This entry will be somewhat different.  I just experienced something extraordinary, and I wanted to write it down while it's fresh.

At about 5 am, I pulled back the curtains on my kitchen window and peeked out.  Expecting to see drizzling rain, I was surprised to see snow, which is rare in my area.  But what left me awed and transfixed was just how hauntingly beautiful this perfect scene was.  I watched large, fluffy snowflakes slowly and softly falling in the eerily still, deathly silent pre-dawn darkness, illuminated by the glow of the street light which silhouetted the leafless, winter tree in front of the window.  It reminded me of The Dead by James Joyce.  It was, strangely and unequivocally, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.  (At least, shall we say, most beautiful nature-related thing.)

I stood there and watched this tranquil winter scene for a good ten minutes or so, until the large fluffy flakes turned back into the more slushy sleet-like drizzle that it had been doing earlier.  The perfect, silent winter moment was short-lived, and I felt lucky to have seen it when I did.

I am, by most metrics, an unmitigated failure at life, and quite a troubled and miserable person.  But standing there, at the kitchen window, in a very rare and uncharacteristic moment of profound gratitude, I felt like I had succeeded.  I felt like witnessing such a moment of natural beauty, and really seeing it, really connecting with it, really paying attention to it, and finding the meaning in it, was one of the most important things we can do on this Earth, as if it's what we're supposed to do.  It made me feel as if I was more successful than Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, and that I had won at life.  It made me feel, for a brief moment...

...content.