In the past couple of days, it's crept up over me - this feeling of calm and softly, almost audibly humming happiness. Whatever funk has held me down for the last couple of years - the same low-grade depression that prompted me to start this blog - seems finally to be floating away.

I am self employed. I am not falling on my financial ass, or fearful that the bottom will someday crash out from under me and send me reeling. I am learning new things, am back on my road bike after years of leaving it in storage and ignoring the news that was part of my everyday life for so long.

In fact, I have not read a newspaper in more than a month and when I do a quick CNN check, see all that I've missed. There is increasing unrest in the Middle East, and gas prices are soaring. I check the date to be sure this is a current issue.

I still have no friends yet within this complex. My son is impatient for me. "Mom, you need to meet someone!" I can't explain to him that it's different for adults than kids. We can't just walk up and ask, "Wanna jump in the pool with me?" and race them to the edge. I also can't explain very easily that I'm starting to strike up the casual conversations that eventually lead to adult friendships. I am much more anxious for him to make friends.

Besides, two of the friends I treasure most are in the metropolitan area. More are just down I-25, and just up I-70. I'm in the center of the circle now, further from some but closer, overall, to them all. The rest will come in time.

A single mom, her teenaged daughter and son see me walking Ally down the sidewalk. "Hey!" the mother shouts. "Where's Robby?" Her 9-year-old son, whom we met at the pool a few days earlier, peers beyond me hopefully.

This makes me happy. Someone already wants to know his whereabouts. Someone knows his name and not mine.

Robby is with his father on this particular day, however, and can't accept their invitation.

"You tell him he's welcome at our place any time," she says, smiling brightly. I see a potential friend in her face.

As my spirit lifts, I notice something else happening to me. Thoughts that have turned inward for so long start to angle in a new direction. To places outside myself. Maybe unhappy hearts have to focus first on healing themselves before they can be much good to others.

I think about that CD I've been meaning for months to burn for my sister - one of those no-reason-at-all gifts I wanted to surprise her with. The liner notes say it has a guaranteed smile effect. I write it down on my to-do list. (And hope she does not read this before then).

I think about the friend I willfully lost late last year and for the first time, genuinely hope she's doing well.

And the friend who just learned the baby she and her husband had hoped to adopt has instead been adopted by the foster parents, this news coming four years after the death of her 2-year-old son. What on earth can I do for this kind woman whose mother's heart, so ready to embrace a child, has been broken yet again?

I think about some of the other gentle and battered souls who came to the bipolar support groups in Colorado Springs. It's time, I know, to get back into volunteering with DBSA.

I think that I have not felt so quietly happy in longer than I can remember.

Poor working conditions infiltrate every aspect of your life, I've read, no matter how much you believe you close the door on it all at the end of the day. I pshawed this, but now I know it's true. What's making me happy goes beyond that, but it starts with shrugging off that surprisingly heavy burden, and all else radiates from it.

The complex here pulses with life. I fall asleep, windows wide open, to the sound of air conditioning units on the building across from ours. I wake to the sounds of I-25 and small planes jetting out of Centennial Airport. I can tell what time it is by the volume from the traffic. To some, all these sounds would be troublesome. To me, it is soothing.

At midnight on Saturday, walking my dog with a beer in hand, I run into three other people walking their dogs - one of them also casually sipping his own beer. We greet one another like old friends. People are becoming familiar to me by their dogs - the big guy with the two Chihuahuas, the tall, good-looking man with the Weimeraner, the friendly lady with the peppy mixed breed, the father with the pair of black standard poodles, the half dozen folks with golden retrievers - harder to distinguish but becoming individuals as well.

At 9 p.m. on Sunday night, a dozen people are in the pool area, more than half of them 20-somethings having an impromptu hot-tub party. Another trio plays sand volleyball in the court just behind the pool. From my window, I can see a mother with a child on her lap, their two heads bent over a book. I see another woman putting away laundry. A man is sitting on his patio, legs outstretched and resting on the top rail of the short fence that surrounds it, eating a bowl of ice cream.

Life. Is. Everywhere.

And it is sweet.