Last thursday, if you had told me how the next week would go, I would have been shocked, and possibly upset. That would have been a mistake. I had three events happen that were, on the surface, disappointments. I got my bonus, and spent five hundred dollars on computer parts, only to find out that I had hooked up everything improperly and destroyed everything, spending another seventy five dollars to see if any parts were salvageable. I had a setback on one area of my love life that was particularly poorly timed. And then, someone that I had been flirting with for quite a while whose upcoming visit I had been preparing for arrived, only to tell me that she had renewed a long standing relationship shortly before leaving.

Let's break down what really happened, though:

I was upset about the computer (and the money) for a few hours, and then found a renewed sense of freedom from it. I realized that I could spend my time pursuing all the other things that I forget to pay attention to, and stop wasting my life away on the internet. I am already getting a lot more done.

The poorly timed setback was in fact well timed, because I wrote from that experience what is likely the best song I have written yet.

Regarding my visitor, I was pretty disappointed that evening, but I respected the decision and recognized that it was the right one. What the next few days of hanging out provided me, though, was an opportunity to establish a friendship that is far stronger and more profound than I could have ever expected. I don't think it would have happened had things gone as I was predicting, and it is a far, far better thing.

On the way back home from dropping my friend off, I got a call from the computer place saying that somehow against all odds every component I had purchased actually worked once they hooked it up properly.

The theme here is that I never succumbed to despair. I was upset each time, but I didn't let it color everything in the world for me, I didn't stay in that dark place. As a result I found a week of profound and astonishing beauty that was something I could never have hoped for.