9 April 2003

So. We don't have all the information we could possibly want, but the information we have looks like it might lead to something all right. On more than one front.

Clear as mud?

I always feel like it's my job to be The Optimist. Maybe I'm just not hanging out with Heathah enough. Often, though, it feels like it's my job to come up with positive future scenarios, professionally and personally. I think Spider Robinson was right: coming up with depressing futures is like shooting fish in a barrel. But sometimes the opposite is really tiring.

There was awhile yesterday afternoon where I had a crisis of faith in my optimism. It wasn't "what if I'm wrong?", because that's not really the point, being right. I don't understand people who have plans because they think their lives will go according to the plan. That's not what the plan is for! But it was "what if all this is just making me more miserable?" "What if all the details of coming up with pleasant futures makes me more nervous and unhappy if it looks like they're not going to come to pass?" And I don't know, maybe they do. But I still think it's a good thing overall, and a necessary thing overall. I still think somebody has to come up with the good futures. And around here, it's me, and that works out okay, most days. Yesterday not so much, but today, I think it's fine.

It's Aunt Doris' birthday. I don't know what it is with April birthdays. We got lots of 'em. Part of that may be that we have a fair number of people, period, in our lives.

This, too, is a good thing, though it has its moments.

Yesterday I did the bit with the sauna and the bit with the giant crows, and today it looks like I'm heading into some weather magic. Anti-Soviet weather magic from the stubborn Karelian chick. Plaguing Stalin even a wee little bit will pull her out of the slump she's been in. She's the kind of 1950 Karelian who's ornery that way.

I also have more of Ancient Light to read, and I'm enjoying it so far. But I'm also enjoying my own books a lot, so work on them is more enticing than it has been at some other times. I can't really see that as a bad thing, either.

So back to it.