I gotta admit, it’s been hard to find much fun in life lately.
It’s winter and cold and blustery and the dreary weather is relentless; it seems as though we only see the sun about one day a week. It’s tax season again so F is back to working too hard and too long. The phone rings constantly with people wanting my money or concerned about my car warranty. We’re dieting and trying to drink less and exercise more and generally being miserable while we slipslide and backslide our way upstream against the current, mixed metaphors be damned.
Our republic nearly fell, our politics are toxic, and astoundingly unbelievable lies don’t seem to matter anymore. The pandemic that is killing thousands is made worse by rampant stupidity. Grifters and con artists and thieves go unpunished. At times there seems to be no sign of intelligent life on our poor, polluted, overheated planet. People have forgotten basic civility and have traded graciousness for greed, kindness for crabbiness, tolerance for tyranny, rightness for rudeness, humility for hatred.
And yet …
Yes, it’s all overwhelmingly depressing right now. But you can’t wallow in depression waiting for someone or something to make it better. It’s up to you to make your life better. Those tired old cliches have endured for a reason. Tomorrow is another day. The glass is half full, not half empty. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps (or your slippers, in my case). Get up off your butt and do something (I made that one up).
You start by changing your juju. Your mojo. Your karma. Whatever you want to call it, if it ain’t working right now it needs changing. If you want to know how to change it, just send me a few dollars and you, too, can find your … no, no, no. Just kidding!
My advice is to change your priorities. The question you have to ask yourself is this: Are you still having fun? If not, what’s the point? You need to find some fun. Live life.
Take a walk and enjoy nature (which if you live where I do involves lots of layers of clothing and those boots whose straps you were supposed to have pulled up already). If you’re feeling blue, listen to some blues music. Learn to meditate, or at least learn to slow down long enough to embrace your surroundings. Turn off the TV and read a book. Turn off your phone and talk to your partner. Plan a vacation, even though you can’t take one. Plan a future that is better than the past.
Given the crappy present that will soon be the pestilential past, that shouldn’t be all that hard.