I don't really have the time or inclination to write a long post right now. Not sure why that is -- it's part of the natural cycle, I guess, of my blogging life. I'm sure in about two years I'll pick it up again, probably with some new focus, and do it steadily for a few weeks before getting bored of it all over. But anyway, I've just been reading over the content here, and I feel I need to say something.

W and I have been in our new city, living in that gigantic rental I was talking about, for about six months now. And as a general rule, we've been extraordinarily happy. That's basically all I wanted to say -- I read some of my old posts and I can see that there were some very, very, VERY dark times not that long ago. I just want to officially note that those dark times aren't all there is to our life. We've been happy as hell lately. (Of course, for the sake of completeness, I should note that we've had our worries too -- the biggest ones being, "okay, I guess we need to start looking to buy a house again," and "okay, are we going to have kids or what?" I'm sure I'll blog about those sometime soon, unless I have in fact given up blogging for good. But I don't want to dilute the force of my point here, that overall we've been happy.)

A couple specific things I should note: we love our house and neighborhood. We've gotten very friendly with a number of the people on our block, and we've been making a point of being social and getting out of the house. And some of these people really are a lot of fun, and really seem to appreciate us and our perspective on things. And we've been really loving each other lately, and appreciating every moment we have together.

I guess writing this post is pointing up something that everyone knows, which is that pain and darkness are much more interesting than happiness and light. This post isn't as interesting as those older ones. It's kind of boring, frankly. I mean, it's just hard to go on and on about how happy you are. I guess that's because happiness is, in its pure form, a very simple emotion? If you had more to say, it would be because there was something complicating the happiness, maybe? I'm not sure, honestly. This is another of those things I've wondered about for a long time. I remember, back when we were kids, W asking me, "why does it feel like sadness is infinite, and moments of happiness are fleeting?" Somehow I think that's connected to this point, but I'm not sure why.

But, I mean, everyone knows this. Sadness has depth to it; happiness is shallow. That's not a flip judgment on people -- like, people who are happy are shallow -- I really mean it, about the emotions themselves. Happiness is just happiness! Sadness is grief, and sorrow, and jealousy, and insecurity, and a neverending morass of conflicting and complicated emotions, one leading to the other, for ever.

It's so odd, though. Happiness is more than "just happiness," isn't it? Isn't it contentment, and elation, and satisfaction, and on and on, right? And yet you always feel that there's some sadness lurking in the background. I think I told W, back when we talked about this, that sadness is an emotion you have to "deal with." But happiness, you just let it be. And what this means is, when there's happiness and sadness in a moment, it's the sadness that demands your attention, your concentration; so you feel that, while there's some happiness there, you're going to have to deal with that sadness. This is why it's so hard to ignore sadness, and why sadness is always lurking there -- if you had to "deal with" happiness, you wouldn't be able to forget about it either.

So is there a lesson here? Probably -- if you could come up with a way to require yourself to deal with happiness, without turning it into something negative, maybe you'd be a happier person. Yes, but... part of what's good about happiness is that you don't have to deal with it, isn't it?