I tend to have a sunny disposition that frequently borders on maniacally happy, and I was recently asked the question of how I manage to stay so cheerful. The answer at the time (“Great job, good hobbies, comfortable in my life, happy where I’m going, etc etc”) was in retrospect a little trite, because it didn’t really go into any of the details that were really the meat behind it all.

As a self-described eternal optimist (Caveat: This is a dirty lie, but it’s a goal), I have to see the silver lining on pretty much every cloud, and this fundamentally is a factor of perception. If I decide to see the good things, I will, and vice versa. This perception is locked in an eternally self-perpetuating symbiotic relationship with my mood: If I’m unhappy I’ll see things in a bad light, which will make me unhappy and so on and so forth until I’m wearing black eyeliner, listening to Faith & The Muse and stapling my hand to my forehead. Alternatively, when I’m happy it causes a similar chain reaction until I’m wearing a Dirndl and singing in the Tyrolean Alps (Yes, there are pictures, and no, you can’t have them). In short, my mood is the lens through which I perceive the world. Sound familiar? Well, I can’t imagine I’m alone in this. Moving on…

This suggests that the secret to being an optimist is actually the same as keeping your mood up aka the secret to happiness, and that…. well, I’m hardly someone who’s made the effort to be an expert at a topic that so many people have tried to define. I do have quite a few books on happiness though, everything Buddhist philosophy to scientific articles about endorphins to small pamphlets handed to me by people declaring it to be my salvation, but that doesn’t make me an expert. If anything, these texts have taught me that the secret to happiness is religious in nature, and since I think that’s absolute rubbish I’m clearly not qualified to talk about it.

Thankfully, that’s not going to stop me.

This is, without a doubt, the best week I’ve had so far this year. Somewhere between the muscle soreness, the celebrations, the accomplishments and the random positive things sliding across my desk it all just glommed into one big ball of slightly manic awesomeness, and now as I sit here at the end of it I’m allowing myself a well-deserved pint to toast a life well lived.

“Life well lived”… that really is the goal, isn’t it. It’s all well and good to accomplish goals and acquire assets that match with some socially acceptable norm, but when in the end you look back and realize you were miserable trying to achieve all that you can’t exactly say it’s time well spent, can you? No, this week has been proof positive that for me I not only love reaching my destination, but that the journey on the way there is taken in a way that makes it all worthwhile. The goal is merely the capstone to an amazing experience, and while I do work hard I do so because I want to, rather than a misplaced sense of martyrdom.

So lets recap, shall we?

Last year, as many of you know, wasn’t the best for me. After graduation my relationship with the CEO gradually degenerated, and though my job hunt was incredibly successful on many different levels, the subsequent crappy situation when the mortgage market evaporated and took my new job with it left me in a precarious situation. Even so, life continued to be good and the lessons I learned from independence were invaluable, and eventually I managed to settle in a phenomenal job that I would have never considered under more secure conditions. Hindsight? Everything happens for a reason, and right now I am in a really good place professionally. The name of 2007 shall therefore be the “Year of unexpected awesomeness”, because every single moment of suck has turned into such an excellent thing for me that I can’t attribute it to my own general sense of optimism. Yet even though I am surrounded by opportunity- I still have to grab it.

I am now in a new city, with (as mentioned) fantastic opportunities, and though in the long run I’m not certain I’ll stay here in Columbus, I am nevertheless going to make sure I take full advantage of everything it has to offer. Thus my resolutions this year will be all about that, what I want to accomplish for myself, and the bright and shiny future that I am building for myself. Except… well, last years’ resolutions I completed in less than 6 months, so this year I’m going to put a slightly different twist on it, one garnered from the ranking systems that make console gaming so much fun. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this year my resolutions will have Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels of accomplishment.

Sometimes it’s hard for me not to shout. Sometimes, it’s hard for me not to tell you about all the little adventures that fill my life. From day to day, I encounter things that in and of themselves are so beautiful and wonderful that they deserve their own post, book, work of art or even novel. It’s amazing, really, to see how the release of stress has resulted in such an overabundance of optimism; The silver lining is everpresent regardless of what I do, where I go, or how I decide to do something. Energy suffuses everything I do, and I hit my bed nightly with a feeling of… exhaustion. Fatigue. That sense of “Today was a good day”.

It takes a frightening amount of work to see the silver lining on everything when sometimes you just want to wallow in misery. The effort can be rough on anyone’s psyche, and the payoff doesn’t seem worthwhile when you’re sitting amongst the detritus of a munching binge. And yet, eventually, it becomes second nature. Sooner or later, you stop noticing the effort because you really do see the best side of everything. Once you reach that point you can’t help but listen to other people and wonder why they don’t see the awesomeness of the position they’re in, regardless of what they’re complaining about at the time. And at that point you feel obligated to correct them, or cheer them up, or try to give them a pep talk, no matter how unwelcome it might be .

The last time I’ve felt like this was during the months not immediately following, but after the breakup in ’0…3? ’04? Meh, doesn’t matter. The point is that for the past month or two I’ve been operating on what I can only really describe as an emotional high. It’s hard to describe what I actually feel, though I can give you symptoms:

I’ve been meaning to talk about my City for a while now, but I haven’t ever felt like I could convey my meaning, my experiences, and my love in a convincing enough way. My relationship with her is something that goes beyond words- it is a matter of experiences, of crossing lines, of those moments of sensation while walking down a street that you simply cannot reproduce. I could describe the chill down my spine, the music or the sounds, the sight. I could take pictures, I could give you a tour of downtown, show you the paths my feet have trod, the places where I have found and spoken to people. None of that will ever come close to giving you a sense of what I’m trying to tell you.

So, I’d been planning to head to DC next weekend for… oh, I don’t know, forever now. And it turns out that the world wants me to go! Not only have they located the ever-so-lovely Becky there, but it has endeavored to transplant Alyssa there for the weekend as well. Not only that, but the Cam has decided to host the Game of the Month there as well, meaning a TON of neat Cammies are going to descend upon that town.

I know I’ve posed something like this before, but really it’s just as valid now as it was before.

There’s… just something about music. Who knows what it is, whether there’s some primal rhythm that’s wired in everywhere somewhere below consciousness, if it’s some cosmic music of the spheres, or even the simplicity of the biological rhythm that plays origin for the enjoyment we gain.

Noticed, for the first time really, the way the wrinkles on my face are beginning to develop. I’m getting a few grey hairs as well, and it looks like age is finally starting to show itself. Know what? This makes me happy.

Why? Well, first of all I’m male. Aging as a male comes with a certain built-in dignity. Second… well, the wrinkles that are showing are the ones that come from excessive smiling, rather than excessive frowning. To me this is a certain indicator that my life’s been significantly more positive than negative, that I’ve had lots of opportunity to smile, and not so much opportunity to frown.