the thing that makes me a jerk

This view is disproportionate; maybe wrong.

Here, happiness for people in it is an absence of discomfort. For a lot of my friends I guess it's the same. And when I say that's not enough it comes across a slight. When I say that I want more and for me this isn't it, the landing spot, the place where we start nesting. Real happiness feels like something, not an absence of something, and real happiness can coexist with discomfort or inconvenience.

Like how there's a fine line between pop culture as culturally enriching conversation and pop culture as panacean sedative. And the same between the practice of gastronomy and eating because it's the only thing pleasurable in the day. Good books as pastime to good books as escape. Things that should make life better can become coping mechanisms, obsessions, distractions.

The way that I'm happy right now [see below] is partly prepositioned on the fact that I'm not planning on staying and I'm using this year in a place I don't really like as a sabbatical to reflect on what's next. This city is boring and I do compare it to a minimum security prison where I get weekends out, am enrolled in a 'program' of self betterment, have a specific release date, and am mostly focused on staying well so that when I get out the air is that much fresher and happiness in the larger sense is that much better. We went to the beach and it was like watching summer as a biosphere display in a science museum. I am kind of concerned about how living here for a year will affect me, especially when winter comes, less that I will resort to all of the above in excess to pass the time and more that I will start to forget the difference between happiness present and absent.