I Just Want to Feel Fantastic All the Time

Why is that a problem?

I’m confident that I’m not alone in wanting this. It’s pretty universal. Admit it. You really wish you could always feel as if it’s Christmas morning when you’ve won the Super Lotto and lost thirty pounds while eating Aunt Lu’s cherry cheesecake. Amiright?

There was that A-HA moment when I thought I’d found the magic potion that would allow me to always feel fantastic. I was wrong.

But just because I couldn’t manage it chemically can’t mean that there isn’t some path to perfect and complete happiness, right? Roughly a third of the internets bristles with podcasts and plans and books and regimens and lists and how-to’s that all purport to have The Answer. How you, too, can get up at 4:30 every morning, meditate, levitate, take the exact proprietary blend of supplements, write three pages of stream of consciousness, run three miles and go off to your dream career, you know, the one where you work three four-hour days and then volunteer teaching little blind children how to read Braille. Bet you’re happy all the time, right?

You’re not?

I’m not. And it’s really the only ambition I’ve ever had. I never thought in terms of career or kids or goals. Of course, 18 years of active addiction and alcoholism can really do a number of any of those notions. But feeling fantastic all the time? That was — and is — something I can really put some effort into.

Especially right now.

Big news: COVID-19 infections are surging all over the country and the world and now we’re seeing the numbers beginning to rise again in New York City, the city that already paid its Coronavirus dues, thank you very much. What gives? The Guv’s shutting down the bars and restaurants at 10 pm again just as a whole lot of them are building “outdoor” dining in the bike lanes all over the city.

These rising numbers are not coming as some blinding bit of bad news from the mountain top for those of us who’ve been paying attention. We are stocked up and ready for the next lockdown. And just because it seemed like an auspicious time to be doing such things, I went had my gallbladder pulled out of my belly button a couple of weeks ago.

Ask me how I’m feeling (go ahead!).

I am not feeling the way I want to be feeling. I feel worn out and not a little frightened and cranky and sore. I guess the good news is that my wee bout of being dope sick has run its course. Funny thing about the brain of an addict. It doesn’t care that the addict is being a good little Do Bee and only taking those lovely pills exactly when they’re prescribed and for exactly what they’ve been prescribed for. All that slightly off-kilter brain knows and cares about is that it’s finally getting the stuff that makes it feel real good all of the time. And take away that stuff? Pay the price.

Ok, I got that. I’m more or less all right again. Not feeling all right or anything. But certainly feeling less ghastly than I was three or four days ago.

I can accept that there are glitches in the programming from time to time, like now for example, when it’s unrealistic to aim for feeling fantastic even part of the time. I don’t like it but I’m rolling with it. Mostly. But there has to be a way, a path, a series of incantations, a sacrifice to specific gods that will get me to 100% pure, unadulterated bliss every single damned day of my life.

I’m ready to do the work

If there’s one thing I can do it’s move planets to get my way. All the “experts” say that you need to write, publish, and promote daily to get any traction at this writer game? Oh really? Well, take a look at my list of published stories sometime, Cupcake.

Email list? Ok, so a year in and I’ve only managed to attract 78 subscribers, but these aren’t just your average delete-unread crowd of subscribers. These are readers, my friend, and responders. I leave my little hat by the door at the end of each free weekly newsletter and readers drop a coin or two (or serious folding cash, HJ Free@55, you marvel, you! And, btw, kudos on finishing “Infinite Jest”!) in nearly every week.

I’ve got other projects in various stages of completion. I’ve also got one of the most talented, sexy, funny, and hard-working partners in the hemisphere working alongside me, more than doubling my oomph in the creative stratosphere (who also, it turns out, is an amazing nurse). Yes, aleXander hirka, I’m talking about you.

So? This isn’t good enough? No, I don’t teach little blind children how to read Braille. The time I spend volunteering and being there for others, well that’s between me and them. Suffice to say, I’m a good egg.

So why can’t I feel totally fantastic all the time, dammit?

You already know this one. You know because you’ve done all these same types of dance steps as I have. With the same results.

The problem is located — as so many are — in the six inches between our ears. That pesky gigantic brain, restless and never still, is always tasting and trying and discarding and branching out and making new connections and letting others wither. Bliss is for the trees and toddlers and, bless them, the sloths. Bliss is for the dead. 100% total bliss is static and going nowhere which is why opiates work so well on certain gigantic brains.

Face it, we’re stuck with a meatloaf-sized computer in our skulls that’s running an amazingly designed — and still fallible and finite — body. In the millennia since our ancestors came out of the trees and stood up to get a look around, we’ve managed to do some astonishing and terrible and awe-inspiring and unspeakable and breathtakingly beautiful things.

Things that blissed-out sloths would never attempt. That’s the good news and the bad news.

Don’t you have work to do? I know I do.

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