Jesus, but I have so much stuff to do that keeps slipping past me. It's the way of life, I suppose, but boy it's annoying and I'm a little over it. "Ah," but you're saying to yourself (as you must be, since I' m so in touch with the world around me and I'm thinking it), "your little troubles are rather paltry compared to those of people around the world." And it's true, too. But it's not helping me catch up with my paltry little problems. Or tasks.
Sometimes I wonder if seeing challenges as problems and not challenges is something that's hard wired into me - a little gift from my family. I'm sure to a behavioral psychologist this is all old hat... obvious, maybe. But it's something I'm struggling through, working out for myself. I read a book a few years ago called Learned Optimism, the point of which is that optimism and pessimism are learned behaviors, and that if you find that you're naturally a pessimist, you can change that if you like. I was delighted to find out that it wasn't that I was a pessimist, but that I was an optimist who didn't have a whole lot of faith in himself. That's kinda beside the point of my story... I'd read Learned Optimism on the recommendation of Nick Ruggeri, who had read the book himself, and the situation I find myself reminds me of a story that Nick had told me once about the difference between optimists and pessimists. He'd had a friend growing up who crystallized the whole for him by telling him the she came from a family where they looked at the future and said, "What next?!?" As though they were looking forward to the next adventure life would bring, and Nick got to thinking about how he'd come from a family that said exactly the same thing: "What next?" But in his family, it was said with dread of the next disaster.
And, God love 'em, I think I came from the same sort of family. They're wonderful, loving people, but the fact of the matter is that my parents and their parents before them all lived through the most devastating economic period out country's ever gone through - the Great Depression - and had to live hand to mouth, and didn't learn the brightest outlook on life. And my grandparents were poor before the depression, so you can imagine all the shit that goes around in my parents' heads. And they're Roman Catholic, too. Talk about the Burgeoning Optimist Inside getting an ass-kicking. And I think that the fatalism that comes of struggling through the Great Depression, and knowing that you're in a constant struggle to save your pitiable, insignificant soul from eternal hellfire in a world where the forces of darkness are arrayed against you just doesn't inspire a sunny outlook.
Just kinda sucks that I inheirited the outlook.
I guess it shouldn't be such a surprise that pessimists are more likely to be depressives than optimists. Fuckers. As if all that hope and excitement wasn't enough of a prize, they get to be less depressed than the rest of us. Somehow that's not what I call equal distribution of resources. But then again, no one ever asks my opinion about that kinda shit.
So anyway, I've got a lot of shit to do, and I haven't made a lot of progress in the last couple weeks. 'Nuff said.
Sometimes I wonder if seeing challenges as problems and not challenges is something that's hard wired into me - a little gift from my family. I'm sure to a behavioral psychologist this is all old hat... obvious, maybe. But it's something I'm struggling through, working out for myself. I read a book a few years ago called Learned Optimism, the point of which is that optimism and pessimism are learned behaviors, and that if you find that you're naturally a pessimist, you can change that if you like. I was delighted to find out that it wasn't that I was a pessimist, but that I was an optimist who didn't have a whole lot of faith in himself. That's kinda beside the point of my story... I'd read Learned Optimism on the recommendation of Nick Ruggeri, who had read the book himself, and the situation I find myself reminds me of a story that Nick had told me once about the difference between optimists and pessimists. He'd had a friend growing up who crystallized the whole for him by telling him the she came from a family where they looked at the future and said, "What next?!?" As though they were looking forward to the next adventure life would bring, and Nick got to thinking about how he'd come from a family that said exactly the same thing: "What next?" But in his family, it was said with dread of the next disaster.
And, God love 'em, I think I came from the same sort of family. They're wonderful, loving people, but the fact of the matter is that my parents and their parents before them all lived through the most devastating economic period out country's ever gone through - the Great Depression - and had to live hand to mouth, and didn't learn the brightest outlook on life. And my grandparents were poor before the depression, so you can imagine all the shit that goes around in my parents' heads. And they're Roman Catholic, too. Talk about the Burgeoning Optimist Inside getting an ass-kicking. And I think that the fatalism that comes of struggling through the Great Depression, and knowing that you're in a constant struggle to save your pitiable, insignificant soul from eternal hellfire in a world where the forces of darkness are arrayed against you just doesn't inspire a sunny outlook.
Just kinda sucks that I inheirited the outlook.
I guess it shouldn't be such a surprise that pessimists are more likely to be depressives than optimists. Fuckers. As if all that hope and excitement wasn't enough of a prize, they get to be less depressed than the rest of us. Somehow that's not what I call equal distribution of resources. But then again, no one ever asks my opinion about that kinda shit.
So anyway, I've got a lot of shit to do, and I haven't made a lot of progress in the last couple weeks. 'Nuff said.
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