i think the troublesome part of my life right now is that there is no joy. i'm happy from time to time, and i have good days, but there is very little of what i would describe as unbridled joy or elation. the only time i can remember feeling that recently - only times - have to do with bridge. when we came back from a 22-imp halftime deficit, that was fun. when we came back from a 17-imp halftime deficit, that was fun. when we won the NLM pairs, although it was not particularly unexpected, that was fun. when i made this ridiculously tricky 3nt contract in the mini-blues, that was fun. which is not to say that bridge isn't ridiculously frustrating, or that it hasn't been the cause of a lot of self-flagellation and hardship. but it really seems like all of the really elated moments in the past 18 months of my life have been bridge-related.
now, obviously, one's current mood affects the evaluation of one's recent past. but i've been in this mood for some time now. and this morning when i woke up, i was just thinking about this, about the fact that life nowadays seems to be one big fit of settling of adequacy as opposed to being able to obtain perfect moments (and i'm not talking about in a relationship sense -- just that i personally seem incapable of being perfectly happy for moments pretty much ever), and it made it hard to get out of bed.
that and the fact that i'm working on this ridiculously hard to write paper. which will probably get rejected. it's hard to muster up the drive to write papers in the hypercritical academic world sometimes.