The Fantastic Trick of Being Alive

I am less interested in happiness these days than I once was.



I suppose you could argue that I am lying, what with my praising the glory that is my SAD lamp, but you would be wrong. There is a difference between no longer wanting to off yourself and feeling happy. There are myriad emotions on the other side of suicidal ideation, and only a narrow spectrum of those are about happiness.

There is a lot of talk now about happiness and how to find it, but I'm less and less inclined to buy what they're selling. We each define our sense of happiness differently, so a seller can say HAPPINESS, and we will each come up with our own product description. Most often, they're only selling us our own assumptions about a transient emotion.



Positive affirmations, a mainstay of the happiness-seeking self-help complex, have always made me feel like absolute shite. It is what they appear to do to a large number of us, (and Danielle LaPorte has interesting things to say about that). [Edited to add: you can find a study that supports the sometimes negative effects of positive affirmations here with a paid membership.]

I think positive affirmations can sometimes wound rather than heal because they act like a question in our brains rather than a statement of belief. Our brains automatically fill in their kneejerk responses, which are often the very opposite of the positive affirmation's goal.

What the positive affirmation says:
You are beautiful, and the world wants your dreams to come true.

What our brain hears:
Am I beautiful? Does the world care about me?

What our brain says in response:
I am a sub-par shit-pile and the world is, at best, ambivalent about my existence.



What I need is practical takeaway. Rather than tell myself I am beautiful — especially when that is something I am not even particularly interested in believing as a grossly oversimplified statement about a complex and far-reaching attribute — it is much more effective to go out and do something beautiful, give to the world.

The universe is both within and without us, and your brain, a finite and rather touchy instrument, is not always the best interpreter of the state of things.

Act outwardly rather than retreat inwardly. If you find affirmations triggering, this'll get you further any day.



I quit drinking two years and three months ago, and my worst struggles have all happened while I was looking for happiness over interestingness, happiness over knowledge, happiness over diversity of thought and feeling.

I had lazily equated loving my life with being happy, when what's true about love is not happiness but love itself. What's true about love is that it exists quite aside from happiness. Love is indivisible.

I loved an ex even as he made me feel lonely, I loved my grandmother even as I grieved her death, and I love writing even when I growl audibly over fussy sentences.

We do not have to see beauty in the mirror to love ourselves. We don't have to believe the world wants anything in particular for us, good or bad. Love happens anyway.

Happiness? It'll fail you every time. It is transient.



I don't know how to describe the steps to love. I'm feeling for them with my feet as I speak. How to get there is the greatest ongoing question of human existence. I do know, though, that it is here, greater than happiness and much more interesting. Love knows more, feels more, and does more than happiness could dream of doing in a month of Sundays.

Happiness feels good when it comes, but Love? It'll tear you apart, build you up, and make you a whole being, even when you think there's nothing left, and that's the fantastic trick of being alive.

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PS. I am not, of course, discounting the positive experiences people have had with positive affirmations. I know people for whom they have worked quite well. The fact is, though, that the opposite is also true for some, and I mentioned them in the above piece to validate those experiences and let people know that it is not some kind of innate failure of the spirit that this negative outcome happened for them.

Did I Ever Tell You About That Time?

Hey, did I ever tell you about that time that I had a job I really hated deep down into the very middlest parts of me, and then I had to leave that job on stress leave, because it was so awful that it broke my brain, and then when I got a little bit better I went to work at a shoe store, and I really loved selling shoes, because shoes are fantastic, but then I had to leave that shoe store job a week ago because working from home has turned into doing what I love full time?

Yeah, that was awesome.

I'm Cranky AND Blessed. I Just Thought You Should Know.

I'm feeling kind of cranky, but I'm also in the mood to write, so here I am both being cranky and writing.

Aren't you lucky you stopped by?

I am feeling all foot stompy, because haven't been in the mood to do anything over the last week or two. I want to just put everything down and go on an extended vacation where I just sit somewhere warm and maybe go for a few walks but feel absolutely no obligation to take in culture or learn anything new or accomplish a single task. I want to wave a big old middle finger at anyone who would even say hello to me, because that hello comes with an expectation that I will say hello, and even that amount of obligation feels like you're rubbing my fur backwards.

I'm irritable.

While I'm irritable tonight, though, I haven't been irritable 100% of the time lately, and I've been thinking about how I have been writing all of this serious material about my newish sobriety and the kid-free kerfuffle thing and anxiety and seasonal depression, and I haven't been writing about how freaking excellent so much of my life is.

I write about how hard sobriety is, but I haven't talked at length about how much I feel like embracing my sober life and cover it in slobbery dog kisses, because I like more things and enjoy people more and remember the things I've done and don't feel hungover all the time that I'm not drunk.

I went on about how horrible some people can be to those of us kid-free types with their assumptions about everyone wanting and needing children, but I didn't talk about all of the wonderful people who stood up and said Me, too and thanked me for creating a space for them and shared their experiences and offered their support.

I talked about how I suffer from anxiety and have some bandaid ways for dealing with the panic that it can bring on, but I didn't talk about the real gift of which anxiety is a side effect, which is a heightened sensitivity to my environment and the people in it that allows me to experience and take in my environment at a level that lends to my deepening understanding of myself and the world around me and absolutely founds my creativity.

I can't think of something awesome about seasonal depression. Depression as a seasonal affliction can suck it.

I have stumbled and fumbled my way into a life that allows me to eat and sleep regularly under a roof of my choosing with a life partner of my choosing in a culture that doesn't outrightly count me as chattel, and beyond that I have the great fortune of seeking others of my kind and creating art and words and communities through an incredible set of technologies that I never dreamed possible as an isolated child.

I really do feel this fantastic sense of being blessed somehow, of having fallen into an incredible pocket filled with chance and good luck, especially now that I am sober enough to see it all.

By all of the above, I mean to say that MY LIFE IS GOOD. I just forget to talk about how my life is good, because once I explain all the dark stuff to myself here on the internet, I tend to go out into the world or eat good food or have a nice nap and feel good about stuff, because I worked it out here.

And, by all of the above, I also mean to say that I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT THE GOOD STUFF MORE OFTEN, because there is a lot of good stuff, and it's worth writing down.

So, I may be cranky lately, but I am also blessed and happy, and I think it's worthwhile to make some noise about both sides of the coin.

And you? How's your crankiness? Well-tainted with the happy, I hope.