Can Happiness Be Luke-Warm?

Yesterday I said I was feeling sick and tired of life, in the sense that I need a holiday, but I that was not unhappy. I'm still not unhappy, but I'm taking the sick and tired thing one step further - I just can't bring myself to do any work today. Or any day this week actually - I've been fairly unproductive since Monday. I'm unmotivated. It's not because I don't enjoy my job; it's still fine as far as jobs go. I'd prefer to be sitting on a yacht in the Caribbean running my toes through my piles of stirling, but who wouldn't? It's just that I'm tired of working. I've had enough to being a slave to the system, and I'd like to stop. Now. Just grab my stuff and waltz out of here, on to a better future which involves sipping cocktails and expensive trips around the world.

I'm pleased to say that I am grown up enough to realise the futility of this. Shoes and I once discussed becoming a con artist team, like in the movies, and marrying a old geezer on his last legs for money (me, not him), but we were both too grossed out by the fact that I'd have to shag him. I mean, I guess if he wasn't grossed out by this, we would no longer be a couple. So, lucky me then. But since winning the lottery or getting randomly "discovered" (as you do these days) are not on the cards for me, I decided I needed something else to lift me out of the bleakness that is my daily routine. What better than to live vicariously through other people?

I've spent most of today trawling through blogs - or, to use the apparently correct term, blogosphere. Partly for my own amusement, and partly to see what everyone else is writing about. I suppose it's no wonder really that almost all personal blogs focus on love. Love, loss, lust, good sex, bad sex, mars vs venus and women scorned (this last from both male and female writers, and it makes for an enormous number of posts!). Also, nearly all posts are negative, in the sense that the writer is suffering some form of drama, difficulty or heartbreak due to love won or lost.

I felt quite alien while reading. Here I am, happy and secure in a relationship with the man I plan to marry, coming up for my seven year anniversary in September, yet almost no other bloggers out there seem to have got it right. Instead of inducing a revolting smugness in me, this has actually caused me to panic. What have I got that they haven't? Or, more precisely, what are they waiting for that I haven't found? Perhaps Shoes and I are too complacent. Maybe we shouldn't be so relaxed - maybe we should be lamenting over the differences between us and constantly pushing ourselves to be better, closer, more in synch with each other. Shouldn't we? Maybe our contentment is actually just laziness, and in 10 years we'll wake up and find we have nothing to talk about because we didn't put the effort in when we had the chance. Oh dear, my heart is pounding, I feel a dramatic swoon coming on. It's really worrying - we're not special, we don't do anything different, yet we're solid and dependable and strong where others are crumbling around us.... this makes me feel that we might be freaks!!!!!!

Perhaps I will go home and pick a fight with him. It might be fake, but at least I would have a witty, acid-tongued post at my fingertips for tomorrow. Ok, jokes aside though, it is a bit weird how calmly we move through our relationship. I'm rather melodramatic in other areas of my life, but my relationship is one area where I hate surprises (unless they're non-threatening and involve presents), and I am definitely anti-conflict. That's not to say we don't have it out when we need to - we do, and we shout and slam doors when necessary, but it rarely happens, and most of the time we're just content in our own little bubble with our own inside jokes and coupley ways (I know, sorry, you can put the barf bag away now). Why though? Why is it so easy for us and so hard for some others? Either we're a fantastic fit, or we're not looking deep enough and missing the heights to which others are aspiring. Hmmm, food for thought. If only there was actually a right answer.