I Ain't Got Time to Be Unhappy

Hi All!

Your are in for a rare, or maybe not so rare treat.

Good writers produce drafts, sleep on them, run it by critical readers, blah blah blah.

I don't claim to be a great writer, in fact, I never have and never will make a penny for my thoughts, but I like to put things down right as I think about them.

I have pulled posts off of this record of drivel, and I have started drafts if the subject is too hot. I never end up publishing the drafts because the intensity of the moments when I am writing are soon gone, even though these drafts are workable into something one might care to read.

I just never go back to them. I wrote a long short story once and I think some of it got out because I was so angry at blogspot.com for burping and going off-line and garbling and losing half my stuff.

When I read the surviving text, I despaired. What a pile of shit.

The "Dark Side" of this season is the tensions of planning, shopping, dealing with relatives, etc. Y'know, "SSTTRESS!

Fortunately for me, or not, is that I am past caring about many things that have been and still could be hurtful to me and my loved ones. Not my problem. Theirs.

I have a big mouth like Cassius Clay and I lead with my chin, so if I was a boxer, I wouldn't have lasted a fight. With me, WYSIWYG and I have a very bad blind side to how others react to who and what I am and particularly what I say. This results in a wide circle of acquaintance with wildly differing opinions of me, with an uncomfortable number holding negative ones -- unfairly, I think. On the other hand, some "get me" and tolerate me and yet others really like me. Such is the price of being who I am.

When I observe people lying and manipulating and otherwise trying to make life less fun for me and my significant others, I build up duck grease on my back.

When I see or personally experience concrete, real injustice, I can still coil and try to strike, but that never seems to result in anything but getting my head cut off.

Every day is an opportunity to be happy (profound, eh? Where's my book deal?)

Speaking for myself, am learning (you never FINISH learning) that bad memories exist only in my own mind and thinking of them only hurts me. Same as what others think or do to me in the present.

Here is an illustration of how a stupid little thing or two made my day today, despite feeling like crap, physically and overextending myself, physically, trying to finish the Fall Chores with this nice little Overtime Period the weather has given us.

As noted in a previous post, my oldest got nailed on a crappy little scooter going 10mph because he didn't have "eye protection." Give me a break. Ah, but the officious Park Ranger asked for proof of insurance.

Long and short of this story is that it was 100% MY FAULT for not having insurance on MY SCOOTER and MY SON lost his drivers license and will have to pay fines and wait in line with a bunch of morons to take an idiot test to get it back. But the license suspension will haunt his driver record forever, and it cost him at least two job opportunities.

I appealed to the Administrative Review Board of the Department of Public Safety, offering to sacrifice MY license and let the offense go on MY record. I got a curt letter, signed unintelligably by some amused drone on Cedar Street saying that having reviewed the case, the Decision of The Commissioner of Public Saftey is hereby.....SUSSSSSTTTAAAAAINNNNEED!

Ok, that DID get my dander up -- I said I am still learning.

So, today comes my new Handicap placard from the Department of Public Safety with 5 crisp dollar bills stapled to the enclosure. Seems as though the $5 renewal fee for these placards are being waived -- I guess because of the budget surplus.

That made me happy.

Later, I went to the Club with my wife and played Tuesday Darts and I won a game of countdown after bragging that I would only need one dart to hit the last 9 -- and then simply nailing it. That target looked SO BIG that I KNEW I was gonna hit it.

So today was a happy day on balance. The back and the knee are useful for now, as I still have leftover Vicodin from my tooth extraction. I expect that tomorrow will find me pretty much confined to bed, where I will continue working through "The Responsible Christian" by a great theologian Father Vincent Rush, whom I was ever so blessed to have as a prof at St. Thomas.

The scholarly tome is pretty dense, as were the readings of Aquinas, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle and all the other influences that informed Fr. Rush's rather radical (for the time) ideas that cannot be very easily summed up.

Suffice it to say, that people who are happy, help others as best they can and live a moral life got it all over those who punch in with their envelopes at Church every Sunday.

I DO go to church, but I don't run over little old ladies in my rush to get a good parking space.

Well, I am gonna publish this and not read it until later tomorrow (might need to use the laptop in bed)

If you are lucky (or not) to have read it before I yank it or edit it all to heck, print off a copy and save it for me.

Cheers!