While our parents sip daiquiris purchased with enormous social security checks taken from our meager wages, my generation puts in yet another 18-hour day in the salt mines. Then, after a quick meal of cruelty-free meatless hot dogs (more morals, less taste!), it's off to our second job cleaning the caviar dishes of those lucky enough to have it so much better than we do.

Many of us in Generation X have become so bitter about life that our complaints have stopped making sense. We're no longer sure if we're upset that our lives stink due to the sins of our parents, or because our own excesses might louse things up for the people younger than us.

We're supposed to live lives of misery justified by high-minded morality, or perhaps moral lives justified by high-minded misery, where happiness is unacceptable because some family in Rwanda doesn't have cable.

Either way, we X-ers have a reputation as whiny complainers equally unhappy with either success or failure. This has made my life extremely difficult, since things have gone remarkably well for me, and I'm entirely unconcerned about the future of those who come after me (Generation Backstreet Boys).

Facing the dour prospect of a life filled with happiness and joy, I've clung hard to the trappings of misery. Unfortunately, although I drink buckets of coffee (sour milk with a spoonful of bitters), have a wardrobe full of black clothes and a healthy level of dislike for just about everything, I've had a difficult time remaining upset.

My career has gone well. My girlfriend seems to like me. And my parents have not only remained married, they've made it impossible to conjure up even a false memory of any physical or mental abuse.

If I try very hard, I can come up with a few minor injustices that have afflicted me. But sadly, although it's hard to get large envelopes out of my mailbox and I often have to wait for a tennis court, these peeves do not make me a candidate for help from Amnesty International any time soon.

Sure, my shower door never closes quite right, and the supermarket near me often has really long lines, but that's about as bad as it gets. I'm guessing that when even your worst visions of a personal hell include a mini-bar and a day spa, perhaps your life is going well.

All of this makes me a horrendous talk-show guest and a profound disappointment to my generation. I'm living a mainstream Hollywood, feel-good life in a world that aspires to bleak Swedish independent films about homeless orphans who need heart transplants.

So, while I'm not birthday-party-clown manic or even flight-attendant mock-giddy, I am relatively happy. That doesn't mean I'm trading in my brooding 80s alterna-band albums for the collected works of "Up With People," but I might occasionally look up from my shoes.