A Splinter of a different kind...

I have always been on the fence in my life fighting a battle between happiness and unhappiness, positive and negative, joy and sorrow.

Cursed with equal parts of my mother's optimism and my father's pessimism, life has been a bit of a challenge for me in my efforts to remain more closely linked to the rose coloured glasses version of the world.  And it gets tiring I have to tell you.

Why is it that being negative seems so much easier than being positive?  Why can't you be optimistic every day with little to no effort?

I have found throughout the years that my father's pessimism wins far too frequently in my every day life. Of course, things like the world news, my local news, facebook links of abuse to animals, abuse to people, abuse to children seem to run rampant and fuel this part of my soul. 

I often wished I lived on an island surrounded only by the ones that I love, beautiful music and art, animals that wouldn't eat me, nature in general and all the colours of the rainbow.  Of course, somewhere in my perfect version of life, I would be the proverbial Dorothy living with the munchkins in munchkin land sucking on lollipops until my teeth fell out, without the wicked witch who would still be stuck flying around in Kansas giving some other poor soul a run for their money. In other words, I would be happiest with my head crammed up my ass.

But really, how dreadful is my life (*que violin music please)...  Well let's see, even though I work in a dead-end, uncreative job, I do make a fairly decent wage, have benefits and receive four weeks paid holidays every year.  And though this dead end job is not what I dreamed I would be doing, financially it allows me to have a pretty decent personal life. And even though my better half and my relationship was not the passionate love affairs that movies are made from (damn those stinking movies), it was a love affair that grew over time and now has established into an amazing relationship filled with kindness, thoughtfulness and consideration. And even though I live in a fairly unattractive city, it seems to sit in the middle of a beautiful landscape of rolling hills, mountains, trees as far as the eyes can see, with lakes and the pounding lyrical song of the ocean's crashing waves.

So what's my problem?

And why do I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find that elusive happiness?  

And why do I have moments throughout my life where I feel unfilled?

I think that somewhere in my brain, I have short circuited and told myself that life is always about being happy, with no turbulence, no strife, no effort. And, if I was truthful with myself, I would have to admit that it is a mindset that needs to be corrected. The question is how...

The question has always been how.

And whilst I sit on this proverbial fence trying to figure out what will make my heart tick in happiness, I can tell you that sitting here for too long not only leaves a fence railing imprint on your big old butt, but also overtime, your ass gets full of splinters. Yup, painful annoying splinters that keep reminding me that at some point, I must step down from that fence and get on with life because if I don't, that splinter will become permanent. And as the years go by, I fear it will fester into a splinter of a different kind. And I can tell you, that is one splinter I could do without.

Until Next Time.

Tracy