Just for today: if it succeeds, it leads

YESTERDAY while I was airbrushing brides in the studio, listening to Radio New Zealand as I always do, a question by pit-bull interviewer Mary Wilson stopped my mouse in its tracks.

Speaking to a firefighter about this week's devastating fires, she asked the exhausted man this: "At its absolute worst, how is the situation right now?"

The question seemed reasonable enough and yet it neatly encapsulated everything about why I am no longer a journalist.

There is a saying in the trade that "if it bleeds, it leads" and while we can all probably understand that a certain level of drama and devastation is required to make a headline, Mary Wilson's question did go to show just how ingrained it is for journalists to "beat up" a story and always zoom in on the worst case scenario. As fires threaten people's homes and livelihoods, what is wrong with asking, "at its absolute best, how is the situation right now?".

I'm guilty myself of often focusing on the negative in these column inches. Perhaps that is because I've learned through personal and professional experience that rather than no news being good news, it is more accurate to say that good news is no news.

Happiness is boring, and even when we connect with friends over coffee or a w(h)ine, how often do we talk about how wonderful our life is and how everything is going well?

Most of the time, for most of us, most of our life is good, not bad. But it is part of the First World human condition that we will put a magnifying glass on the dirty spots in our lives and ignore the fact that the rest of the plate is spotlessly clean.

So today I'd like to share with you some tremendously tedious news: I am happy. Not "fine", not "OK", but deliriously, stupidly, wonderfully happy.

Six months into the most life-changing event in any person's life, I have my head around parenthood, I am back at work part-time and it's brilliant. I am in love with a man I respect and laugh with and I have found a sense of purpose and joy that could never be found wholly in exciting holidays, a great career or good times with friends.

Bored yet? Annoyed, even?

The fact is that my life (while fabulous to me) is a yawn-generator for other people. Or maybe it's not.

For over a decade now, I have laid out in black-and-white print the big and sometimes bad moments of my life for the entertainment of other people. A firm believer that if you don't laugh about some things, you'll end up crying, I've made incredibly sad times of my life the fodder of a humour column.

It has worked because we all have a dark part of us that can laugh at other people's misfortune " or in my case laugh "with" rather than "at".

So I suppose that even though it is boring, I can be forgiven for writing one brief column about how it turned out all right in the end.

Life is a series of experiences - some good, some bad - which all melt together to create our present selves.

There are times I have wished desperately to rewind actions and decisions, but each of them have made me who I am now, and given me the perspective to judge how good my life is now.

So if I were to turn the microphone on me and ask the question 'at its absolute worst, how is the situation right now', I would be able to honestly say that it is the best.