Cheer up you miserable bugger

Had one of those days today when I brood on the past and the useless yet inevitable regrets rear their ugly heads. It seems that despite how well a life turns out...admittedly, that's a strange turn of phrase due to the fact that a life doesn't really turn out any way as all lives end the same way; but you know what I mean (see what I mean about the mood I've been in today)...we all seem to have regrets.

There are a litany of bad decisions and unfortunate events in all lives; if one has lived then this must be true. After all, is it not a truism that "to err is human"? Yet despite what regrets we may have, on most days we can be happy with the here and now without being concerned or even giving thought to the past.

So why is it that on some days our regret haunts us like a malevolent spirit intent on causing as much pain as possible? This is the kind of day that I have had today. It is not that such thoughts have been in the front of my mind, yet since waking a cloud of sadness has hovered over and around me.

Such days are something that we, as erring humans, simply have to put up with every now and again. And it is the fact that we each have such days that gets us through them. Social animals that we are, it offers us great comfort to know that any morose feelings that we have are shared by the greater community.

On a day such as today I would never normally write anything other than, perhaps, to vent my self-pity. Such pathetic ramblings are generally only suitable for immediate deposit into the trash bin, so this is a habit I broke a long time ago. However, there is benefit to be had from simple and simplistic outpourings that cannot be gained from planned and well thought out pieces of writing. Sometimes the ramblings of a mad-man, or even a self-pitying wretch, can lead to moments of poetic joy.

Of course I'm not a poet so that's not really very likely...

But I can end on a positive note.

Every thought and emotion that is processed within my mind is first digested, annotated and stored for later use by a certain part of my mind. It is that part of me that urges my fingers to type; that leads my imagination into fantastical worlds to explore the realms of possibility. Whatever is processed by that part of me will, in some way, end up somewhere in my work. Perhaps, someday, that will resonate within someone else and give them the lift that they need, at the time they need it.

In other words; there really is a silver lining to every cloud...provided you look hard enough for it.