Not all traces of glee are wiped out, apparently

A friend of mine in my group therapy group made an astute observation the other day. He'd been looking at my blog and, in particular, the line graph I use to monitor my progress.

He asked me why I only tracked the negative things, feelings, and moods I experience rather than the positive. He's got a point, and it had never occurred to me before, but I guess it is an arse-about face way of monitoring progress. Trouble is, one can scour online all day and never find a medical questionnaire that's been phrased that way around i.e. positively.

I have been thinking about it but I don't have it sussed yet. Should I record every moment when I actually feel something I haven't felt in a long time? Like joy? Glee? Ecstasy? Serenity? Security? How do I do that and how would I quantify them? What would I call them? "My happy moments," sounds too much like a euphemism for masturbation to me. Either that or it's perilously close to one of my favourite e-mail sign-offs, "Warm regards". To me, that sounds like the person sending the e-mail just urinated on the recipient.

Warm regards indeed. I once gave my Grandma warm regards on holiday in Majorca when I was about nine or ten years old. I'd been whining for two things on that holiday - first to play mini-golf, and second to go out in the Mediterranean on a pedalo. When the opportunity eventually came to take the boat out i.e. when my parents and grandparents could stand the nagging no more, I coincidentally needed to pee. However, I was so afeared that if I said I had to go to the toilet first my long-awaited opportunity would be taken away from me. So I kept my mouth shut.

Ten minutes later my Grandma made the same noise a donkey probably would if you inserted a freshly boiled potato up its bum. I can even remember what she said, as her voice slowly pitched upwards: "Ooooooh! It's all warm!"

It probably was too, given that I'd just peed right into the back of the plastic seat she was sitting in. I think my Mum (in the other pedalo seat, but not pee'd on) said, "Why didn't you just jump in the sea?"

I still don't know the answer to that question.

Anyway, neither pedalos nor incontinence have anything to do with the legendary Playstation game, "Wipeout". 'Twas this that led to the first gleeful moment I can remember in a long, long time. The nice chap who lives next-door brought his PS2 over and set it up in the garage, so we have a nice little lads' den in there now. And then he left it there, which is pretty darn cool if you ask me. The gleeful moment actually came when I was playing the game though. It sounds infantile I know, but if you've ever been perpetually beaten into submission by a video game, and then you pull out an amazing if not enchanted flying lap (circa 1,000mph), obliterating the competition with missiles, photon cannons and allsorts as you go, then a genuine 'whoop' is often heard, if not eminently appropriate.

It's good I noticed it though. I nearly dropped the controller just so I could immediately blog about it. I even mentioned it in the following group therapy. "Hey! I have something to talk about this week! I felt GLEE...WOO HOO!"

It's kinda sad that one solitary moment of glee sticks out so. But let's face it, there hasn't been much glee in the last year, so as I said to my esteemed acquaintances in group therapy, "I'll take glee wherever I can get it, no matter how trivial it might seem to other people."

So if you're ceatively-minded or a whiz with MS Excel, then feel free to comment either on how I might record such instances, or what I might call them. In the meantime I'll try to look forward to my second gleeful feeling this year.