sure, I'll just hover in mid-air while you do that.

There's another of those "Let's pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy." pictures today. I've had problems with that for a while, not because I disagree but because it's incomprehensible that anyone could do that.

For me being happy requires constant effort or I slide down the sheer cliff face I'm climbing. And when I get to the top and poke my head up, I feel like one of those ducks in a shooting gallery. Like I daren't actually get *happy*, merely happy-adjacent is as good as I can have without being hurt for it.

There's a line in a popular song from last year, by Gotye, "You can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness." And I'm thinking that's pretty close to how my brain works. And most addicts get there because their brains are wired for addiction, which I certainly inherited from my alcoholic mother despite not being an alcoholic. All you have to do to become an addict is over-expose your brain to whatever chemical experience and you'll feel like you *need* that for the rest of your life. It's worse if your brain gets it younger because the level for overexposure is possibly lower. (That was the theory behind raising the drinking age.) I was certainly overexposed to a biochemical level of sadness by knowing I was unwanted from a very early age.

This is a simplistic view, of course. And I disagree with it, but it provides a perception that is lacking anywhere else.