Author’s Note: I lived in New York City for many years and enjoyed the regular installments of The New York Times’s Metropolitan Diary that captures little snippets of life in the Big Apple and the New Yorkers that put up with it. My piece below appears as it did in the July 26, 2004 edition under the pseudonym Albert Driver.

Dear Diary:

I had been feeling somewhat depressed, so I was excited to hear about a lecture being given at the Albert Ellis Institute and to learn more about rational-emotive behavior therapy. Arriving at the appointed hour, I learned that the schedule posted on the Web site was wrong; the lecture was in fact the next night, and I already had plans to see “Madama Butterfly” in Central Park.

I left mildly disappointed, but smiling at the irony of the situation. The title of the lecture that was not meant to be: “When Happiness Eludes You.”