Make a Great Day

So stop me if I'm getting holier-than-thou, okay?

Okay.

Hahahaha, just joking, you can't really stop me, because by the time you are reading this, I have already finished. It's like a star that you are still making wishes on because you don't know that millions of miles away, it is already dead. 

Ahem.

Sorry about that. Excuse me. Moving on.

So I spent time the other day with a friend of mine, and she was talking about all the stuff that's hard and difficult for her. Halfway through the conversation, she said--referred to something that had happened to her--something like, "yeah, well, that's a reason to be miserable."

When I gave her a kind of quizzical look, she said, "Yeah, I'm compiling a list of reasons to be miserable."

She was kinda yes joking, kinda not joking, and I said that what she was doing was a bit counter-intuitive and shouldn't she instead think of reasons to be glad? And she and a few others around the table dismissed me as an insufferable and incurable optimist.

Disclaimer: I am an optimist.

Disclaimer: I made a choice to be.

I have been through a fair amount of doo-doo in my life and I expressed it at the time in pretty heavy ways. (hint: I once write a diary entry in my own blood. Yeah, I was fairly psycho.) Most of the really weighty stuff I choose not to write about or talk about not because I am a private person--I am not. I dunno if you noticed, but I write a blog. On the internet. So, no. And not because of fear of being judged, either. I choose not to delve into details of poopy-ness mostly because A. They do not reflect on who I am now and B. They can bring me back to a place in which I do not want to be, i.e., compiling lists of reasons to be miserable.

See what I did there?

So why didn't I share my journey with her because you know how people say (somewhat cloyingly?)  "if sharing my story could help even one person..." blah blah blah? Well,I don't know if my story could help anyone. Because everyone is so different. Everyone has such different tests. Maybe I had stronger drive than she does, better role models,went through it at a younger, more bounce-back-y kind of age...a million reasons for why I ended up so differently than she did.

And also, I don't need accolades. Because all I need is to know at the end of the day that I was there for my kids, my husband, my family, my job, and me. That I lived the day as if it was all sunshine and rainbows. Because you know what?

It is. 

If you want to look for it,

it's right there.

And if you want to look for reasons to be miserable,

that's right there, too.

And that's why being an optimist is a daily

(rinse and repeat)

(rinse and repeat)

CHOICE.

As to why I chose to write those last few sentences in a pretty melodramatic fashion, yeah, well, that was my choice as well.

It was all my choice!

Except for the fact that Coco-pop is wearing a winter dress today. That was totally her.