Most of the happiness we enjoy in life comes from wringing the best out of a less-than-ideal situation, because life hands out ideal situations very, very rarely.

If you go through life waiting for ideal situations in order to be happy, then you’re going to spend most of your life very, very unhappy.

Also keep in mind that happiness is an event, not a state of being.

(This has been a public service announcement from, and to, Yours Truly. To anyone else who gains benefit from it: You’re welcome.)

I spotted a bumper sticker the other day. It informed me that, “The death penalty is a hate crime.” Well now. Let’s think about that for a moment, purely from a semantic point of view.

The death penalty is the product of a process involving judges, lawyers and juries. The judge is supposedly impartial, the lawyers are in it either for principle or for money, and the jury is a bunch of people who have a collective blend of loves, hates and prejudices. Delivering a death sentence is a process constrained by a complex series of laws.

I wonder, then, where is the hate and where is the crime? We’re talking about a legal (read: “made of laws, therefore not a crime”) process that’s had most of the humanity squeezed out of it to begin with (so, there’s no more hate involved than any other emotion one could name).

Go ahead and disagree with the death penalty in principle if you see fit, but framing the argument in terms that don’t even make sense in the context isn’t going to help your cause. It just makes people like me shake our heads in bewilderment.

(Please note that I’m not looking for a debate on the merits of the death penalty itself. It’s the message’s phrasing itself that concerned me. Call me crazy if you must.)

You know I’m having a bad month when I can barely eke out ten posts from 1st to 31st. As it is, my son wrote most of the previous one… two weeks ago. Ouch. As anyone who knows me could tell you, I haven’t been doing so well lately, a time period defined as “since I lost my job last March.” You’d think that being employed for over six months would have given me the time and money needed to get back on my feet, but apparently you’d be wrong in my case. I’m sleeping poorly, getting sick more often, and generally have very little energy or enthusiasm. Even the things I could usually handle with grace and a smile are getting to me, such as getting thoroughly trounced in a game of Munchkin.

That’s not to say I’m living in some kind of hell. Drama levels are generally down, my bills are paid, the basic necessities are covered. I enjoy the company of people who care about me, we share laughter fairly often, and nobody’s currently in what I would define as a serious crisis situation, nor are there any active feuds that I know of. Life could be so very much worse, indeed.

And yet.

I’m searching for something that will help lift my spirits again, without falling into the trap of thinking, “As soon as I find [whatever] then I’ll be happy!” That was always Mom’s problem, her persistent belief that there was something or someone Out There(tm) and all she had to do for her “happily ever after” was to find it or them. So, no, there is no wonderful fix-it-all waiting for me. (I’ve been fixed, thanks.)

I’ll figure something out. Unlike some people, I don’t like wallowing in misery and I don’t like using pity ploys to gain attention. Hell, that’s why I’ve not been writing very much lately: You don’t want to read a continual string of depressing posts, and I don’t want to write them. See? I’m always thinking of you, my loyal and devoted readers. That’s what kind of a great guy I am.

There are a few amusing things to write about and link to which I plan on getting posted over the next few days. I’ll even go so far to say that “I’m back, baby.”

I know, I know. I’ve claimed to be “back” several times over the last few months. Time will tell, as usual…

One of the subject lines in my “probable spam” email folder advertised something called “Soft Viagra.” Sure, it’s not hard to figure out what they’re talking about, but did they really think things through before calling it that?

Maybe I should go into the consulting business. “Hire me! I’ll give your new product a once-over before you go public, with an eye toward preventing glaringly obvious faux pas and double entendres! Stop being the laughingstock of intelligent people!”

Hmm. I might be onto something.

If you catch the killer, red-handed even, and it’s a hot day in late July, and you gun him down (you’ll figure out how to make it look like self defense later)…

…does that make it a summer-y execution?

(If you can read this, my WordPress 2.0.4 upgrade went well. Whee. I have more to write, later.)

Here’s the thing: I, like so many geeklings, have self-esteem issues. This hardly makes me unique. In fact, part of my problem in that arena is my lack of uniqueness. I’ve written whined about this before, of course, but it bears mentioning here because coming to grips with the fact that I’m not demonstrably, markedly better than everyone else in some fashion is one of the keys to accepting who I am. (And dammit, it’s tough. I want to be exceptional in some useful fashion. I want not just to be good at something, but damned good. I’m not, unfortunately.)

The technique I most often use to deal with my feelings of inadequacy is humor, mostly in the form of pointed barbs at my own expense. I’m quite good at it. In fact, I’m so good that I sometimes find myself in the strange position of being angry at myself so I make a joke at my own expense that’s so funny it makes everyone around me laugh, then everyone cringes apologetically because they realize they’re laughing at my pain, and so I have to absolve them of their guilt. After all, I did say something funny, so it’s natural for them to laugh! (An odd side-effect of this experience is that it takes me “out of myself” in the process, so I’m then less angry at myself. Weird, huh?)

I may not be in the “stand up comedian” class of funny guys, but I’m not a complete slouch, either. This actually presents me with a challenge when it comes to handling my foibles and failings. My knee-jerk reaction is to joke about it, but that’s not helping anything. Is it? Okay, maybe the ability to laugh about it can help, but not the way I normally go about it. A challenge for me, then, is to find ways to express my frustration through the humor I’m so attuned to without turning it into a jab at myself. It’s a neat trick if I can pull it off, eh?

Not to say that if I stop making jokes at my own expense I’ll stop facing so many bouts of depression, but every little bit helps.
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