Catching Up

One way to look back on 2011 is to read my past posts.  And, wow, what a whiner I am.  My first impulse was to delete it all.  I even contemplated going completely offline, and just writing by hand in an old-fashioned journal--which I still might do, as part of my resolution. But I happen to be reading Barbara Ehrenreich's book Bright-Sided, so instead I'm working on seeing these past whinings as honest, valid feelings.

Strange that I should have to convince myself that my own feelings are valid.  That's the root of a lot of problems these days.  I've fallen into several traps like the ones Ehrenreich describes.  I need to keep a positive outlook, or I won't find a job.  I won't keep any friends.  I won't find a mate.  Well, I'm having trouble, incidentally, with all three of those issues, and I don't think it's just my attitude.  It can't be, can it?

I'm not immune to positivity.  It seems I am today in particular, but there were some positive moments this past week.  For example, I had one glorious, Fox News free evening when Dad was out.  I watched my latest Netflix offering, Eat Pray Love.  I'm not saying it was phenomenal...maybe I'll explain later.  And despite some setbacks, I squeaked by with an order in to the printer for work, done on my day off, but still, an accomplishment.  Now my keen, penetrating mind is capable of many feats of critical thinking, and in this instance I do mean critical in its pejorative sense.  Not the well-meaning academic sense I attempt to convey to students.  My critical mind finds one major negative aspect in the most positive things: none of my most recent list of good things involves, directly, other people.  No human interaction without incessant doubt, suspicion, bitterness or regret.

Why?  Because, with my bad attitude, who could possibly stand to interact with me on more than the most superficial level?  I'll keep reading Ehrenreich's book, because I am most definitely stuck in the rut of positive thinking.  Not because I think positive, but because I believe my lack of positivity is the root of all my troubles.  To put a happy/brave face on it, on the most heinous things like cancer or the silliest like feeling utterly cut off from the world, is to deny myself the catharsis of typing it out.  Not talking it out.  A magazine told me not to do that.  (I'm only half-joking, there.)