Just The Pursuit of Contentment

'Just' is 'just' fine as an adjective.

Hugh was a just and patient man

As an adverb 'just' is a mess.

Here's one of my favorite 'just' messes.

"Just relax"

okkaayy, yeah right

I haven't been able to relax up to the point where somebody told me to just relax and because the adverb 'just' is thrown in there, I'm now supposed to do what I haven't been able to do and I'm going to do it with ease.

Just like that.

When I started this novella, I said I'll just write a novella. A novella is just 7-25,000 words. I'll just write every day until I get that amount of words and then i'll just edit it and just send it in.

Then I'll be happy

Now, I'm 3,000 words in and I just want to add today what I'm about to add and then just relax. Go upstairs. Read some Flannery O'Connor.

Hugh Guy also hated the word just as an adverb.

He just wanted Haylen to be happy.

Haylen didn't want to be happy.

Haylen wanted to be content.

Haylen disliked the whole concept of "happy" which is just what Hugh wanted her to be.

Haylen thought the pursuit of happiness was a fool's errand. Happiness was unobtainable. happiness was frustrating.  There was no need for more, more, more. Enough was plenty and enough required continual maintenance. 

Step by step trumping dream by dream.

Dust never sleeps.

Haylen didn't like dust.

Dust would temporarily disable Haylen's contentment.

Even invisible dust was a problem.

Haylen made sure to dust under the couch every day as well as every other place in the house. No visitor would have been able to see the dust under the couch. Haylen didn't like visitors much anyways. This energy was all about contentment. Hugh? Forget about it he just didn't give a shit about the goddamned dust.

When she was finished dusting, she was content. Was she happy? Hell no! There would be more dust tomorrow and another whole slew of messes and problems that needed her attention and maintenance which she would apply assiduously to her heart's content.

So Hugh's wish that Haylen would "just be happy" was a double fools errand.

Haylen just didn't want to be happy.

Since the main objective in Hugh's life was for Haylen to be happy, Hugh was very discontent. Over the years, his discontent had manifested into what some might call depression but what Hugh called "just a little down today."

"Well," said Haylen as she did all the work around here..."maybe if you did some of the work around here instead of just layin' around daydreamin you might feel a little better."

SLAM

"Jeezuz Christt"

Begin the broken record.

After playing the record once again, Helen was content.