Fuck happy.

Who among you knows where that's from? If you do, then you're my people.

After a few swimming days of sunshine and roses, it all came crashing down. It seems like pesky people are going to keep ruining my road to recovery and sending me running right back to that limitless bottle of cynicism and snark. I'll admit: I do still carry a flask wherever I go.

Work. Since I'd like to keep my job, I'll leave it at that. That's all most of us ever really need to say, isn't it?

Unlike my 9 to 5 bread and butter, which will be off limits here, I will talk a whole bunch of shit about the freelance projects that have been making me question just how much I will put up with to make a buck.

Like I mentioned before, I lost my steady blogging-for-hire work. It sucked, and I hated it, but it was a nice side income. Since then, I have picked up some other writing work that pays considerably less. But it's still enough to bring in a little extra and help out. Except there's this: The guy I work with is a micromanaging incompetent ass with no sense of tone in e-mail (or a flagrant disregard for it).

I got an e-mail from him Saturday night -- Saturday night -- asking me how many posts he could send me to have done by Sunday night. Um, NONE. I do have a fucking life, thank you very much, and I'm not a blog-post-producing-24-hour-at-your-whim-writing-machine, and my friend is in town, and, oh yeah, I might actually just want to fuck off and do nothing. (OK, I NEVER do this, but what does he know?)

Today, I send him a couple of more posts. He writes me back and says to resend them and copy "James." James? Who the fuck is James? I don't know James, and I sure as hell don't know his e-mail. I say that. Instead of forwarding my posts to James, he e-mails me back with Jame's e-mail. Apparently, that forward would have taken longer than than the time it took him to reply. So I forward my e-mail and posts to James. Then he writes me back and says can I RESEND the posts again in a separate e-mail each to both him AND James.

In fact, EVERY TIME I send him a post, he e-mails me back and tells me to resubmit it over some formatting or submission issue that he did not make me aware of the first time around.

My impulse is to reply with a "Fuck you, you don't pay me enough to make your anal-retentive bullshit worth my time." Alas, I am trying to be more cool-headed these days.

Or maybe I'm just cranky because I've eaten not much more than pizza and cookies these last few days, haven't had much exercise, and haven't slept my usual 12 hours a day over the weekend. (Oh how far I've fallen....Half marathon shape: I hardly know ye any more.)

I have been on a complaint-a-thon the past few days. I guess the upshot is that I've been more aware of how much complaining I'm doing. Most of the time I announce it: Like when I walked into the adjacent office on Friday and said, "OK, I'm here to bitch." Before you can change your behavior, you have to have an understanding of it. And I'm becoming more conscious of how much I complain and why I do it.

However, I've had a lot of discussions with people lately about whether it's a good idea to cut out complaining. A friend and I talked about it just this week, and I got an e-mail earlier tonight. The argument is that you shouldn't suppress what you're thinking or feeling -- even if it's negative. Where do you draw the line between justified complaining (airing your grievances, your disappointments, your hurt feelings, etc.) and just dwelling on petty negativity? What are your thoughts, readers? Let me hear what you think!