Hippie's Hunt for Happiness

The world is fairly disastrous at the moment, I feel. It scares me.

I am trying desperately to find some positive things to write about. Community events, creative resistance, something... Not to pretend the shit isn't happening - that's impossible. But as, I guess, a way to try to re-balance the things we are exposed to, things we hear about, things we see. I need there to be more going on in this world than what I hear on the news.

Sheffield's annual Off The Shelf festival of reading and writing is happening this month.

Now in its 13 th year, Sheffield 's annual literary fortnight is a well-established festival which is one of the highlights of Sheffield 's cultural calendar and one of the largest festivals in the North of England.

Radio 4 comedy really has its pretty impressive moments. A new series of the rather splendid The News Quiz started today. I slept through it this evening but will be listening again once it is up on the site.

I thought googling happy might be the next step in my quest for despair-erasing enlightenment. I was sadly wrong.

But it's got to be promising that there are about 39,900,000 results, yeah? I'll keep looking.

Ok, result number 470 informs me that there is such thing as a Happy Number in mathematics. Note the cunning use of the full word to avoid any potential UK + AUS (maths) and US (math) semantic conflict.

I don't understand a word of the first paragraph, so will slip in an easier extract, as follows:

The first few happy numbers are 1, 7, 10, 13, 19, 23, 28, 31, 32, 44, 49, 68, 70, 79, 82, 86, 91, 94, 97, 100

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There, see. Happy numbers. Follow the link there if you actually understand maths stuff and want to know more.

You know when you look at a certain word a lot, and it starts to look odd. That is now happening with HAPPY.

Willkommen Im Happychat is actually the absolutely last google result for happy.

Not sure any of this is actually making me any happier. Keeping me occupied, mebbe, but not making me happy.

The article entitled Reassurance sounded promising, even if it was from Dermatology Times. The image search shows some odd perspectives on reassurance, though they were significantly less garish and harsh on my tired eyes than the results for happy.

Maybe, just maybe, the answer is more in contentment, or friendship, or love, or sunny days. Not the thing, but rather a combination and build-up of many small things.

Maybe.