It really is harder to write when you are happy. The literary world at least has editors to stop all but the most angst ridden, dare I say literature, from reaching the masses but not so the blogging world, where if we are honest the majority of blogs are about lament, regret, anger, angst, fear, loss, nervousness and the oft failed quest to find “perfect” love.

Which means we as online voyeurs get buoyed by the failures of others, we see our lives as not so difficult as we imagined, and most of all we see that the road we think is ours alone is in fact a well trod highway and we are not as alone as we dream. But that makes Blogs on the whole, if you stop to think about, as generally depressive places…which is why it’s hard to write when you are happy.

A reader once asked me “I can't help but wonder...when does the melancholy end for you? And the joy begin?” Back then I think I offered some pithy reply, and shrugged it of as a mere phase of my life and the memories I was sorting through at the time reflected in my blogging style, but today I know how I would answer that reader…and in fact maybe this post is doing just that. But like everything there is a trade-off…and as Fab likewise promises to return to "thought provoking, rambling, agonizing posts one day soon", I do have to wonder if it is actually possible to do just that...

...for it is much harder to write when you are happy...instead of writers block and lack of inspiration you find the “joy block” where composing becomes difficult, while angst is easily shared since misery loves company…joy is such an emotion that it is really shared by to a select few, and does not lend itself so well to a public forum…

And let’s be honest, people really don’t want to be reminded that happiness can be achieved, since it only serves to remind them that they are yet to find it, or had once found it and have now lost it.

Update/Addendum (15:25 20 April 2006) After some angst filled comments and an e-mail or three it has become abundently clear to even my dense skull that many found the above last paragraph either too smug or possibly slightly condescending, this was not my intent. Perhaps the last paragraph would have been better served by the following which conveys, I feel, the sentiment I wished too, and maybe in a more erudite manner.

People do not want to be reminded that others are happy, especially when they themselves are not. Other people's happiness is confronting for it reminds us too oft of our own lack, it highlights our own unattained goals, our unrealised dreams and areas in which we are less than we would have ourselves be. But by far other peoples happiness confronts us the most for even in the midst of sharing, congratulating and wishing them well in their joy...we feel envy, and are forced to confront not the happiness of others, but the short comings it illustrates in us. And if we can be truly honest with both ourselves and others we would admit that this is so.

Lectiones Sacrae Ex Libris Indiana 14:15