Maintaining or achieving happiness sometimes means stretching your definitions.   I search for good things or at least things that make me smile everyday.  Some days that means being delighted with my fortune cookie, some days that means finding joy in the absurdity of my fellow commuters (which happens a lot) and some days that means revelling in accomplishments that are trivial.

Maybe out of stubbornness, or pride, or unclear logic, I can’t (and won’t) equate passing the next level of Candy Crush or (the far superior) Cookie Jam with achievement. However, I will celebrate things like a cleaned up desktop.  I can celebrate getting all my laundry done.  I can even celebrate when a blog post gets more than ten views.  I will even celebrate a preparing a meal with more than one vegetable in it.

It is in this vein that I celebrate something rather trivial, but which seemed remarkable enough for me to (ahem) remark on it. (Perhaps I should spend a bit of time with my thesaurus).

So, it should be restated that I play darts. That being said, I can’t honestly say I play darts well.  I show some brief glimpses of decent play but mostly I am in the lower mediocre ranking.  I enjoy the game though.  Where I play, it is social as well as slightly competitive.  Perhaps the fact that you can drink beer while playing makes it even more fun.

What all dart players aspire to is the magical score of 180. This means getting all three darts in the triple twenty spot.  If you watch darts on TV, you have seen professional dart players do that with ease.  I have never done it myself, though.  Not in a match, not while warming up and not even at home when it didn’t matter.  In fact, in a couple of years of playing,  I have only seen it twice .

When I first started playing, I never practiced at home. I bought a dartboard, but procrastination didn’t allow me to get it set up.  Faithful readers of the blog will remember that I finally got some home organization done and have had the dartboard up for a while.(see here)

I have had more time for practice and I often find myself throwing for a few minutes every day. I usually throw until I have hit the triple twenty at least once.  Then maybe I throw triples for another number or the try to hit the bull’s-eye.

The other day, I was feeling pretty consistent and I hit the best score I have every gotten (anywhere). I scored 174.  That was two triple 20’s and a triple 18.  I was so excited that I had to take a picture.

In terms of bragging rights, it doesn’t amount to much. It wasn’t in a match.  There were no witnesses and no one to say “nice darts” except the voice inside my head.  The thing is, I don’t care if I was the only one.  That was some fantastic darts.  I threw them and I am damn proud of myself.  I am going to blow my own horn until someone hears me.  It may not “count” in the “official” scheme of things, but it counts for me.  I feel good and that is all that matters.

Too often people downplay their achievements because they are not achievements in the eyes of others. That stops for me right here and right now.