A New Kind of Snarky Optimism (with spittle)

I am giddy with the prospect of September even though I thoroughly HATE September and everything September stands for– except for (maybe) the prospect of “new beginnings” which, to be honest, every month has the potential for, on the first day of its bad self.

But after that first day is over, September is especially nauseating because it signals that we are now on the brink of the murk. (Murk: def. Partial or total darkness; gloom) What we now stand before is a long road of dwindling days heading into total darkness. We are looking down into that deep trough of despond, that murk, and there is no escape.  So today we have this new-pencilly murk of September, which will be soon followed by the moldy-leaf murk of October, then comes the wet, bare-branchy murk of November, and the inevitable fake-twinkly murk of December.

This is followed by the hangover murk of January, and the cloyingly sweet murk of February, which, once we get to the end of that little son-of-a-bitch of a month we can finally heave a big sigh of relief and fire up the snowblower just in time for the 5-foot snow drift dump on the newly-bloomed daffodils in March.  Yah.   Good times.

But today I am NOT going to allow myself to slip into thoughts of the murk. No. No way, Hoe-Zay.  Why? Because I am so into the POSTIVE PSYCHOLOGY movement, yes I am, and I even have the book Learned Optimism sitting right there on the book shelf where I can stare at it every morning first thing, right after I squint into, and turn off the creepy green glow of the Zen alarm clock, and turn off its profoundly annoying mechanical birds.

So where was I? Yeah, the murk, and not going into it. Nope. Not going. Because today is September first. The day of Optimism (!) and new beginnings (!); the day of taking charge of my own happiness and my response to everything, because I can. Yes I can. (insert repetition of this a few times here.)

I am going to get back to all the things I need to get back to, and then talk about them, here (hopefully,minus a lot of today’s snark). Resolutions-ish things. New Project-y things. New Goal-y things.

I have decided to take full and total responsibility for my own:

1. Happiness.

2. Creativity.

3. Inspiration.

4. Health.

I have always “claimed” and “proclaimed” that I was taking responsibility for these things, but deep down? Not so much. If I were to come totally clean here, I would have to confess that I really expected more from the world in meeting those needs.

But “the world”?

People, if you haven’t noticed, it disappoints. It really does. And on pretty much every level. And this forces me into “Spider Mode” in which I am left to spin my own world out of my own spittle, if I have any hope at all of getting up that goddamn waterspout.

So “Job 1” every day is tending the Spittle Factory. And to that end, I am off right now to the gym, to row.

More about that, tomorrow.  Happy September. Or whatever.