Yesterday wasn't the best day.

I don't like to complain and, the truth is, I have very little to complain about. Still, yesterday was not the best day.

I woke with a stomachache. I'd gone to bed with a stomachache, and this is not terribly unusual. My mother gets stomachaches, and now my 20-year-old niece is prey to them. Stress and irregular eating set them off, these stomachs of ours, and sometimes they take hours or even days to get sorted out. This one was particularly stubborn and saw me through the night and into the next day. By midmorning, I realized, unless I was writing about a stomachache, I wasn't likely to get much writing done.

So I thought I'd learn a new program I'd promised myself I'd learn. The young woman on the video assured me that this training was for "absolute beginners," and I felt reassured. I sat down with my stomachache and started watching.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

It wasn't that she left me behind -- I never got on the bus. The bus pulled away and left me standing on the curb. I suddenly felt old. I was an old woman with a stomachache.

Then I heard from my agent. My agent is cheerful and hopeful and loves my book, and she's working hard right now to sell it. She wrote to tell me I got another rejection. She sounded pretty down -- for a perpetually upbeat person. She sounded as if we might be running out of people to send my book to. This was depressing news.

That's when I saw the Facebook post.

A friend objected to my recent column where I looked through the stained glass in a church and found color -- and reason to be happy. It wasn't realistic, he wrote. Bad things happen, and people like me should acknowledge them. He talked about tornados and shootings. He said people like me would go looking for a pony in a pile of horse poop. He wasn't very nice. And I still had a stomachache.

Nothing makes me feel better when I am down than a nice hot bath by candlelight, and it was certainly time for one of those. But the bathtub faucet was not working, and so the hot water filled the tub very slowly -- so slowly that, by the time there was enough for a bath, it was lukewarm.

"Oh well!" I said as I hopped in. "A lukewarm bath by candlelight is better than no bath at all."

That's when the candle fizzled out.

I sat in the lukewarm water in the dark. I still had a stomachache as I mulled over the rejection of my manuscript. I remembered my friend's accusation that I was not realistic. I realized he was right.

But, as I considered the options, I honestly couldn't think of another way to live. Life is short, no matter how long we live. Knowing that my time is short, and my abilities limited, encourages me to do whatever I can with this precious time I have -- right now -- sitting in lukewarm water. I get a choice about how I wish to feel about all of it, even the stomachache. And I believe (realistic or not) that it is a precious gift to live in this continually amazing, astonishingly beautiful world.

I feel better today. The sky is still gray. The faucet is still broken. There is still no word on my book. But my stomachache is marginally better. And I am enormously grateful to experience all of it.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other news can be found at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

I have a sticker that says "My Happy Place," and I kept it for a while, wondering where to put it. In the end, I stuck it near my desk so I could see it while I write. I am usually happy when I'm writing.

On Monday, however, I was not happy. I had a major technology breakdown, and I had no idea what I had done wrong. As it turned out, I had done nothing wrong (which is rare, when it comes to technology). Microsoft had a failure that lasted for almost two hours. During the technology breakdown, I had an accompanying emotional breakdown. For two hours, I was not in my happy place.

Only after it was over did I look back on the experience and realize how easy all this annoying technology makes my life every day.

I've heard of writers who use old typewriters, or write entire novels by hand, and then type them up on their computers. They even have a device that only lets you see a couple of lines at a time and has no access to the internet. I guess this is because some writers consider the internet an obstacle to writing. This seems very silly to me. Without the internet, how would I know that avenues run perpendicular to streets and that lanes can run in either direction? How would I find funny cat videos?

I hear writers complain that they would get more done if they were in a cabin in the woods like Henry David Thoreau, but they forget Thoreau had somebody copying his manuscript for him and his sister bringing him lunch every day. All our imaginings of how the past might have been better for writing are romantic nonsense. Right now, at my little desk, I know I have it better than any previous generation of writers ever has.

