MY LIFE IS AWESOME! AND GREAT!

I! LOVE! MY LIFE! MY life is awesome and great! I have all the things anyone would ever want! I have awesome friends! I have an awesome partner for life! I have a window to look out of! It is under the roof that is over my head! You would love my life too if you had it, but you don't, because I do! I! Am not trying to say that I don't ever cry! Who could say that? No one but a very repressed person! That is why I would never say that! I am only trying to say that even though I sometimes cry, like when my aunt dies or when my awesome life partner is sad, that doesn't mean that my life isn't awesome and great, because it is! My life has many feelings and one of them is being sad! Being able to be sad when sadness comes is part of what makes my life so awesome and great! I have tried to be happy when I am sad and that has only made me sadder! And sometimes angry! So I don't do that anymore! You shouldn't either! It's unrealistic! If you are reading books like How to Be Happy or buying fancy stationery or bubble bath because you think it will make you happy, it won't! Don't do it! Fancy stationery is nice and so is bubble bath but these are special treats! Do not think they are anything more! They aren't! Plus, you cannot learn how to be happy from a book! Except if it's Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Then you can!

Let me tell you something else! I don't have lots of money! I'm not saying I wouldn't like more money! Send me some! I am just saying that sometimes when I have money I am happy and sometimes I am still sad and sometimes when I don't have money I am also sometimes happy and sometimes sad! Sometimes when I have money or when I don't, I feel jealous! Or suspicious! Or bemused! These are just a few of the many things that are part of my awesome and great life of feeling! You might ask, how can anyone be happy when there are so many problems in the world! And I would say, those things make me sad too! But I am still happy! You know that old cliché where if you don't eat your brussels sprouts your parents say something like, "There are children starving all over the world," and you're supposed to be grateful and eat your brussels sprouts, except usually it doesn't work and you just mope in your plate and push your brussels sprouts around so it seems like you're eating them gratefully and feeling sadness for the starving children worldwide but really you are neither eating them nor grateful? Well that is not me! I am grateful! Also I like brussels sprouts! They are actually quite flavorful, especially with lots of butter! Many things are good with lots of butter! Like artichokes!

You might be saying, "I cannot relate to your awesome and great life!" But listen to this! Not so long ago, on top of these awesome things, I also had a good job! Except I was fired! I was not feeling so good about that! I had feelings of rejection and uneasiness! Mixed with surprise! I thought I was a competent worker, but in my review they gave me only a seventy-three percent competence rating! Did that stop me from walking out of there with my stapler and my ivy plant and my head held high? No! I believe that my positive attitude alone put my competence rating at no less than eighty percent! And that is respectable! Most importantly, though, I am a person who sees opportunity in times of trouble, and I knew that this was the universe's way of telling me it was time to pursue my dream of being on reality television! You might say, "That is a foolish thought," but I would say, "Maybe, maybe not!" I believe that when you have a dream of being on reality TV, as I did, and a chance comes, you must take it! So I did!

Unfortunately, it is not as easy to become a star of reality television as you might think, but I did not let that stop me! My first choice was to go on that show where you race around the world! Called Race around the World! Wouldn't that be so much fun, I thought! But my life partner wasn't as into that as I was, so I didn't! Because it would not be so much fun to be on so many airplanes without him! This was when I remembered that I am an awesome singer! So I drove to the closest place where they had tryouts for Be a Famous Star! Which was not so close at all, it was all the way over in Gary, Indiana! That was sure interesting! You may not know that there are long lines of people who try out for Be a Famous Star! But there are! Or that it is very cold waiting in the long lines in the parking lot of the U.S. Steel Yard in Gary, Indiana in March, but that doesn't stop people from coming! Not even people in wheelchairs! Not all of these people can sing, though, which I thought would be to my advantage! But it really wasn't! Because the judges did not think I looked like a famous star! One of the celebrity judges said my voice was not bad! The mean one asked me if I was planning to keep shopping at the Rainbow Stores! I thought that was especially mean because what is wrong with the Rainbow Stores? They have good prices and contemporary styles! I asked him if this competition was about looks or about music and he laughed like I should know it was about looks! I boldly asked him if I shopped somewhere besides Rainbow Stores would they send me to Hollywood? And do you think he said yes? No! I had more feelings of rejection, but remember when I said there were people in wheelchairs? Well, one of them was waiting for his brother to audition after me and he saw my look of rejection and said "Sorry" to me and I thought, someone in a wheelchair feels sorry for me? That can't be right! I asked him why he was in a wheelchair and he said he had a rare disease whereby he could not bump into anything or he would have severe internal bleeding! I said, "That is so terrible! Have you ever tried to go on that show where they give people miracle cures?" And do you know what? He said to me, "You will not believe this but I was rejected from that show!" And he was right! I didn't believe it! And what else is unbelievable is remember he was consoling me! That was when I knew he was an especially nice person! I said, "That does not make any sense! Who could need a miracle more than you?" And do you know what he said? He told me that they chose to go with a blind woman! A plain old blind woman! I said, "That does not seem very interesting!" He told me that she had also recovered from cancer and that gave her the edge! I said, "Too bad you didn't recover from cancer!" And he said, "I know, right?"

You might think I was pretty discouraged by this point, but I was not! Because there are lots of reality television shows! I tried out for many of them! And was uniformly rejected! Even by some game shows! Like the one where you go grocery shopping really fast! That has always seemed like a lot of fun to...