Feelings

Julia's cousin visited. We talked a lot about good emotional health--it's a serious hobby of hers. Maybe that is said badly. I am not sure how to say it. She thinks a lot about the subject.

I, on the other hand, almost never think about my emotional health. I am happy. I am generally satisfied with life.

I think I am happy because I have very little ambition--that thing that causes people to either climb mountains or beat their heads against walls or both.

Perhaps that comes from my ancestors. None of them seemed to try to reach far beyond their grasp. Some people point to the fact that I am an economics professor, saying that obviously I had some ambition in order to get a PhD.

Maybe. I liked school. I liked learning. I found the discipline that obsesses over efficiency and loved it. Maybe you can call what I did in response, "ambition." I do not see it that way.

I do not stay awake and worry that I am not the most well known economist in the nation. I have worked with one person who did. He was not happy at all.

I do not stay awake and plot how to eclipse Stephen King and Dean Koontz. I would like to have a nice second income from writing. I enjoy writing. So if I write well enough to earn a nice second income, I will do that.

Meanwhile, I am happy. I am not going to sit around and ask, "Am I really happy, or am I just in some unhealthy denial?" That does not sound fun at all.