I had a chance once to see an original manuscript written by Charles Dickens. It was behind glass, and I no longer remember which novel it was. But it was thrilling to see, in his handwriting, how he had come up with his stories, just like anyone else.

And like anyone who writes, he had circled sentences and entire paragraphs and drawn an arrow to where he wanted them moved. Of course, this was all done with a goose-quill pen. It must have taken Dickens a long time to finish anything, even if he got some help. I wondered if he would have written more if he'd had a computer. My hunch is that we would have at least one more novel by Dickens if he'd had word processing.

Now, a lot of people are concerned about how artificial intelligence might replace writers. I am not terribly worried. I suspect AI will be another tool -- like word processing. It's unimaginable to us now, but we'll learn it and then wonder how we ever got along without it.

I don't think we'll give computers the job of telling stories because we like telling stories too much. Telling stories to one another is about the most human thing there is. A story comes from one person and is told to another person. We've been figuring out ways to do this since we were gathered around a fire. I don't think anything will stop us -- no matter how much that storytelling changes.

In the meantime, I'll keep writing. Microsoft sent me a nice note explaining that what happened on Monday was their fault. I'm thinking of having it framed -- and hanging it in my happy place.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other news can be found at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

I like taking photos when I'm out of the country.

Photographing things in Mexico is effortless. I'll never understand the nuances of every festival or ritual, but I can enjoy the pageantry and the color and the incredible effort and artistry that goes in to creating so much beauty.

Then I come back up north and look at the mud. It's a big change.

The skies were overcast for the first five days after my return from Mexico. The temperatures were unseasonably low. There was some rain. There might even have been some snow, if you count the white, pelletlike things that dotted the sidewalk. Maybe it was sleet. Maybe it doesn't matter.

"What is this?" I asked an innocent passerby. He shook his head disapprovingly.

"I have no idea."

And I realized that I was terribly spoiled. Taking pictures in Mexico took no skill at all. I decided I needed to start taking pictures right here at home.

The first day was not a great success. The sun stayed stubbornly behind a cloud. The few blooms that were out had been nipped by the frost. I took a photo of some branches against the gray sky and a carved stone pillar covered in green lichen. The lichen was vivid green after sleeping all winter. The lichen seemed about as happy as lichen can be, and so I figured I could make more of an effort.

The next day I happened upon some crocuses forcing their way through the muddy soil. The crocus is not a showy flower, but their sheer numbers were amazing. I found a handful of daffodils blooming in a spot where they caught the occasional bit of sunshine.

The third day was colder than ever. I headed out the door for my walk and turned right around, went inside and put on warmer clothes. The sky was dark in the middle of the afternoon. I photographed a hydrangea, left over from the previous year, bleached and brittle, shaking in the chill wind.

I wanted to photograph one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood through the fence, but a row of garbage cans was in the way. I contorted into a strange position, and a woman walking by looked at me curiously.

"I'm trying to take pictures," I told her, "even on the gloomy days."

"Well, this is a good house to photograph when it's gloomy!" she replied. The house looked menacing under the heavy clouds.

On Sunday, I went to church. A new pastor had been hired while I was in Mexico, and he preached a good sermon. The choir was especially strong. And, sometime in the middle of the service, a little bit of sun crept out. I looked up and saw the stained glass.

"Oh, look," I thought. "Finally, some color."

After the service, I climbed the wooden stairs to the balcony, and I looked through the vibrant stained glass. It was all the color I had been missing since coming back from Mexico.

And I felt a lot better.

I'm not sure if the new minister would approve, but those windows did more for my soul than his sermon and the beautiful music put together. Those windows gave a sermon of their own. Those windows lifted my spirits and made me remember how much unseen beauty there is -- all the time.

They reminded me that it's not what I'm looking at that matters -- it's what I'm looking through. Looking through eyes trained to see beauty, I see beauty everywhere.

I left the church, thanking the windows on my way out.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos and other news can be found at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION