I've been fairly depressed lately.  The deck always seems to be stacked against me these days.  I probably should be having this conversation with a professional rather than those few subscribers who are probably waiting for me to shut up and talk about something technical already.  Anyway, I'm making an effort right here and now to turn things around.  I thought I would start with a list of things that give me joy.  If you don't care, stop reading now.

Things That Make Me Happy

• My Lovely Wife
• The fact that I will soon be moving into a brand new house
  • That I could afford
  • Without stretching too much
  • While still saving for retirement
  • Where my current neighbors will not be
  • And there will be room for a few new additions to the family
  • Only one of which will be a dog
  • Or a Mac mini
• Solving difficult technical problems
• Writing code
• Reading code
• Writing about code that I've either written or read
• Taking pictures
• The fact that Michael is moving on
  • Ok, so I'm happy for him, but damn it's going to suck to see him go
  • But at least he has an XBOX now, with a XBOX Live starter kit which he will hopefully use before it expires.
• Reading good books
  • Technical or otherwise
• Reading blogs
• Reading newsgroups
  • and participating more this year
• IM conversations
  • With people I only know through blogs
  • as well as people I see every day
• A really great bottle of wine
• Snow
• As long as I don't have to drive in it
• and the fact that I can still laugh about wrecking the rental car that January while in Minnesota
• Channel 9
• That I have no regrets about my failed attempt to get a job at Microsoft

That's it for now.  There's much more that makes me happy, but this process has encouraged me at least a little.  I'm going to run with it and see where it takes me.  I'll update my list as I notice things bringing me joy.