I have no logical reason to be as chipper as I seem to be. When my wife asked me this morning how I was doing, the answer was along the lines of…hmmm I feel pretty great, pretty excited, very happy. She jokingly suggested I might be a psychopath, in what are obviously tense times right now. Oh hai there corona.
The irrationally optimistic part of my character has increased the older I’ve got. As a teen and younger man, the world absolutely terrified me. Dread stalked my waking hours for no ostensible reason. I’m not sure when or exactly where and how things changed. I got hooked on a lot of Eastern philosophy stuff years ago during a tough period in life, maybe that was it. I like to tell myself that, it makes me feel all zen master wise and smart; but in truth it was at best, a lazy consumption of half read random books. The dog is undoubtedly more zen than I am.
In truth it’s probably a character flaw of sorts. I mean I know it can be hard to live with me, to appear to be so flippantly blasé to so many things. I share this trait with my mother, who right now is an extremely at risk patient for covid-19; post (multi) chemo, heart issues, breathing issues, oxygen machines around the house. But still on the phone today, we joked and laughed about the seeming end of days quickly approaching as a, “well, it will be what it will be”.
After all – today we laughed, I listened to some music and drank coffee, I bought some presents for my family. Later I’m going to drink a headache inducing mix of hard cider and red wine, smoke a few marlboro and watch Tiger King. I plan on the rest of the day being decent. Tomorrow is tomorrow and we will deal with that then right.
Mood be like: