For lack of happy endings.

A friend of mine was questioning the existence of happy endings in life.

Life doesn't really follow plot structure, does it? So, following that, you can't have happy endings in life because life is multi-faceted and doesn't really end until you die. And then, though you're not in it, your story doesn't really end because you echo in others.

If you have to judge the way things go, I guess you could look at those incidents in a nutshell. A goal accomplished. A relationship sparked. A chance taken. A fortune won.

Story structure can be found by snipping your life into episodes. "How I moved into my apartment." "When Welsh Guy Came to Visit." "The Reason I Was Constantly Late for Stuff." "What I Did While I Was Supposed to Do Something Else."

So take this snippet of your life as it was. Did it, the part that you just lived through, end well? Did you fail or succeed?

This week, I fear I personally failed.

Though it was a holiday weekend, I worked every single day of it, and I didn't do so with a smile on my face or a good mood flowing through me. I was bitter. I was tired. I was upset and disappointed, and I didn't keep that inside of me as much as I maybe should have.

I'm upset that, though I expected to work at the bookstore this weekend, I feel like I'm working too much. I fear that, though now I have an apartment that I truly would like to "live" in - not just sleep there, I'm not getting any real opportunity to do that because I end up at the bookstore five days a week. (I'm scheduled to work 30 hours this week because it's a holiday, and we're short-staffed there.)

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't know what caused it, either. Did I mismanage the communication about my transfer, which I thought I could wait until October to do? Should I have gone sooner, anticipating a post-summer mass exodus of the staff?

It seems there's always a point one time during the year when my bookstore job becomes not much fun (i.e. stress over not getting tasks done, difficulty walking due to time spent on my feet, coping with managerial woes and extra work), and I usually just weather it and will likely do that again. In previous years, I've not really had anything better to do.

But this year, I'm in a new apartment and in a new neighborhood, and I'd really like to, I don't know, live for a while. Meet people. Settle in. Be the new boy on the block.

I called Lupo late Saturday and, in what had to be one of the longest voicemails ever, I told him that I hoped he was getting to do all the things that I wasn't getting to do. It was a message that I probably shouldn't have left. I already give him so much unnecessary grief.

This is just something that I should fix myself. I'm the only one who really can, I guess.