What have I got to be happy about?
Everything.
It's absolutely a choice, you know. Circumstances are what they are, the decision on how to react is entirely up to you. I can wake up everyday lamenting the day ahead, dragging with me the negatives of yesterday, or I can wake up, smile, and say to myself that today is going to be awesome.
Barney Stinson has got it right: If I find myself being negative, I stop being negative, and be awesome instead.
Perspective is what's important. There's always someone whose got it worse than you. Here's a rather dreadful thought: someone out there is planning something for tomorrow, but he/she will die before it happens. A bit morbid, perhaps, but that's how the laws of life work. Today, then, is all that really matters.
So whatever I need/want to do today, it's imperative I get it done now. You've got something to say? Say it, cause you might not have a chance later. Putting it off, or being scared into silence, cannot be an option. Most of the time, fear is there to inform you that what you're about to do is absolutely worth doing.
I let go of the small things. Twice yesterday another motorist cut me off, almost to causing a collision. I braked. That was it; no horns, no gestures involving the middle digit. I simply continued trundling along, listening to music, and enjoying a rare sunny day in San Francisco, in a car I adore dearly.
Getting riled up over ultimately insignificant events is an enormous disservice to yourself.
10 THINGS I THINK
1. I feel like we've been experiencing lots of "Super Moons" lately, but it still doesn't distract from the sheer beauty of it. I'm lucky to have a window that faces east, so on Sunday evening I practically sat in the dark and admired the moon for a good hour as it climbed out of the horizon.
2. If you utter the words "Damn, the weather is hot!" yet you're wearing a black t-shirt, I tend to not have much sympathies for you. I know dark colors are flattering if you haven't exactly got the right body type but wearing them in anything beyond 80 degrees weather is absolutely asinine.
3. Rumors has it that Luca Di Montezemolo, the long-time head honcho at Ferrari, will be stepping down from his duties to go do other stuff (he is Italian aristocracy, after all). While it's lamentable that Formula One will lose one of its most potent voices, I must motion that if LDM really does leave, Ferrari must change the name of the LaFerrari hyper-car - a moniker chosen by LDM himself, probably in a heavily drunken state - to something that doesn't suck.
4. Not once during this entire "Share a Coke" campaign has anyone actually shared one with me. To that end, I'm extremely saddened and slightly bitter. It's not too late, though: I'll gladly accept a Diet Coke any day of the week, as long as it's Sunday.
5. Guardians of the Galaxy is a fantastic movie. I'm not the most hardcore of Marvel Cinematic Universe nuts (Iron Man 2 was decidedly terrible) so I'm not just blindly stating this. For those of us pinning for a proper space western since the untimely demise of Firefly (tears), Guardians finally delivered. Here's to hoping for many movies to follow.
6. It's not a secret: car enthusiasts love fast cars, and when given one, we drive them fast. Problem is, we don't exist in a vacuum: there's other motorists sharing the roads with us. The Jessi Lang story posted earlier last week is a stark reminder to be alert and careful when driving, because it can all be taken away from you so quickly.
7. Thanks to Vladimir Putin and his power-tripping shenanigans, the European stock market was terrible last week. Compounded by the seemingly endless unrest in the Middle East, my International stock holdings completely wiped out any gains I had in the domestic stock market. Diversity is key in any investment portfolio but what Russia is doing to Europe is simply extraordinary. I'm having serious thoughts about shorting.
8. America should not be going back into Iraq. Retrieve any citizens still living there abroad and leave the two warring sides to their own device. The U.S. should not be picking sides on what is really a religious civil war. Offer only what is necessary from a humanitarian perspective; if we want to fix countries we need to first fix our own.
9. I don't see myself as the most ardent of grammar nazis but people not using the Oxford comma is proving to be quite irksome.
10. Far more people I personally know are participating in The Giants Race than I had thought. Either running for health is very much en vogue these days, or the allure of a plastic bobble-head is simply too enticing to ignore. That and getting drunk with food and booze afterwards is always a very welcomed endgame.