Aney Mata BAAAAA.

It must be the heat. Everywhere I turn, somebody's complaining about something or the other. Sucky home life, sucky work life, sucky love life.

Reality check, people. My life sucks too. On so many different levels it's not even funny. Sitting there and chewing the cud about it ain't gonna make it any less sucky, hokay? Trust me on this one. You gotta adopt a strategy. I, in my infinite wisdom, do hereby offer you a list of options as to how to un-suck your world.

• Get a psychiatrist. Especially those of you dealing with home parental issues. If you're Sri Lankan, then give up hope for change now, unless you're willing to commit a murder of sorts. Or suicide, which is favoured by the greater populace. If death is not something that appeals to you, then go find a greedy shrink who will spend as much time as you want listening to you whine. It will be costly, yes. But you get to complain your depressed little heart out until you've drained yourself of your negativity.

• Run away. Always a good thing. Perhaps the whole problem is that you're way too cacooned in your little comfort zone that everything seems bigger than it really is. Run away and pretend you're the host of a Lonely Planet show, travelling off the beaten path. The street life can give you a little perspective. Of course, none of your problems will be solved, but at least you have something new to complain about instead of the same old shit.

• Fight. Maybe that's why it's the bitches who make it in office (case in point). Big mouths can sometimes make a big difference. Don't like the way things are done around the workplace? Badger the management into submitting to your whims. You have nothing to lose except a job you didn't like anyway.

• Live in denial. Some of us are experts at this. Ignore the issue in the conviction that when you wake up, it will have gone away. At the very least, you'll be oodles of entertainment for the rest of us looking to feel sorry for someone.

• Get thee to a nunnery. Or at the very least, a church or temple and start praying. You'll figure out soon enough that with all the time you dedicated so passionately towards focusing on your problems, you forgot how to put your palms together and invoke higher authority. Don't worry. God's not gonna tell on you.

• Get yourself some perspective. Global warming is at an all time high. The tiger and blue whale are almost extinct. Another earthquake just added itself to the growing list of natural disasters performing live this week. Three little puppies were born down my street in a garbage dump and are dying of the heat. All we've got to show for politicians are a bunch of thugs and imbeciles. And you think YOU'VE got problems.

• Internalize. Don't bother talking about your issues. Keep them to yourself, convince yourself that they're THAT bad and obsess over them daily to the point of them throwing you off the deep end. Once you're mental, everything will be nice and happy again.

• Drink. Always a treat, except for the guy who's taking you home with his lap full of your puke. For best results, become so friggin' alcoholic that your problems never get a word in edgewise coz you're permanently too drunk to give a shit.

• Suck it up. Understand that shit happens, and not just to you. Part and parcel of the process, coz if shit never happened, you'd never appreciate the good times. So shut up and put up.

• Get yourself an outlet. Write. Sing. Draw. Dance. Poo. Whatever relaxes you and takes your mind off your shit long enough to charge your batteries and give you the sanity to deal better. Just do it.

Or here's a crazy idea....

• Change your mind. The only person your life is sucky to is you. How can sucky be sucky if you don't think it's sucky? I know I made sense in that statement, somewhere.

This morning I hit one of my all time lowest on the depression scale. (The last time that happened I went to Sumithrayo and spread my misery to the befrienders there.) A combination of heat, hormones, frustration at work and irritation at home sent me swinging off the charts on stress and pressure levels to the point where I seriously considered jumping off the six-storey building I work in.

So I did the next best thing. I went into the ladies' loo and sang 'Little Peter Rabbit'. WIth the actions. Then I came out and took my shitty day by the horns and threw it off the roof instead, with a little help from some awesome choc-biscuit pudding drowned in brandy.

With that one move I discovered that my life doesn't, won't and can't suck as long as I'm in control.
As of now, guess who's much happier than you are? Ngyah ngyah ngyah.