la la.Happy happy. Ok, well to be fair, I don't have anything specific to be happy about. The possible date I was excited about tomorrow seems less and less likely. Some people cancel. Others don't even respond. But for some reason I am not down about that. Maybe it's the caffeine. Maybe it's the sugar. Maybe it's that I do have a few really great friends, and a family that I love (despite our shortcomings), and a fuckin' sweet place to live. And I sort of have a future, I guess (if I live that long), that is rather reassuring.
Maybe I'm happy-[ish] because I take myself less seriously now. For example, some guy just told me that I look like the actor from "Yes, Dear" - that is not a compliment, and I told him as much, but in a friendly jokey way and we both had a good fake laugh about it. It was kind of an amusing little interaction. Basically I keep confronting the fact that many people don't see me as I would like to be perceived (and often they seem to develop great misconceptions), but it bothers me so much less now. I'm not sure if it's a self-esteem thing (i.e., now I'm less hard on myself) or a more general "life's not that big of a deal, quit being a control freak" kind of attitude, but I like the way I handle things now more than ever.
So yeah, maybe I am happy. Not always, not completely, maybe even not for long, but I like using that word to describe this moment.
In some way, I guess, I realized that I've been wrestling with "white people problems"... and they're not that serious.
It's always hard to tell if something is a compliment or not...people have different tastes and what might be a compliment to one person is an insult to another.
ReplyDeleteFair enough, and I'm sure he didn't mean it as an insult - it's just that I wasn't flattered by the comparison.
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