Ebbs and flows. This is how I explain to myself the endless vacillation between happiness and homelessness, satisfaction and disconcert, and the necessity for constant reorientation. There are ebbs and there are flows; I try and withstand both with a seriousness appropriate to life. I've consoled myself with Nietzsche: "The path to happiness is subterranean, requiring great seriousness." But it has been Nietzsche that has led me to desolation: "The secret to my happiness? A yes, a no, a straight line, a goal." My goals are obscure, opaque; for this reason my joyousness feels insincere. I have vague ideas of happiness achieved through an active work ethic, a metaphysics of labor. But I fear this is the last consolation of the slavish. I don't want to be a richer man, I just want to be a better man. I want to be a better man. Time to make a ch-ch-ch-change.