My clever strategy to triumph against the forces of pessimism is to treat it as a war of attrition. I intend simply to outlive my own feelings of permanent disappointment. This suits the non-partygoing part of my personality, which is prone to plodding and a kind of dull brainless stamina. Don't be fooled by my seemingly winsome surface charms! I am in a sense the opposite of a manic depressive. No soaring highs, no despairing lows, just a constant forward motion that, while so slow as to resemble stasis to the untrained eye, has a kind of reassuring inertia all its own.